Max Tilderquist can rattle off medical terms and talk about surgery complications to rival any doctor. He also speaks about his own mortality in as matter-of-fact a manner as if he’s discussing the weather.
One might express surprise at how well-spoken Max is for a 17-year-old. Then again, his pre-teen and teenage years have been filled with so many hospital visits, biopsies and life-threatening complications that it’s no wonder he’s absorbed a lot of information.
Now, after a lung transplant at University Hospital in Madison, Wis., he’s hoping to slowly move back into a life beyond doctors and procedures.
Cancer leads to more complications
In 2018, when Max was 10, he was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukemia. In addition to taking a chemotherapy pill once a day, he received a bone marrow transplant from his brother in summer 2019 as part of his treatment near his hometown of Welch, Minn.
“Nothing was supposed to go wrong,” he said. “It was after the transplant in October 2019, and the doctors took me off all the immunosuppressants. Not even two weeks later, I started showing symptoms of graft-versus-host disease, which is when the donor cells and cells in the receiver don’t get along. Mom and I knew what it was right away.”
The symptoms he had included breathing problems, skin rashes, abdominal pain, diarrhea and jaundice, and they continued for quite a while. Then, the following year, he underwent a lung biopsy, during which his doctors discovered he had aspergillosis, a type of lung infection caused by mold.
Over the next several years, as Max went through adolescence and became a teenager, he suffered several collapsed lungs, a broken leg and abdominal migraines. The latter condition was what landed him in the hospital on a feeding tube because he couldn’t keep any food down.
“I was 70 pounds, and my body couldn’t metabolize all the medications they were giving me,” he said. “The doctors pretty much told my mom I wasn’t going to make it, and she should plan my funeral.”
Failing lungs
But he hung on, and by the summer of 2024, he was feeling well enough to show his Holstein dairy steer, Smash, at the county fair.
In May 2025, however, Max suddenly began experiencing lung failure. “I was planting my corn,” he said, “and I told my mom I didn’t feel good. By the time she got me to the hospital, I was unconscious.”
Doctors told Max’s mother, Mandy, that his best chance of staying alive was to go on extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO), a therapy that uses a machine to temporarily replace his lung function. But ECMO was only a temporary solution. Max ultimately needed a lung transplant.
While doctors at his hospital had picked a transplant center they wanted Max to use, his parents had been researching their options. They learned the UW Health Lung Transplant Program had excellent success rates, and insisted that Max be transferred to Madison.
“I really pushed hard for UW Health,” said Mandy.
In June 2025, Max was transferred to UW Health and immediately underwent testing to be listed for a lung transplant. He was listed on June 23 and by June 26, he had his new set of lungs — and a new lease on life.
Life back at home
The family’s experience with UW Health was unparalleled, Mandy said.
“When we have to go back there for follow-up visits, I’m so excited to see all the doctors and nurses,” she said. “They went out of their way for us.”
Max says he’s feeling good now. He and his siblings are home schooled, so senior year of high school is much the same as the other school years — except that he’s able to handle more work around his family farm than he was before the transplant. He has to be careful, though — many of his previous farm duties aren’t possible for someone who recently had a lung transplant.
“I can take care of my goats, which I couldn’t do before the transplant,” he said. “I also like to work on equipment and fix stuff.”
Both Max and his parents are holding out hope that he will eventually be able to return to his chosen career—farming.
“He’ll probably always have to wear a mask when he’s on a tractor,” Mandy said. “He will just have to take a different approach to farming.”