"Young man fights covid virus with double lung transplant"

STORYTELLING CATEGORY

Houston Chronicle
02/17/2022

In September of 2021, the delta wave of COVID-19 sent a flood of otherwise healthy young people to intensive care units with devastating lung damage. These included young fathers and mothers – the centers of their respective families. Some had never faced a significant illness before. And yet, sickened with this new virus, they depended on ventilators and life-support machines.

Some of these patients recovered on their own. Others did not. Then there were patients like 29-year-old Jesus Ceja Ceja, forced to undergo a double-lung transplant and confront another grim reality: Only 60 percent of lung transplant recipients survive after five years, and 33 percent survive after 10 years. That meant Jesus likely could not watch his two children grow up or fulfill his life goals with his wife, Perla.

My reporting partner Godofredo Vásquez and I first met Jesus in mid-September while embedding in the Houston Methodist Hospital intensive care unit to document COVID’s impact. We happened to be in the room together at the emotional moment when doctors explained to Jesus that he likely would not survive without the transplant. Once we ensured he and Perla were comfortable with us following their journey – and the hospital agreed to accommodate us -- we visited Jesus weekly in the intensive care unit over the next five months, experiencing with them all the ebbs and flows of the intensely complicated transplant process.

This narrative was the product of more than 100 hours of interviews and time spent watching and photographing his journey. We were there for his physical therapy milestones, the five-hour overnight surgery, his first days out of the hospital and the Christmas Eve celebration with his family from Mexico. The trust we built with them allowed us to tell a story not only of COVID’s unique and devastating impact on the young, but also the layered struggle of any lung transplant recipient – especially one with little resources.

We encountered practical and abstract challenges in the reporting process. I do not speak enough Spanish to converse with Jesus, who spoke only limited English, so Godofredo translated for us. On top of that, the lung damage had weakened Jesus’ voice so much that he could only whisper responses for about five minutes before becoming tired. Jesus’ well-being took priority. Early on, we relied on Perla to help us paint a picture of their lives in Mexico and the U.S.

There were moments when she broke down crying. She felt alone. Serving as her husband’s voice for the medical staff and shouldering their financial burden, all while facing the possibility of her husband’s death, was overwhelming. She stayed strong in front of Jesus, but she too struggled with the trauma of his illness. We were careful not to become a burden for her and often asked whether our presence was welcome that day. The answer was always yes. But we still paid attention to her body language and cut interviews short when she appeared exhausted.    

It took weeks of physical therapy for Jesus to become strong enough to talk for long stretches about his kids, his ranch in Mexico and the first time he saw Perla. Even then, he was reserved, his emotions blunted by his sudden decline and aggressive treatment. We turned to his mother and siblings for a deeper understanding of their family’s traditions and Jesus’s personality. They explained his close relationship with his father, who died of COVID months before Jesus’s hospitalization, and the family’s collective dread when they learned the virus could take another loved one. Additionally, they helped recreate moments that happened before we met Jesus, or when we could not be at the hospital.

To properly contextualize the story, we needed the doctors’ perspective. We rounded with transplant pulmonologists in the ICU, where they tended to a half dozen other patients just like Jesus, and bolstered the reporting with a number of phone interviews. We learned about the complexity of the organ matching process and prepared ourselves to rush to the hospital at a moment’s notice to watch Jesus’s surgery.  

Organ donor matches could happen at any time, and the transplant team moves quickly. We also understood that plans easily could fall through if doctors notice donor lung damage late in the retrieval process. The first time we were notified of a donor match, we went to Jesus’ bedside only to learn that doctors found signs of pneumonia on the donor lung. The second time we were notified, the donor lungs proved healthy. The five-hour surgery started around 11 p.m. We shadowed the surgeon all night and consulted him during breaks about what he was thinking and where he was cutting. Anesthesiologists and other members of the surgical team helped us understand the technical aspects of the operation.

Completing the story meant accompanying Jesus home and observing emotions that were impossible for him to describe. His happiness was never more evident to us than on Christmas Eve, when he and Perla welcomed us to celebrate as if we were part of the family.

After the story’s publication, the lead surgeon, Dr. Erik Eddie Suarez, said we contributed to other patients’ recovery by reassuring them they were not alone in their struggle. Readers said the story helped educate them on lung transplants and the true toll of COVID. The CEO of LifeGift, the organization that manages all organ donations in the southeast Texas region, wrote that our series “brought attention to the urgent need for donated organs to save the lives of patients like him.” Perla’s GoFundMe page also collected more than $10,000 in donations.

This narrative paints a uniquely honest picture of a procedure that so often is portrayed as a second chance at life. Lung transplants do not end when a patient leaves the hospital. Piles of medications, a long list of physical restrictions and the prospect of an earlier-than-expected death can torment the mind. Jesus’ faith and family preserved his spirit, but he would continue to struggle with his new life in the months to come.

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Submitted by Elizabeth Pudwill.