Breath for Amy

Amy graduated from Haverhill High School with high honors in 2004, then attended Loyola University in Maryland, earning a dual degree in Psychology and Writing in 2008.  In 2010 she began studying for an advanced degree at the University of Massachusetts and earned a Masters in Counseling in 2012. During her entire career, Amy has worked to support children and adolescents in the community.  She began her career working with adoptive and foster children, and is currently working with young adults with major mental illness.  Her goals have been to ensure children have a future and are safe.  She is an extremely intelligent and caring person, tirelessly working to help others. Now she requires our help.

At 32-years-old, Amy is in need of a double lung transplant due to the damage her lungs have sustained from her lifelong battle with CF. There is no cure for CF, but a lung transplant can extend a patient’s life and improve their health once their lungs become so damaged that they can only function at or below 30% of normal. Amy’s lung/oxygen capacity was estimated to be between 32%-40% up until about 2 weeks ago, when her health started to rapidly decline. She was hospitalized for coughing up blood due to damage in her lung and required surgery to stop the bleeding (not for the first time). The surgery went well, but then about a week ago she was developed severe pneumonia. 

The existing damage plus the pneumonia made it too hard for her lungs to keep up with what her body needed, so her doctors transferred her to ICU and put her in an induced coma so they could put her on a ventilator. Less than 12 hours later, her doctors told her father that the transplant we had thought would be at least 6 months away had to happen as soon as possible because her lungs were much worse than they estimated. Her ICU nurse told her family that Amy is very healthy other than her lungs, and they expect she will do really well with the transplant.

The transplant process is invasive, physically demanding, and requires a minimum of six-months recovery time. After the surgery, Amy’s entire life will change:  she will have to begin taking heavy doses of immunosuppressants, as well as a multitude of other medications for the rest of her life. She will have more frequent doctor’s appointments and tests during the recovery period as well. 

During that projected minimum of six-months recovery time, Amy will not be able to work, and in addition to her normal living expenses, she will have significant medical costs. These expenses would be significant without the burden of major illness, but as a single woman supporting herself, these financial challenges fall well beyond her present income. Her friends and family have partnered with COTA, a 501(c)3 non-profit that has been around for 30 years, to help raise funds in Amy’s honor to help with a lifetime of transplant-related expenses.

She worked in the foster system doing psychological assessments on families looking to foster/adopt and the children, including children with trauma. By next week I’m sure there will be a lot of updates as things have been changing drastically by the day. This time last week we thought Amy’s transplant was probably 6 months away and she was in pain but walking a talking.

Today they put her on an ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machine, which basically bypasses the lungs and oxygenates her blood for her. It is basically two gigantic tubes attached to a giant machine-blood that doesn’t have oxygen in it goes into it, the machine oxygenates it, then the other tube returns it to her body so her heart can pump it to the rest of her body. It’s really scary to look at, but it will eliminate the need for the ventilator, so they are hoping to take her off of it tomorrow, and try to wake her up. They need to make sure she did not have any damage to her brain from lack of oxygen, but they believe the ECMO surgery went well, so they don’t anticipate any problems. Once they wake her up and get her consent to move forward with the transplant, they will have her officially listed, and at the top of their list.

It’s hard for them to predict when she will receive her transplant. They cannot use a living donor for her because she has next to no healthy lung tissue left, and it certainly weighed on her, as well as her friends and family, that someone will have to have died to her to live. Everyone in her life will be forever grateful to whoever it is that chose to become an organ donor and will end up saving her life. She is truly an amazing person, and hopefully she will soon get to thank you for your kindness herself.”

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