“Take a deep breath, it’s a whole new life.”
That’s what Jill Holker, 43, said is the first thing she’ll do after walking out of the hospital doors of the University of Florida Health Shands Hospital in Gainesville.
Holker an ICU nurse in Utah helping treat COVID-19 patients every day until she herself became infected in November. She was first admitted to the ICU where she worked. Soon, doctors said her lungs were essentially not working anymore. UF Health is one of only a few hospitals in America with the capability to perform double-lung transplants. Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago being another.
In fact, the first two known patients in the United States who received double-lung transplants due to COVID-19 were Mayra Ramirez, 28, of Chicago, on June 5, and Brian Kuhns, 62, of Lake Zurich, Ill., on July 5. Both of these were performed at Northwestern Memorial Hospital, according to a press release.
Holker was transferred to the Florida hospital and put on the transplant list. Dr. Andres Pelaez, medical director for the UF health lung transplant program, said, “She was completely unable to breathe on her own.” So, she needed an external lung to stay alive.
She received the new lungs in January. Although Holker was able to leave the hospital recently, she has to have three months of rehab in Florida before being able to return to Utah and her family, says a report in Yahoo!news.
The severity of Holker’s case was completely unexpected. “I had no underlying health conditions at all,” said Holker. “I run and work out and work full time and don’t take any medications. It hit me to the point where they called my daughter to tell her to start thinking about withdrawing care,” Holker said, according to a report on Friday by WGFL CBS4.
“I think this is extremely rewarding,” said Dr. Tiago Machuca who performed the 10-hour surgery. “It’s essentially the best example of why we do what we do.”
Read more:
- Vanderbilt University Medical Center has performed the world’s first heart-lung transplant of a COVID-19 patient
- Pennsylvania’s weekly supply of COVID-19 vaccine grows by 40,000
- Couple, married for more than 60 years, shares hospital room as they fight COVID-19 together