Lexington teacher who spent months on a machine, had two double lung transplants has died

A Lexington teacher who spent months attached to a machine and then survived two lung transplants has died.

Emily Presley’s husband, Jeff Presley, confirmed her death to the Herald-Leader Thursday.

“Time after time she defied the odds,” Jeff Presley told the Herald-Leader. “The biggest being an emergent second double lung transplant within just a few days of the first. Who could possibly overcome such a trial. Emily. Many would ask, how could this be? It’s because she had been doing the hard work all along. The physical. The mental. The emotional. The spiritual. She was ready. She was prepared. And it took all she had.”

Her sister, Leslie Cunningham, said she died at 4 a.m. Tuesday surrounded by her family and friends.

“Emily’s radiance went such a long way and impacted people so deeply,” said Cunningham.

In May 2022, Presley was finishing teaching STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — at Wellington Elementary School in Fayette County when a cold developed into severe infections that led to 16 months in the hospital, including nearly a year in Chicago, and two lung transplants.

For four months at UK HealthCare, Presley was attached to ECMO, an advanced form of life support that does the work of the heart and lungs, but showed no signs of recovery. Additional infections compromised her lungs and other organs, and ARDS, or acute respiratory distress syndrome, continued to cause inflammation throughout her body.

In October 2022, surgeons at the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute in Chicago performed a double-lung transplant on Presley, whose lungs were destroyed by viral and bacterial infections that had compounded into ARDS. The life-threatening condition allows fluid to leak into the lungs, causing breathing to become difficult and depriving the organs of oxygen, hospital officials said.

“In the midst of agony…there was no defeat,” Jeff Presley said. “Instead, the nurses, the doctors, the (therapists) they’d see a smile. They would hear ‘thank you.’ They would be inspired. They would tell others about this amazing, powerful, wonderful, gracious woman of God that would not give up. Because she was on a mission. A mission to return home with her family in Lexington, Kentucky.”

In 2023, Presley spent her first Thanksgiving at home in Lexington with her family since 2021 after returning from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago with new lungs.

“It’s been really, really difficult, but I’ve been able to get through it because I have a ton of support with my family, including Jeff, my husband, support from my friends. I have a really great community and that really did get me through,” Emily Presley told the Herald-Leader in November.

Presley’s celebration of life on Saturday, May 4 includes an Open House from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. and a service from 1-2 p.m. at Southland Christian Church, the Nicholasville location, Cunningham said.

In lieu of flowers, the family is asking that people donate to Presley’s children’s college fund.

Cunningham said family members are requesting people wear bright colors to the ceremony “to represent such a brilliant life.”