Sharon Kelly, Chanute, spends much of her time encouraging people to enroll in an organ donor program.
Few people know the value more. Seven years ago she had a double lung transplant, a procedure that restored her vigor and kept her from facing mortality far sooner than she wanted.
Iola Rotarians were given an intense and emotional review Thursday of what it was like for Kelley to await an opportunity for a transplant.
THE DIAGNOSIS that eventually led Kelly, 61, to have her double lung transplant, occurred about 15 years ago when she came down with pneumonia. It became so severe that an evaluation at the University of Kansas Medical Center uncovered that she suffered a condition that prevented her liver from producing enzymes necessary for proper lung function.
The recommendation was a transplant, but with children in elementary, middle and high schools she opted to have oxygen 24 hours, even with the prospect that she might not live another year.
She then received a reprieve. A new enzyme-replacement treatment was developed, her condition stabilized and over the next several years Kelly led a relatively normal life.
Then, pneumonia struck again and she was back at KU Med in January 2006, with a transplant the only recourse.
Disadvantage was Kelly had to move to St. Louis, near a hospital where the transplant could be done, because of a two-hour window from the time when a potential donor surfaced and surgery.
She was alone in a small apartment, in days that grew longer by the week, because of husband Merle’s obligations at Merle Kelly Ford in Chanute. “He couldn’t take off for a prolonged time from the business and all his employees,” Kelly said.
The call came at 2 a.m. on Feb. 3, 2007.
“I was going to drive myself to the hospital, but realized I couldn’t make it,” Kelly recalled. A neighbor in the apartment complex came to her aid.
At the hospital she was prepped for surgery, along with a another person awaiting a lung transplant, and just before she was to be taken into the surgical suite, doctors determined the other person was a better match.
Her family, whom she had called on the way to the hospital, arrived “just as I was leaving,” Kelly said.
The rest of February crept by. Then March and April. On May 1 a grandson was born.
