Teen Experiences Miracle Recovery from Lung Disease

High school senior Michelle Harris doesn’t need lung transplant anymore after her “miracle” recovery.

The 18-year-old girl suffers a rare autoimmune lung disease. It is called granulomatosis with polyangiitis (and often referred to as Wegener’s granulomatosis) and affects the blood vessels in several organs. Lung damage can be fatal. Due to Michelle’s deterioration last year, the doctors recommended lung transplant to save her life.

According to her mother, Michelle has been going in and out of the hospital and the doctors were not optimistic. “They told me she wasn’t going to make it,” Michelle’s mother said.

The Chicago doctors put Michelle on a machine, which oxygenates the blood vessels mimicking the work of the lungs. This special machine, which is called Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), takes over the functions of the lungs and heart. The parents were desperate and also sought help at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Hospital. The chief of the Thoracic Transplantation Section at the hospital Dr. Charles Hoopes said that “Michelle was referred to us because of our experience with ambulatory ECMO as a bridge to transplant.”

The doctors decided to offer Michelle a lung transplant since she didn’t have any hope of recovery. “The difficulty in this is having the capability to take very sick patients like Michelle and create a functional person who can responsibly undergo the rigors of transplant,” Dr. Hoopes said.

Michelle was transferred to the Alabama hospital by a medical jet, but soon after she got there her organs started to show some improvement.

As the associate professor of medicine in the Division of Pulmonary, Allergy and Critical Care Medicine Dr. Keith Wille explained “one of the strengths of bringing her to UAB was so that she could be awakened and engaged in physical therapy, and that wasn’t possible” on the Chicago ECMO Unit. The doctor said that Michelle was put “into a position where she could wake up better, participate in therapy and rely less on sedating medicines.”

During the process, the doctors removed the ECMO to clean and reset it. This is a usual process called “circuit change”. This is when they discovered that Michelle could breathe on her own. The tests showed that Michelle’s organs started healing after spending months on the special machine. Her lungs function normally now and Michelle doesn’t need a transplant.

She will have some help with her school work so that she will graduate on time. She is also offered a 12 dress option for Prom night and Michelle just has to decide which one to get.