LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — From family trips to national parks, raising teenagers, teaching at Wellington Elementary, and every moment in between, Emily Presley’s life felt normal by all standards, and "normal" meant "fulfilling."
“Normal life was pretty full…we had a full life,” said Emily, sitting next to her husband Jeff.
In May of 2022, that normalcy went out the window in a matter of days.
“I had a cold, then it went away, then it came back, then it was bronchitis, then it was pneumonia,” recalled Emily.
The dominos fell. Rhinovirus, parainfluenza, staph infection.
Jeff remembers coming home, his wife breathing so heavily that he could hear her from another room. He made the call to seek medical help.
“By the time we got her to the ER, she was already in sepsis,” said Jeff. “ They whisked her into the room immediately and had her on a ventilator in a medically-induced coma within an hour of getting there.”
Friends would consider Emily one of the healthiest people they knew. She exercised regularly and led a healthy lifestyle. In a cruel plot twist, her doctors suddenly worried if she’d live.
“And I thought, 'What is going on?' You feel like your world is crumbling, and the doctor stepped me outside the room and said, 'We have to put her on a ventilator, or this isn't going to go well,’” said Jeff.
According to one of Emily’s doctors, staph pneumonia is one of the most common pneumonia to occur after viral infections. While someone as healthy as Emily could usually fight this type of infection, it can be deadly in rare instances.
Emily spent the next five months at UK hospital, attached to ECMO, an advanced form of life support that does the work of the heart and lungs. All the while, Jeff realized they would have to travel 300 miles away just to make it back home.
“Northwestern agreed to accept her, and we are forever grateful to them for taking a chance because UK, to their credit, said this is too risky for us to do; they just don't do enough of them,” said Jeff.
Emily needed a double-lung transplant. Northwestern Medicine was her best bet. On Oct. 8, 2022, Emily was transferred to Northwestern in Chicago. Yet, even the best of the best had their doubts.
Dr. Catherine Myers, a pulmonologist at the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute, said, “She'd already been in the hospital for five months, she was very thin, very malnourished, and really everything that could've gone wrong, had gone wrong. Really, the only thing that hadn't gone wrong was that she happened to still be alive.”
On October 25, Emily had grown strong enough to receive a double-lung transplant, but it failed.
After the news, Jeff had to sit down with Dr. Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute.
“So then I kind of go “Now what? Are we stuck again?’ I remember sitting in a conference room with Dr. Bharat…having the worst conversations you can have,” said Jeff, tearing up at the memory.
Dr. Bharat presented the idea of pursuing a second transplant, and as soon as Jeff and Emily agreed, Dr. Bharat was out the door looking for another lung, according to Jeff.
On October 27, 2022, surgeons successfully transplanted the second set of lungs.
Emily spent the following year relearning how to walk, swallow, and perform daily tasks, all while under the care of Northwestern Medicine. Meanwhile, her mom stepped in to care for her son and daughter in Lexington.
To see a walking miracle, one might ask, how did Emily survive?
“There were times that were really hard, times where I didn't have a lot of hope, but I never thought, 'This is the end for me.' I never went there,” said Emily.
She and Jeff also credit a heroic team of doctors at Northwestern and a revolving door of supporters back home.
“I remember thinking, 'Wow, if there's someone who can do this because they have the support, it's gonna be her' because she never didn't have someone at her bedside, whether it was Jeff, her mom, her friends,” said Dr. Myers.
In Emily’s recovery, Dr. Myers said she had a goal in the back of her mind.
“I want to get her back to Kentucky, and I wanted to get her back to Kentucky in time for Thanksgiving.”
With a new set of lungs and outlook on life, Emily left her team in Chicago and came home to Lexington in late October.
“To be here is amazing. To be 'home home,' not Chicago home,” said Emily.
“It was really humbling because you don't always get the opportunity to send folks home that are as sick as her,” said Dr. Myers.
Back to normalcy, Emily had just one last thought to share.
“I really hope that people learn to live a better story and to really soak in the present moment like they never have before.”
