When Jenny Yelczyn received her double lung transplant in 1995, her doctors said she would be unlikely to live more than about five years. Yet here she is in 2025, celebrating the 30-year anniversary of her gift of life and still going strong.
“I have never been a statistics person,” Jenny said. “I think it’s more about how each individual cares for their own health.”
Jenny, who is now 59, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF) — a progressive, genetic lung disorder that limits a person’s ability to breathe over time — at age 7. After she graduated from college, she began experiencing more and more breathing problems. At the age of 29, she was on oxygen 24 hours a day when she began talking to her doctor about a lung transplant.
At the time, doctors were uncertain whether the procedure would significantly extend her life. Even so, she took the initiative to refer herself to the Lung Transplant Department at UW Hospital. On March 27, 1995, she received a transplant from a generous donor and their family, and since then she has been able to share a full and meaningful life with her husband, Mike.
“To me, it’s miraculous,” she said. “I can’t explain it. I just do what my doctors and transplant coordinators tell me to do. I take my medications when I’m supposed to take them and I call my coordinator when I have questions. Sometimes I go for months without talking to my coordinator or doctor, and sometimes it’s every day for weeks.”
Jenny’s lung transplant has given her a life — and everything else that goes along with it, both the good and the not-as-good.
The good:
She’s a clinical dietitian with a master's degree at a small community hospital
She and Mike have been able to travel quite a bit
She loves kayaking, canoeing and hiking
Jenny was diagnosed with CF-related Type 1 diabetes since she was 16, and in 2003, she needed a kidney transplant. Her mother donated a kidney to her.
The not-as-good:
In 2020 — 17 years after receiving her kidney transplant, Jenny again had to go on dialysis. Her kidney from her mother began to fail, and she started to receive in-home dialysis. She’s now waiting for a kidney to become available so she can have another transplant.
“Because I have type O blood, it’s a five-year wait for a deceased donor kidney,” she said. “But I have a friend who is being tested to see whether she can be a living donor for me, so we’ll see.”
In the meantime, she and her husband are still able to travel to Florida for a vacation every winter. And, she said, travel isn’t impossible, it’s just a little more challenging. “We still do what we want to do,” she said. “If we want to take a three-day weekend, we’ll haul that dialysis machine along with us.”
Still, as Jenny looks back on her life, she’s happy to count herself as an incredible success story for how much she’s been able to accomplish. She is living proof that a lung transplant can be the beginning of something special.
“And the technology has gotten so much better even since my transplant,” she said. “It’s truly a miraculous procedure and an incredible gift, and I thank me donor and her family every day.”