Victor Gonzales-Villatoro was hospitalized in October with COVID-19. The thirty-seven-year-old ended up on a ventilator, and his lungs were so badly damaged nothing else could be done.
Gonzales-Villatoro’s family considered ending life support.
But Dr. Sravanthi Nandavaram evaluated and approved Gonzales-Villatoro for a double lung transplant. She’s the medical director of UK HealthCare’s lung transplant program.
"In late November, early December, he woke up, and he started doing a lot of rehab and physical therapy. And we put him on the lung transplant waitlist on December 30,” she said. “And since then, we kept looking for lungs, and finally he got an offer.”
Gonzales-Villatoro underwent double lung transplant surgery on March 1.
“He is off the machines, he is not on any oxygen, he gets to spend his life with the rest of his family,’ Nandavaram said. “He has two young kids, and he has a new life change…taking pills, going to the doctors. But he did tell us that it's worth it.”
Gonzales-Villatoro left a University of Kentucky hospital on Wednesday surrounded by a hallway full of cheering medical staff.
