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Breathing easy: California sisters get new lungs from same donor

Breathing easy: California sisters get new lungs from same donor

Irma Myers-Santana, 71, and Anna Williamson, 69, are both breathing easy today thanks to their new lungs.

The sisters from Santa Barbara, California, both recently underwent lung transplants — and received their new lungs from the same donor.

The women became ill about 10 years ago with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis, a scarring of the lungs that kills more people each year than breast cancer. They both needed transplants.

Myers-Santana and Williamson argued over who was most in need of new lungs, each wanting the other to go first. In the end, they ended up in the same operating room, each receiving a lung from the same donor.

"It's a miracle to have all those things lined up like that," Williamson told the Associated Press.

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The sisters met the same criteria: blood type, height and severity of illness. And because they are both Jehovah's Witnesses and are opposed to blood transfusions, they were both seeking a "bloodless transplant."

Doctors at Houston Methodist Hospital, the only hospital in the country that offers lung transplants without transfusions, called the siblings surgeries a first for them.

"It's never happened … We've transplanted siblings before, but years apart," said Dr. Scott Scheinin, who did Myers-Santana's transplant. "It's a little bit of serendipity."

For the first time in years, Williamson was able to complete her sentence without coughing.

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Before the transplant, she required an oxygen tank at all times. Four months ago, her sister experienced a sudden decline in health and also found it almost impossible to breathe.

"If we hadn't had the transplant when we did, she would be dead right now, dead," Williamson, who received the donor's right lung, said of her sister.

"Her coughing just hurt to my core. You can't help someone that coughs like that," Myers-Santana, the left-lung recipient, responded, arguing that her sister was in greater need.

"It's so hard to watch, and so I felt she needed it more than I did."

Two weeks after the surgery, the sisters are joking with their doctors and looking forward to returning home to Santa Barbara — and leaving their oxygen tanks behind.