SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (Dakota News Now) – Britiny Schultz has never truly known a life free of pain or fear, as she told Dakota News Now in 2017.
She was born with a condition called Eisenmenger Syndrome. It’s a hole in the heart that leads to high blood pressure in the lungs, eventually overpowering them.
“I was coughing up blood for a while,” Britiny remembered.
It also overpowers the heart. Britiny needed supplemental oxygen to breathe, she couldn’t walk, she couldn’t do anything. She was dying.
The only thing that could save her was a heart and lung transplant.
With no guarantee she would survive, she underwent that transplant in 2016, and two years later, she told us a medical miracle had happened. The organs were working. Her body wasn’t rejecting them.
Britiny resumed working on the family cattle ranch. After decades of being sick, she now knew what it was to feel good.
Her story had a happy ending. At least, that’s what she thought.
“I’d gotten sick and put into the hospital for a fungus-type deal and they fixed it. I hadn’t had a problem,” Britiny explained.
Five years ago, she got sick with a fungal infection in her lungs, the type of infection someone with a strong immune system wouldn’t even know they had.
But Britiny was immunocompromised, the result of any-rejection medicines helping her body accept her new heart and lungs.
The fungus settled in and for three years, percolated in her system.
“In 2022 I went back for my yearly and there was more showing up in my lungs so we tried throwing different meds at it, IV meds, and just couldn’t get it to go away,” Britiny said.
For six months, Britiny received outpatient treatments. Nothing got better, only worse.
“Stuff started showing up on the biopsy of things growing kind of heavy again, then I kind of had a cough and my breathing wasn’t what it was before,” Britiny described.
In early February of 2023, Britiny was admitted to Mayo and told without a lung transplant, she was going to die.
Dr. Sahar Saddoughi is an on-call transplant surgeon at the Mayo Clinic. It was her phone that rang when a new set of lungs were found for Britiny. The first time she ever laid eyes on Britiny was right before the transplant surgery.
“I definitely took a pause after I met her because she was very thin,” Dr. Saddoughi said.
Very thin. Down to 90 pounds. Her lungs were compromised. Her heart was overburdened trying to catch up. Her body was burning fat and muscle, whatever it could.
History was medically repeating itself. The equivalent of being hit by lightning twice.
“Anytime you’ve been into somebody’s chest and put in new organs going back there’s always going to be some scar tissue that makes surgery more difficult,” Dr. Saddoughi explained.
That is exactly what she had found and had to deal with in an operation that took over ten hours to complete. Merging Britiny’s original tissue with tissue from her first lung donor and tissue from her second lung donor in a procedure so rare, Mayo can only find one similar case.
Dr. Saddoughi said she intentionally doesn’t think about the idea she saves people from death, but the respect she has for Britiny and what she has been through does choke her up.
It could happen again.
“I don’t take a day for granted. that’s for sure. I live in the moment pretty much I think. Take it one day at a time,” Britiny said.
Her life has been threatened by serious illness twice and her spirit has had to find the will to live twice, but she said she has never asked why this has happened to her.
“I believe God has a plan for everybody and this is what he wants me to do and I was going to do it and there’s a reason it all happened this way. I believe that,” Britiny expressed.
Both Britiny and Dr. Saddoughi said they encourage people to become organ donors. In South Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa, you have the option to become an organ donor every time you review your driver’s license.
Britiny Schultz wouldn’t be alive if someone hadn’t made the decision to become an organ donor.
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