In March 2007, Michael Fountain, undergraduate architecture major at Texas A&M, received a chilling prognosis from his doctor.
“’If we don’t get this stuff taken care of now, you won’t be here by Christmas,’” he said, quoting his doctor.
The “stuff” his doctor was talking about was pulmonary fibrosis, which had taken root in both of Fountain’s lungs.
He believes the disease was contracted while he worked in a mobile home factory.
“We were building eight-to-10 floors a day, said Fountain, “and, working in that dust with the sheetrock and the embedded fiberglass, it got in my lungs and messed them up,” he said.
The diagnosis was confirmed and that spring and his condition quickly deteriorated.
“My lungs just quit working,” he said. “I went from a normal person to being confined to a wheelchair and a home oxygen system, barely able to get around, in just three months.”
Because of the seriousness of his condition, he was put on the list of patients needing an immediate double-lung transplant.
His odds weren’t great.
Right now, approximately 3,400 patients are registered on the national waiting list to receive a lung transplant, according to the Johns Hopkins medicine website. It also says that about 500 of these patients will probably die within the next 12 months because suitable donor lungs cannot be found.
Doctors at St. Luke’s Hospital in Houston told Fountain the wait for a transplant could be anywhere from a week to year, but not to get his hopes up.
But he didn’t need to wait long. “I had five donor matches in six weeks,” he said, “I’m very fortunate, very blessed.”
Getting donor matches, though, was just the beginning of Fountain’s transplant odyssey. Each of his first four transplant efforts were false alarms. Fountain would make the 101-mile drive from College Station to St. Luke’s, get prepared for surgery, and then be told to go home.
“The first four they decided weren’t viable for me,” he said, “because either the lungs tore in the extraction process, or were damaged, or, in one case, the lungs came from a smoker and they said no, we’re not going to do it.”
“The fifth time, when I was still there at 3 o’clock in the morning, I realized it was time, they were going to do it,” he said.
Fountain was in surgery for 11 hours. Afterwards, doctors told him that he had to be revived twice, because he actually “died” on the operating table.
The procedure was literally do or die, he said. “God, it was scary. If I had rejected the tissue, I wouldn’t have had anything to breathe with.”
Fountain received two new lungs July 29, 2007, after being placed on the transplant list June 15.
After surgery, a long recovery period awaited him at St. Luke’s.
“Average recovery time is four to six weeks,” he said. “I spent almost 9.5 weeks in the hospital. I had some acid reflux in my lungs, and that put me back in ICU. It was horrible. I got really demoralized and depressed being on the quarantine floor. My family couldn’t come see me on a regular basis.”
When he was in isolation, his only company consisted of nurses and doctors.
“My typical day consisted of lab work every 4-6 hours, meds every 4-6 hours, X-rays twice a day, CAT scans on a regular basis. I was busy all day long.”
Extra caution had to be taken to prevent against infection, since his immune system was being depressed to prevent it from rejecting the new lungs.
“Contact with the outside world was limited to TV and the Internet. I had my laptop down there so I could log in and out. I could communicate, but I couldn’t see anybody,” he said.
Finally, he was well enough to leave the hospital, beginning a regimen of checkups and physicals.
“My physicals aren’t like everybody else’s. I go through a full workup. Lab work, X-ray, scans, CT scans, and physical limits on how much I can exercise.”
He also has a very close encounter with a camera every 90 days.
“They do what’s called a bronchoscopy. This is when they take a camera and stick it in my mouth and down inside my lungs to look at my lungs from the inside,” he said. “They knock me out, thank God, but the first few times they didn’t. I had to swallow that camera. It’s about the size of a quarter.”
He said he had to ignore his gag reflex and swallow the camera. “Once you swallow, they run that camera down all the way in. As they feed it in, you have to keep swallowing, and you can feel it moving around inside, it’s weird. You can feel it moving around, looking.”
He returned to class in the spring 2008 semester, missing just the fall 2007 semester to his surgery and recovery.
He said he doesn’t know anything about the individual who donated the lungs that kept him alive.
“I would love to meet the donor’s family, if it didn’t cause too much inconvenience to them,” he said.
Privacy laws, he said, prevent St. Luke’s from releasing any information about the donors’ family without their consent, but he can communicate with them through the transplant center.
He’s agonizing over how to word a letter to the donor’s family.
“I’ve written it several times and scrapped it; my family has come up with a really good idea too … when I finish mine, they’re writing their own letter to pair up with mine, so not only will they just get one, they’ll get eight or nine different letters for that one donor from my family’s point of view showing how grateful they are.”
After they receive the letters, the donor’s family can, through the transplant center, arrange for a meeting.
Fountain is appreciative of the faculty at Texas A&M, his fellow students as well as the staff at the college’s Azimuth café for their help with his ordeal.
As his lungs worsened during the spring 2007 semester, he began requiring the use of an oxygen tank to breathe and he got some help from friends at the college.
“I parked in the handicapped parking outside Langford A, and Miss Sherry and Ira and Miss Unice of the janitorial staff would come help me with my wheelchair, making sure I wasn’t tangling my lines up getting in and out of the car. They were really a big help,” he said.
Fountain was speaking of Sherrie Corley, Azimuth café supervisor, and Ira Moore and Unice Thomas of the Langford Architecture Center’s custodial staff.
He’s also appreciative of the college’s professors.
“They’ve been really helpful understanding my medical condition,” he said. “If I have a bad spell and get sick, I get the chance to make up tests and stuff as they come along.”
Their help is still important because Fountain has to constantly be on guard, even for what might seem to be a minor illness.
“If I start showing symptoms I make an appointment to have a checkup, so I can let the doctors handle any kind of medication,” he said. “Last week I got sick and called my doctor. I’m feeling better now, but I‘ve got a little bit of chest congestion and a bit of a fever. If I get sick, even a little bit, it could develop into pneumonia in a heartbeat, and I have to really watch it.”
His medicine cabinet is always full.
“I take a lot of meds,” he said. “I take anti-rejection drugs, anti-bacterial, anti-fungal and steroids; I‘ll be on that for life. I’m on sixteen different medications; calcium for my bones, potassium for muscle cramps.”
After earning his bachelor of environmental design degree, Fountain plans to continue his schooling and work toward a masters’ degree in architecture.
“Healthcare and commercial architecture are my biggest interests right now,” he said.
When he’s not studying, he’s working at Brazos Valley Engineering, doing mechanical, electrical, plumbing and structural work at various projects in the area. He installed the structural framework for the Langford Architecture Center’s Wright Gallery renovation and did structural work at the Texas A&M Freedom from Terrorism memorial that was dedicated in October 2007.
I’m grateful to family for being there for me, my professors for being understanding, my classmates for being so friendly, “ he said. “I still see people on campus I haven’t seen since my first year and they ask me how I’m doing. It’s the most friendly campus I’ve ever been at. It’s like family here.”
