Lung transplant gives Santa Fe man second chance, fresh perspective

Santa Fe New Mexican | Kate Nash

It was Mark Rodriguez's wife, Marla, who was lying ill in the emergency room, not him.

But he recently had suffered from fits of coughing, and when they started again at the hospital, Marla placed her finger oxygen monitor on his hand.

Mark Rodriguez's oxygen level was so low, alarms went off immediately. Nurses told him he should go out the door, get in line and check himself in to the ER.

He brushed them off, going home and even to work the next day.

Still, he couldn't get the alarms of out his head. Less than two days later, he went back to the hospital, where he was admitted and stayed for a week, before doctors began to realize he would need a double lung transplant to stay alive.

Years of breathing in tiny particles of sharp dust from his work as a stone cutter gave him silicosis fibrosis, leaving his lung capacity severely diminished.

So six months ago, Rodriguez was one of 1,822 in the nation last year to get a lung transplant, the gift of a woman in Colorado.

The 12-hour surgery was tough, and because of the nearly solid condition of Rodriguez's lungs, they had to be taken out with a hammer and chisel, he said.

Before the surgery, he was close to death, saved by the random connection of two people linked up on a waiting list.
Read more - VIDEO: http://www.santafenewmexican.com/Local%20News/Lung-transplant-gives-Santa-Fe-man-second-chance--fresh-perspec

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