Montgomery County woman with cystic fibrosis in need of another double lung transplant after being rejected
Jen Dunlea needs a double lung transplant but has been rejected by most hospitals.
By Stephanie Stahl
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PHILADELPHIA (KYW) — A desperate fight for life for a young woman in Montgomery County. She needs a lung transplant but has been rejected by most hospitals.
Follow the tubing to 22-year-old Jen Dunlea, who’s in the fight for her life, hooked up to tubing for oxygen and nutrition.
“I am waiting for another double lung transplant,” she said.
Dunlea has cystic fibrosis, a lung disease, and had her first transplant when she was 13.
“I just remember just how much pain I was in,” she said.
Now, nine years later at home in Narberth, a series of complications have caused the transplanted lungs to fail.
“I’m a special case because I’m a redo, it’s riskier, takes longer there’s more surgical complications,” Dunlea said.
Because of that, most hospitals rejected her case.
“So it’s like you’re being abandoned,” she said. “There’s only one hospital in the U.S. basically that has accepted me and that’s in New York so I need to be there because they’re my only hope.”
But there are financial barriers to being in New York, insurance only covers part of the medical expenses.
“It’s been really hard so I’ve used my savings and my retirement funds just to get us here,” Laurel Dunlea said.
Jen’s mom, Laurel, has spent decades taking care of her, determined to save her daughter’s life.
“We’ve moved so many times just to get better care,” she said.
Now, they’re raising money with the help of the Children’s Organ Transplant Association.
“It’s like it just feels like every week I get worse,” Jen Dunlea said.
The waiting is excruciating. Now, it’s all about managing Jen’s fragile condition with a lot of medications.
“It’s hard, it’s getting harder for her to swallow and breathe at the same time,” Laurel Dunlea said.
This mother-daughter duo is keeping hope alive, that somehow, they’ll get to New York and find the right match.
Jen and her mom have their go bags packed, hoping they get the call.
Doctors said most patients with cystic fibrosis don’t need lung transplants because drug therapy has advanced. That happened after Jen was diagnosed.
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