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Newswise — LOS ANGELES (April 15, 2025) -- Chris McCain was dying. He knew it. His wife, daughter and son also knew it. Years ago, at age 37, Chris had undergone a double lung transplant, but now those lungs were failing.

At first, Chris noticed he’d be out of breath while carrying equipment during his son’s Little League games. Eventually the lack of oxygen made it difficult to move and caused his thoughts to blur. His doctors said he desperately needed another transplant, but surgeons at 15 centers had rejected his case, saying it was too complex.

It was October 2023 when Chris and wife Liz prepared to call the Smidt Heart Institute at Cedars-Sinai after meeting with the lung transplant team there. They braced for another compassionate—but emphatic—no. Instead, what they heard was that the team would take his case.

“They were willing to give me more time with my family,” Chris, now 48, said.

Chris and Liz gathered their kids in the living room and they hugged as they shared the news. The family would be temporarily relocating to Los Angeles to begin the process of getting Chris on the organ transplant list.

“When you read his story on paper, you can be taken aback by what's a very risky endeavor,” said , surgical director of the . “When you actually meet Chris, you see something totally different. You see a guy who's willing to fight, who has resilience and drive in him and a loving wife willing to support him.”

When Liz met Chris in high school Spanish class, she thought he was funny. Soon they were going to the movies together and talking on the phone for hours.

Chris told Liz not to fall in love with him. That’s because at 8 days old, Chris had been diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a disease that causes the lungs to create an excess of thick, sticky mucus that clogs airways.

“I warned her it’d be a life of doctors’ appointments,” Chris said.

They dated anyway, often hanging out with friends and family in their Houston suburb, and Liz would visit Chris during his frequent hospitalizations.

“He's always been an incredibly generous, authentic and intelligent person,” Liz said. “I knew from a young age that he was the person I wanted to spend my life with.”

They married when Liz was 20 and Chris 22. After many difficult conversations, Chris and Liz chose to have children through in vitro fertilization after bloodwork confirmed Liz was not a carrier of the genetic mutations that cause cystic fibrosis. Both parents must carry the altered cystic fibrosis gene for a child to inherit the condition. 

The family eventually moved to Arizona, where the arid climate allowed Chris to breathe easier than the Houston humidity.

Exercise helps keep the lung mucus at bay and Chris was diligent about daily workouts. Despite this, his lungs required constant care, so much so that Liz created a play area in his hospital rooms for their children. When Chris’ condition forced him to leave his job as a physical therapist, he learned to do personal investing from home.

A double lung transplant in 2015 made it possible for Chris to see both of his children finish elementary school, his son enter middle school and his daughter start high school.

When those lungs started to lose function because of chronic rejection, Chris knew a second transplant would be more challenging. Scar tissue from previous surgeries can interfere with the reattachment of new organs. Chris also had been diagnosed with superior vena cava syndrome, a condition in which one of the body’s main veins has a blockage and cannot circulate blood properly.

“Because of this syndrome, he had poor venous access and an increase in collateral circulation to his right chest, which would increase his risk of bleeding during surgery,” said , medical director of the .

Another complicating factor was that after his first transplant Chris had developed a debilitating condition called post-transplant lymphoproliferative disease, a reaction to the many drugs he took to prevent his body from rejecting the first transplant. Although he had been in remission from the disease, physicians were aware that he was at risk.

By the time a donor match was made for Chris in March 2024, he had already been intubated because he couldn’t breathe on his own. Megna and transplant surgeon , working with a team of other surgeons, anesthesiologists, surgical technicians and operating room nurses, dissected scar tissue and prepared Chris’ blood vessels to attach to the new lungs. A heart-lung machine called ECMO, or extracorporeal membrane oxygenation, kept Chris alive during the eight-hour operation. Chris became one of 88 patients who received a lung transplant at Cedars-Sinai in 2024.

Today, he’s back in Arizona, lifting weights five days a week, playing baseball with his 13-year-old son, and helping his 16-year-old daughter prepare for college.

“We expect Chris to have a great long-term outcome,” Megna said.

Rampolla is treating Chris with low doses of immunosuppressive drugs to avoid the toxicity that made him sick after his first transplant. Chris travels to Cedars-Sinai for checkups every three months, but these visits will be less frequent as he adapts to his new organs.

Improved surgical techniques and immunotherapy treatments are making it possible for more people to qualify for a transplant. But more than 100,000 people are waiting for an organ in the United States, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.

Liz gives talks in her community about signing up to be an organ donor. “It’s a horrible thing to think about, but it can be comforting knowing that if something terrible happens to you, you could give life to someone else,” she said.

For Chris, his goals keep changing. He once hoped to be well enough to walk his daughter into kindergarten. He currently looks forward to seeing both children finish college and begin their adult lives.

“Organ donation means everything,” Chris said. “If someone hadn't been generous enough to donate their lungs, my children would have grown up fatherless a long time ago.”

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