Wisconsin man went from feeling breathless to getting a lung transplant in seven days
If Bill Sanders is on a treadmill and sees that the person next to him is running 6 mph, he will bump his own speed up to 6.4. Sanders describes himself as athletic and competitive, so when he suddenly found himself breathless from walking his dog, he knew something was wrong.
In October 2023, Sanders went from a doctor visit in Chilton, Wisconsin, to an emergency room. Suspecting a heart problem, the doctors referred Sanders to see a cardiologist. It turned out that his heart was fine, but the coughing and breathlessness continued to worsen. A couple weeks later, Sanders was back in the emergency room – this time in Appleton, Wisconsin. His diagnosis was interstitial lung disease. The only cure was a lung transplant.
A doctor from the hospital in Appleton called the lung transplant team at M Health Fairview.
“He was about to go on a breathing machine and probably pass away,” said Anupam Kumar, MD, FCCP, lung transplantation director at M Health Fairview and an associate professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School.
“The next thing I knew, they flew me to Minnesota,” Sanders said. “I know they called my son and said, ‘anything you want to say to your dad, you should say it now.’”
Sanders doesn’t remember much after that until he woke up in a hospital room with his wife, son, brother, and niece nearby. “Then a nurse came in and said she was going to take my oxygen and I said, ‘no you can’t. I can’t breathe without it,’” Sanders said.
That’s when Kristi, his wife, gave him the news: He had a lung transplant.
It all came together quickly.
A combination of good luck and getting to the right hospital took Sanders, 68, from considering signing do-not-resuscitate paperwork to breathing easy in only a week.
Sanders’ lungs had extensive scarring from interstitial lung disease, Kumar said. “For patients who experience acute exacerbation of interstitial lung disease, only about half are alive three months later.”
The lung transplant team at M Health Fairview acted quickly to complete the necessary tests to get Sanders, who was otherwise in good health, on the lung transplant list.
“All the while, he was very close to cardiac arrest and death,” Kumar said. “Ultimately he required ventilator support but fortunately we got appropriate donor lungs in time and we were able to perform lung transplant surgery.”
It all happened so fast that his wife, Kristi, barely had time to pack for a two- or three-month stay and find care for their two dogs before driving to Minneapolis.
“Once we know that someone needs help, everybody just comes together and does their part and that's why I think that timeline of finishing all the evaluation in three to four days is so critical,” Kumar said. “We have a wonderful team that is experienced enough to do it.”
