Double-lung transplant gives Bardstown woman new life

LEXINGTON, Ky. (WTVQ) – After losing four sisters to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, Bardstown native Brenda Conder found herself on the same path: breathless, exhausted, and barely able to move around her home.

“I couldn’t breathe,” Conder said. “I couldn’t even walk up a flight of stairs.”

After being diagnosed with COPD in 2008, an oxygen tank became Conder’s constant companion. Dragging the tank around kept her blood oxygen levels up and gave her some relief, but it limited her ability to go out and do the things most of us take for granted — exercising, shopping, even playing with her young grandchildren. At the peak of her disease, she estimates that she would have to stop and take about a dozen breathing treatments a day.

“I had no life at all,” she said. “I didn’t move anywhere without the oxygen.”

Conder, like many of her generation, began smoking at a very young age. The effects of smoking took her sisters and her father, who passed away from the complications of emphysema.

For years, Conder dealt with her COPD, regularly visiting her pulmonologist in Louisville, Dr. Taurif Sayied. Though a double lung transplant was looking more and more like the only solution, Conder was hesitant because one of her sisters had undergone the procedure but didn’t survive the surgery itself.

It wasn’t until she came down with crippling pneumonia twice in less than a year that she decided to broach the possibility of a transplant with Sayied, who then referred her to the University of Kentucky Transplant Center. Conder was evaluated by Dr. Maher Baz, medical director of the lung transplantation program at UK.

But before she could be listed for a lung transplant, Conder faced one major task: to quit smoking.

“She was an ideal candidate once she quit smoking,” Baz said. “She’s a very positive lady with high morale.”

Sixty-one years old at the time of referral, Conder had been smoking for more than 50 years – a lifelong addiction tough to break. She had tried unsuccessfully several times in the past, using the smoking cessation drug Chantix for nearly five years, but knew she needed to make the commitment stick this time. Now motivated by the possibility of eliminating her disease, she gradually tapered her cigarette consumption until she was completely smoke-free.

“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she said.

Nearly a year after quitting cigarettes, Conder was officially listed for transplant at UK. Over the next month and a half, she received the call for potential lungs four different times, but all fell through for various reasons. But when she got the fifth call – on Friday, Nov. 13 no less – she was ready and optimistic.

“I had a good feeling,” she said. “I just knew these lungs were it.”

Her instincts were correct: the lungs were a match and viable, and UK cardiothoracic transplant surgeon Dr. Alexis Shafii performed a successful double-lung surgery on Conder.

“When I woke up, I knew I had a new life,” Conder said.

Her ability to breathe immediately improved. Conder says she thinks about her organ donor’s sacrifice every day, and was overwhelmed with the magnitude of the gift she had received right after receiving the lungs.

“I think I cried the entire day after the surgery,” she said. “Not for me, but for the donor family.”

Conder’s husband, Roger, has been by her side throughout her diagnosis, treatments, and the surgery. Expressing gratitude for such a monumental gift is difficult if not impossible, he says.

“I mean, what can you possibly say?” he said. “What can you say to thank someone for this gift?”

Conder got the all-clear to go home in mid-December, just in time for the holidays. These days, she’s living her life to the fullest, filled with more energy than she’s had in a long time. She attends pulmonary rehab in Elizabethtown several days a week, using the trip as an excuse to go out to eat lunch, shop, and so many other things she wasn’t able to do before.

But perhaps most importantly, she gets to spend quality time with her grandchildren, even coming outside to participate in a snowball fight with her youngest back in January — a task made impossible by her disease prior to transplant.

“I feel great,” Conder said. “So far, this is the best life I’ve had in 15 years.”