(LEX 18) — April is recognized as National Donate Life Month, a time to appreciate those who have given the gift of life and an opportunity to highlight the need for organ donations.
Currently, nearly 140,000 people in the United States are waiting for an organ transplant.
According to Donate Life America, 16 people die each day while waiting for an organ.
Despite a tumultuous few years, Lexingtonian Keith Zafren won’t be a statistic.
The husband, father, and business owner developed a bad cough in 2017. Before long, he’d be adding “cancer patient” to his bio.
“I went to Urgent Care just to find out if I needed antibiotics and if I had bronchitis. They took an x-ray of my chest to see if I had pneumonia, which I did, but on that x-ray they noticed a couple spots and said I better get those checked out,” said Zafren. “So we started that process and by April of 2018, we got the diagnosis that I had lung cancer.”
With a diagnosis came years of treatment. First, half of his left lung was removed, followed by two different kinds of chemotherapy. Then, Zafren joined a clinical trial for a new drug.
In the end, none of the treatments worked.
Zafren had rapidly progressing stage 4 lung cancer and was running out of time to find a viable lung donation.
Along his side all the while, Zafren’s wife Lori remained unwavering in her positivity and support.
She recalled one appointment in particular, saying, “The doctor said to you in August 2022 at that meeting, ‘I'm sorry, but you're out of options. If you go on chemo again you might get two more years, and if you don't, that it's probably gonna be much shorter.’ And Keith’s response was 'Yeah I don't think so,' I mean who says that to their doctor?” Lori laughed.
Zafren had caught wind of innovative lung transplants happening at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago. If it worked for someone else, why not him?
“From the moment I heard of these two other lung cancer patients getting transplants, I essentially made up my mind, I'm gonna be number three,” said Zafren.
Yet, there’s a reason only a handful of cancer patients have undergone this surgery. The qualifications are plenty, and the procedure is still very new and complex.
To save Keith’s life, surgeons would take donor lungs that were not initially viable for transplant and use ex vivo lung perfusion, or “lungs in a box,” to keep the organs alive outside the body.
“Essentially, it’s a machine that gives the lungs fake blood so the lungs can be kept alive outside of a donor's body and a recipient's body for longer. When we remove the lungs from the donor body, there's a time clock, basically,” said Northwestern Medicine pulmonologist Dr. Catherine Myers.
While on the lungs in a box technology, surgeons used clot-busting drugs to repair the lungs before transplanting.
According to Northwestern Medicine, the first-of-its-kind clinical program was formally established in March 2023 to provide hope for select patients with stage 4 lung cancers confined to the lungs who are being considered for hospice.
Since the surgery, Zafren’s new lungs have been working well, and he is cancer-free.
According to Myers, the technology could be life-changing for others on the organ waitlist.
“What this allows us to do is take donor lungs that we might not otherwise be able to use and actually perform different procedures or treatments on them, so it opens up the donor pool and creates more donor organs for recipients,” said Myers.
The last-ditch effort to save Zafren’s life took faith in the doctors and the process.
“We just crossed into the land of ‘anything is possible.’ That's the whole point of this experience, we can't believe how grateful we are. We're so fortunate,” said Lori.
With a new lease on life, the duo plans to move to Florida, get back into traveling and golf, and, above all, spend time with family.
“I am most looking forward to being able to enjoy as many years as we have together, Lori, me, and the boys,” said Keith.
