For Jim, traveling from his home in Cashton, Wisconsin, to see the doctors at the UW Health Transplant Center and William S. Middleton Memorial Veterans Hospital is like reuniting with good friends.
“I love going to see those people,” he said. “Because without them, I wouldn’t be here today.”
Jim’s transplant journey began in March 2022, when he was suffering from a bad cough. A doctor at a neighborhood clinic determined he had high blood pressure and gave him inhalers to help with the cough, but about a month later, he was back at the doctor’s office. That doctor told him he had pulmonary fibrosis, a chronic lung disease that causes the tissue around the lungs to scar and thicken. And then, yet another doctor delivered the dreaded news: Jim would need a lung transplant.
“I was not good when I heard the news,” he said with tears in his eyes. “She asked if there was anything she could do, and I said, ‘Yes. Hold my hand.’”
After Jim saw a pulmonologist, who confirmed he required a lung transplant, he was told he could choose between UW Health and another transplant center. He decided he wanted to be in Madison. “I heard they were the best in the nation,” he said.
Within a week and a half, he was sitting in an examination room with Erin Lowery, MD, a lung transplant doctor and medical director of the UW Health Lung Transplant Program. Right away, Lowery asked to see Jim’s fingernails, and when she saw they were blue (a sign of a lack of oxygen), she ordered oxygen for him right away. Jim received both an oxygen tank for use at home, and a portable one to carry with him. “The more I was on oxygen, the more I needed it,” he said.
There was a challenge with Jim undergoing such a big surgery, however: In addition to needing a new set of lungs, Jim also had a clogged coronary artery. His doctors made the historic decision that, should a donor become available who matched Jim, they would also fix his artery at the same time.
On Jan. 28, 2023, Jim became the first patient at UW Health to undergo both a double lung transplant and coronary artery bypass surgery at the same time. And it went swimmingly, with no complications.
“In October and November, I was making plans, because I didn’t know if I was going to be here or not,” he said. “Then, on Jan. 28, everything changed. Two days after the surgery, I was up walking, and I’ve been walking ever since.”
Since his surgery, Jim has slowly been able to become an active person again. He goes on two- to three-mile hikes with his partner, Cindy, and returned to deer hunting this fall.
“Every day, I feel blessed to wake up,” he said. “I got a second chance at life, which not a lot of people get. I think UW Health and the VA Hospital in Madison are the two best organizations I’ve ever had the honor to work with. Everyone that I’ve encountered there is always so pleasant and so good at their job.”