As a nurse, Sharon K. considers herself a tough customer when it comes to health care. When she felt her local pulmonologist wasn’t doing enough to address her chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), Sharon took action. Her research brought her to the Temple Lung Center.
Finding treatment for lung disease
Sharon was interested in lung volume reduction surgery. However, testing showed it wasn’t a good option for her. She worked with David E. Ciccolella, MD to find a clinical trial that would fit her needs, but Sharon kept missing the study requirements by mere tenths of a point. A physical for one of these clinical trials connected her with Dr. Gerard J. Criner.
“He could not believe how bad my CT scan was,” Sharon says. “He said, ‘Look, if you don’t make this study, I promise within six months, I will have something for you.’”
A week later, Temple Lung Center contacted Sharon. Dr. Criner recommended a lung transplant. Ideally, she needed two new lungs. But if a left lung were available, he recommended that option as well.
“I went through two weeks of testing and passed them all,” Sharon says. “I was on the list.”
‘I’m a very lucky person’
In December 2017, after 10 months on the transplant list, Sharon’s phone rang. A left lung was available.
“The feeling’s amazing when you get that call,” Sharon says. “And then you’re really nervous. After you call everybody in the family, you think, ‘It’s real!’”
Sharon’s nerves continued as she was wheeled to the operating room.
"The nurse came over and held my hand and talked to me. That’s the way they are up there."
The transplant surgery went well, and Sharon was out of the hospital in about a week — and embracing her new lease on life.
“Honestly, before my transplant, I couldn’t enjoy anything. I didn’t go anywhere,” Sharon says. “People hated coming here to talk to me because I couldn’t even complete a sentence. I would gasp after a couple of words.”
After her lung transplant, Sharon created a bucket list. The No. 1 item: going to Florida to see her beloved Miami Dolphins play.
Yelling and cheering at the game was a revelation. “My lungs hadn’t had that in years,” Sharon says. “I was so happy.”
But Sharon’s journey wasn’t over.
Health challenges and personalized care
In 2020, a follow up CT scan showed a mass in her old (right) lung.
“Temple got me in for a biopsy in no time,” she says. Dr. Criner confirmed that the mass was cancer. Three weeks later, Sharon had surgery to remove the right middle lobe of her lung. The cancer was at stage I, and Sharon didn’t need more treatment.
But she wasn’t out of the woods. Over time, the medicines that were necessary to keep her body from rejecting the transplanted lung began to affect her kidneys. As a result, Sharon spent time on dialysis and was hospitalized several times.
A kidney transplant in July 2023 changed everything. Antonio Di Carlo, MD, performed the surgery and she was home in three days.
