Sunday Story: ‘Make Every Breath Count’

“Are you ready to take your first breath?”

When Samuel Kirton’s wife, Susan, leaned over his hospital bed and asked him that question, he admits he initially shook his head no.

Kirton, who had received a double lung transplant the day before, knew he was at a point of no return. His old lungs — wrecked by idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a disease that causes lung tissue to stiffen and scar, preventing them from expanding and making it harder to breathe — were gone. He was restrained and intubated, and the next moment, when the tube was removed, was among the most pivotal in his life.

“At this point, when they pull that tube out, it’s either I’ve got new lungs that are going to work or they’re not. If it doesn’t work, there is no turning back,” he says.

Then the ventilator tube came out, and he sucked the first gasp of air into his lungs and released it. In and out. In and out. In and out.

“If you could paint a picture of what a sigh of relief looked like — I took that first breath, and I knew it was going to be OK,” Kirton says.

And it was. On July 20, 2021, 10 days after Kirton successfully received two new, healthy lungs, he went home to continue recuperating and fully embrace his second chance at life.

It’s an opportunity he knows came at an incredibly high price: the life of the person whose lungs now sustain him and the loss of a loved one for the donor’s family and friends.

“I don’t know anything about my lungs; I don’t know if they were another 60-year-old male or an 18-year-old student-athlete. Male or female. Asian, African American, Caucasian — none of that is known,” he says. “What I do know is that if I had not gotten a transplant in July, my wife and I did not expect that I would have been there at Christmas of that year.”

But someone — possibly the donor, possibly a family member — turned their tragedy into the gift of life, and it is an act of generosity and kindness Kirton says he will be grateful for until he takes his last breath.

Since his donor is anonymous, there is no grave for Kirton to visit to pay his respects. So, on July 10, 2022, and again this year, he marked the anniversary of his surgery by driving from his home in Lake Anna to Richmond to visit the National Donor Memorial located at the United Network for Organ Sharing.

At the entrance to the memorial, called the Wall of Tears Fountain, he watched water pour over stones inscribed with the relationships a loved one might share with an organ donor — mother, brother, daughter, friend, husband — and thought of the people his own donor left behind.

After descending a ramp and standing in front of the Wall of Names, bearing the first names of scores of organ donors, he prayed for his donor’s family. “It is amazing to think that all of those people had the chance to make a difference in someone’s life.”

When he was diagnosed with pulmonary fibrosis in 2017, Kirton was given two to five years to live; there is no cure for the disease. His doctor also told him they would plan for the best care possible.

After his diagnosis, Kirton stopped working and went on full disability. He and his wife decided to make the most of whatever time they had left together. Travel was a big focus for them, including fulfilling dreams of visiting Antarctica and Asia.

Some days Kirton’s condition was stable, and other days he struggled. He started supplemental oxygen in 2019 for exercise, and his condition gradually worsened. Doctors initially approved Kirton for a transplant in 2020, but then the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Dr. Shambhu Aryal, medical director of the Lung Transplant Program at Inova Health System, says most programs went inactive for lung transplants for several months during that time.

With any chronic disease, mental health issues can be a problem, and those are only magnified with an aggressive and fatal disease, says Aryal, who has been directing Kirton’s care since 2018. Despite the delayed transplant, his worsening condition and increasing dependence on oxygen, Kirton managed to focus on both his physical and mental well-being. “Many people cannot do that, and that alone makes them ineligible for transplant. So that resilience is really important. Sam did stand out. He has always been a very positive individual,” Aryal says.

Kirton was put back on the transplant list in March 2021 and began the wait to see whether a donor would be found. His lungs continued to deteriorate, and by the time he received the transplant, he was always on oxygen and his breathing sounded like “Velcro pulling apart.”

Faith got him through that time, Kirton says. So much was out of his hands — the wait for a viable donor and, if one was found, successfully undergoing an eight-hour transplant surgery and the uncertainty of his body accepting the new organs. But he prayed, he had confidence in his medical team, and he kept his spirits up by focusing on the things he could control. “I knew that [no matter] the outcome of this whole journey, I could only do the things I could do. I couldn’t worry about all of the other things.”

Even after receiving the transplant, Kirton has maintained his positive attitude and channeled it into mentoring patients with pulmonary fibrosis and starting a support group, Aryal says. “Sam has always been a great advocate for patients with pulmonary fibrosis.”

Kirton is realistic that the transplant wasn’t a complete cure and his life will be filled with medical follow-ups. He takes about 34 pills and does multiple breathing treatments each day. Since the transplant, he has survived pneumonia, COVID-19 and having a stent put in to open his airways.

But even those setbacks haven’t kept him from enjoying each new milestone he marks with his family or his continuing advocacy work inspired by these experiences. Kirton encourages others to become organ donors, speaking with firsthand knowledge about how much of a difference it can make in so many lives. He also advocates for the Pulmonary Fibrosis Foundation, which seeks to accelerate the development of new treatments and ultimately a cure for pulmonary fibrosis. However long he has on this earth, Kirton says, his goal is to “make every breath count.”

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