CHARLESTON, W.Va. — When Vickie Keene from Kanawha County gets her two new lungs, she has plans to go to Mardi Gras.
The Dunbar woman left West Virginia on Saturday for South Carolina where she’ll be living and working with a dietitian in order to lose the more than 14 pounds she’s gained in the past year due to steroid treatment for advanced chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD.
Only after she has lost the weight will her status on the lung transplant list change from inactive back to active so that she can again be eligible to accept lung donations via University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
“I refuse, and I say this again, I refuse to let this disease defeat me,” Keene, 60, told MetroNews.
“I am going to do everything I can. I have to live. I have too much to live for, too many things to do and too many people to see.”
Among the organizations coordinating potential organ donations for Keene and many others is the Center for Organ Recovery and Education, also known as CORE, which oversees a region that includes 150 hospitals in West Virginia, western Pennsylvania and Chemung County, N.Y.
Based in Pittsburgh, Pa. with an office in Charleston, W.Va., it’s one of 58 federally-designated and not-for-profit organ procurement organizations in the United States.
In 2019, CORE set a record for saving lives through organ, tissue and cornea donations.
A total of 253 organ donors, nearly 20 percent more than in the previous years, made possible 661 life-saving organ transplants, up by nearly ten percent from 2018, according to information from CORE.
Tissue and cornea donations climbed by more than four percent, CORE reported.
“We know we can do better, but we’re incredibly proud of this new achievement,” said Colleen Sullivan, communications director for CORE.
She cited growing awareness as a factor in the increases.
In addition to registering as organ donors on driver’s licenses, those applying for hunting and fishing licenses in West Virginia can also sign on to give. Additionally, registration is available HERE.
Each hospital in CORE’s service area serves as a referral site for potential donors while seven perform organ transplants, including Charleston Area Medical Center and WVU Medicine’s Ruby Memorial Hospital.
“We facilitate the donation process. We work with grieving families during their time of loss and we’re working to allocate organs and tissues to those in need,” Sullivan explained.
“It’s important to wonder and ask yourself that, if you needed a life-saving transplant, would you be willing to accept one? Would you want someone else to say ‘yes?’ Put yourself in someone’s shoes that’s waiting for a life-saving transplant.”
Among CORE’s donors in 2012 was Nicole Moore, 26, from Jackson County.
Moore was declared brain dead in September of that year after a vehicle crash.
At that point, her mother, Lisa Johnson from Ripley, found out her daughter had signed up on her driver’s license to be an organ donor.
“At that point, I knew that as her mom, even though she wasn’t going to be here physically, it was my job to honor her and to spread awareness so that we keep her memory alive,” said Johnson, now a CORE advocate.
“It was her legacy because she made this decision to save lives.”
Nicole Moore would have turned 34 on Sunday, Jan. 19.
Since her death, her donations have saved four people and given two people sight, Johnson said.
In all, Nicole has saved, touched or enhanced more than 230 lives because of her donations of organs, corneas and tissue.
“That’s what makes it worth getting up in the morning knowing that my child, she’s all over,” she said.
“She is my hero.”
In 2016, Mickey Johnson from Huntington, a former newspaper editor for 33 years, needed a hero.
He had been on dialysis for the better part of two years before going on a kidney transplant waiting list in Dec. 2015. In May 2016, he had his transplant surgery at Charleston Area Medical Center.
“The changes were actually extraordinary. I was able to go back to leading a useful and active life free of the rigors of dialysis,” Johnson said.
“It’s changed my life and I’m very grateful for that and for what CORE, what the Center for Organ Recovery and Education, does with donor families, it’s really remarkable the work they do.”
Currently, CORE officials estimated more than 2,500 people in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia are waiting for life-saving transplants.
The number for needed organ transplants is upwards of 113,000 nationally.
Keene, in line for a double-lung transplant, is one of them.
She was first placed on the lung transplant list in Nov. 2018 about seven years after initially becoming a patient at UPMC.
Her hope is to be able to meet the required transplant list BMI, or body mass index, by the time she makes a return visit to Pittsburgh in late February.
Keene was only recently released from the hospital for her latest stay.
As a past smoker who worked in coal dust for years, the last time she said she could remember taking a breath without struggling was in 2009.
The COPD, coupled with emphysema, has started to negatively affect her heart rate.
“I keep a positive attitude. I never let negativity into my life or into the way people talk to me because, my goal is — and I’ve always been a positive person — I will get my transplant, it’s just when will it happen,” she said.
“Be an organ donor,” Keene advised others. “Always be an organ donor, because you never know when you or one of your family members are going to need an organ.”