Transplanted lungs breathe life into Hampden woman

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HAMPDEN – When at 18 Amy Eyles took a deep breath and felt pain in her chest, it didn’t feel right. When the doctors diagnosed her with asthma, it didn’t feel right. When the hospital administrators in Cleveland called the first time to say they had two new lungs to transplant into her body, it didn’t feel right.

But more than a decade after Eyles, now 32, told her doctor it was hard to breathe, the Hampden woman is recovering from a double lung transplant she underwent in September, the one that did feel right.

“Climbing stairs, I’m not getting so out of breath,” Eyles said during a recent interview at the home she shares with her parents. “It’s a lot better than it was.”

At 18 the pains in her chest were the result of a collapsed lung and numerous blood clots, not asthma. Eyles was further diagnosed in 1992 with severe pulmonary hypertension, meaning the blood pressure in the arteries of her lungs was high enough to kill her.

Various drug treatments over the next decade, including a medicine administered through a catheter in her chest, didn’t work.

Only her doctor in Portland knew how serious the problem had become in May 2004, when a visit to his office turned into a helicopter flight to the Cleveland Clinic for emergency surgery.

“She only had a few weeks to live,” said Amy’s mother, Alice Eyles.

The doctors performed an arterial septostomy, a procedure similar to a heart catheterization, to keep Amy alive. A hole was created between left and right chambers of Amy’s heart to relieve pressure, but blood passed between them without proper oxygenation.

A healthy reading for lung pressure is about 25; Amy’s was in the 90s. Her lips were blue and she was weak.

The cause of primary pulmonary hypertension is not known, though the illness can run in families and is most common in women of Amy’s age, said Jenny Foertch, Amy’s lung transplant coordinator at the Cleveland Clinic, a nationally known organ transplant center.

“She was very much at death’s door when she got to us,” Foertch said Monday. “It’s [pulmonary hypertension] very hard to pinpoint.”

The arteries carrying oxygen to Amy’s heart were much like a constricted water hose, Foertch said.

“If that water hose gets tied off or kinked, you’re going to have a trickle at the end,” she said.

“The only option left was a transplant,” said Amy, her slight frame resting on a couch near the fireplace in her family’s living room. “The decision kind of made itself.”

Amy was placed on the lung transplant list in June and was told the wait could vary from a few hours to a few months. Her parents had no idea that emergency helicopter flight would take Amy to a lung transplant clinic halfway across the country for eight months.

“I left with just the clothes I was wearing,” Amy said.

Alice and Steve Eyles eventually realized that renting a car and staying in motel rooms was not practical for them and Amy. They rented an apartment in a Cleveland suburb and bought a new vehicle. They missed the birth of a grandchild back in Hampden.

Amy left a house and a job she loved as a social worker in Lincoln. She missed providing support for foster children and their families.

“Every time the phone would ring, we’d jump,” Amy said.

The first call finally came in September, and Amy and her parents rushed to the hospital to receive the donated organs.

She didn’t feel ready; the timing wasn’t right, Amy said, remembering the anxiety she felt on her way to the hospital.

And it wasn’t right. The donated lungs were not in good enough condition to transplant into Amy’s body. She and her family were sent back home to wait.

A second call came at 8 p.m. two weeks later: Amy and her parents had to be at the hospital by midnight. That time it felt right, Amy said.

“I was ready,” she said. “I knew that this was the time.”

The organ donation process is confidential, but Amy said she heard her two lungs came from someone half her age. She is 5 feet 5 inches tall and petite, and the teenager’s lungs were healthy, and small enough to fit inside her chest.

“I honestly don’t remember much about that night,” except her mother squeezing her hand, Amy said. “I wasn’t in any pain at all.”

The next couple of weeks were harrowing. Complications from bleeding landed Amy in the operating room about a dozen times.

“It was a nightmare,” Alice Eyles said.

But Amy stabilized. She was slowly weaned off the respirator that helped her new lungs adjust to a new body. She and her parents were told they could leave on Dec. 21, and they started the drive home to Hampden on that day.

“She’s sitting there right now because of the work and dedication of the world’s best and brightest,” Steve Eyles said.

The family has named one of their cats “Bach” after Bangor surgeon Robert Bach, who performed a lung biopsy on Amy in 1991 and discovered the life-threatening blood clots.

“He basically saved my life,” she said.

Amy walks on a treadmill to exercise her new lungs. She recently went shopping in Augusta and on a snowmobile ride outside her home. Trips outside are limited, though, because she has to wear a mask to protect her from infection.

Amy will be on immunosuppressive drugs for the rest of her life to prevent her body from rejecting the new lungs. She hopes to go back to work in Lincoln eventually and to start horseback riding again, a lifelong passion since she got her first horse, Cherry, when she was 11 years old.

She’ll return to Cleveland every few months for checkups. She said she’s learning to adjust to breathing with lungs that are stronger than she’s used to.

It feels right now. Better than right.

“I’m doing great,” she said.