{"id":3512,"date":"2023-01-03T21:47:57","date_gmt":"2023-01-03T21:47:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/medschool.prd.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/?p=3512"},"modified":"2023-01-03T21:47:57","modified_gmt":"2023-01-03T21:47:57","slug":"saved-twice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/saved-twice\/","title":{"rendered":"Saved Twice"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

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Patient Janet Darnell received a lung transplant followed by treatment for colon cancer. Photo by Erin O. Smith.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The first time Janet Darnell saw her clinicians at Vanderbilt, she was sitting in a wheelchair, on oxygen 24 hours a day, and her lungs were near failure. She couldn\u2019t walk from her chair to her front door.<\/p>\n

In a series of events she considers miraculous, Darnell\u2019s life would be saved twice in one year. First, she received a lung transplant in 2020. Just five months later, because of tests required for transplant, Darnell had surgery to remove stage 3 colon cancer. Without the lung transplant, the cancer may never have been detected.<\/p>\n

Darnell, 66, of Greeneville, Tennessee, recently walked a mile.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes I think I\u2019m a walking miracle,\u201d she said. \u201cI really do. I owe it to the Lord and Vanderbilt. I don\u2019t know what I would\u2019ve done. There\u2019s no other hospital around that I trust like I do them. I go down there, and I just feel comfortable. I feel like I trust those people.\u201d<\/p>\n

Darnell had no problems with her lungs until about two years before her transplant. She was seeing her family physician, and he became concerned listening to her lungs. He advised her to get a CT scan.<\/p>\n

The results showed she had pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease that leaves lung tissue damaged and scarred. There is no cure, and her only hope was a lung transplant. Researching the condition, she figured she could live two or three years on oxygen.<\/p>\n

One night afterward, she fell asleep on the couch, and her husband couldn\u2019t rouse her. She was rushed by helicopter to a hospital in Johnson City, Tennessee, and was on life support for six days. She had pneumonia, and her lungs had gotten worse.<\/p>\n

Darnell saw a specialist in Johnson City who referred her to Vanderbilt for a transplant. Stephanie Norfolk, MD, assistant professor of Medicine, was one of the first of a team of pulmonologists who saw her in clinic. \u201cShe was definitely sick enough that without a transplant she would not have survived, I would anticipate, another six months, let alone 12 months,\u201d Norfolk said.<\/p>\n

Darnell was advised to build up her strength so she could walk for six minutes. She began physical therapy in Greeneville three times a week. \u201cI kept going, and Vanderbilt kept checking, and one day, praise the Lord, I made the six minutes,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

That was good, but then she had to demonstrate that to her treatment team. She did.<\/p>\n

In April 2020, she got the call that her new lung was available. VUMC arranged for Darnell to board a plane at the Greeneville airport in East Tennessee and be flown to Vanderbilt. Her bags were already packed.<\/p>\n

Darnell had a successful lung transplant, saving her life. Her life was about to be saved again.<\/p>\n

To receive a transplant, all patients are required to receive a series of tests and screenings to ensure they are good candidates for transplant. Darnell had several colonoscopies both before and after her transplant. That\u2019s how a suspicious polyp was detected, leading to a surgery in September 2020 when much of her colon was removed. \u201cIt is the only way to get the cancer out and to figure out what stage it is,\u201d said her surgeon, Ben Hopkins, MD, who, coincidentally, is Norfolk\u2019s husband.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe confluence of events that occurred was lifesaving,\u201d Norfolk said. \u201cHaving the lung transplant was what enabled her subsequently to get through surgery for her next diagnosis of cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Darnell is now on surveillance to ensure the cancer doesn\u2019t return, said Hopkins, associate professor of Surgery. Five years after the cancer was removed, she will be declared cancer free.<\/p>\n

The cancer screenings were \u201ccritically important,\u201d Hopkins said, adding that American Cancer Society guidelines now say anyone 45 or older should get a colonoscopy, not age 50 or older, as was recommended until 2021.<\/p>\n

Darnell\u2019s oncologist, Cathy Eng, MD, said Darnell\u2019s case shows how a multidisciplinary institution such as Vanderbilt can coordinate complex medical care \u2014 in Darnell\u2019s case, two major medical issues. As a result, \u201cshe is 100% healthier than when she started,\u201d said Eng, professor of Medicine, David H. Johnson Professor of Surgical and Medical Oncology and co-leader of the Gastrointestinal Cancer Research Program at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center.<\/p>\n

Today, Darnell said she feels great.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got more energy now, believe it or not, than I did before I found out I had pulmonary fibrosis,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m just amazed.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  The first time Janet Darnell saw her clinicians at Vanderbilt, she was sitting in a wheelchair, on oxygen 24 hours a day, and her lungs were near failure. She couldn\u2019t walk from her chair to her front door. In a series of events she considers miraculous, Darnell\u2019s life would be saved twice in one…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":222,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[11,45],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3512","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-vm-around-the-medical-center","category-vm-fall-2022"],"acf":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pcDnub-UE","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/222"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3515,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3512\/revisions\/3515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3512"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3512"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/medschool.vanderbilt.edu\/vanderbilt-medicine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}