David Walker of Altus, Okla., is a busy man. Since receiving a double lung transplant in March of 2024, he has been marking things off his “bucket list” in record speed.
David Walker of Altus, Okla., is a busy man. Since receiving a double lung transplant in March of 2024, he has been marking things off his “bucket list” in record speed. “Last year, I went skiing. I hadn’t snow skied in six years. I couldn’t handle the altitude,” David admits. “But this time, I skied 21 days in a 27-day road trip from Wolf Creek, Colorado to Revelstoke, Canada and back again. It was a five-thousand-mile trip and the most I had ever skied, probably the best I have ever skied.”
He credits his new lease on life to the selfless gift of organ transplantation. “Just the ability to breathe and move freely about and enjoy life again, it’s a truly humbling experience.”
He recounts what life was like before his procedure. “When you have COPD and emphysema, it's very restrictive. You’re afraid you’ll run out of oxygen everywhere you go, so you’re literally counting every step you take. It’s just easier to stay on the couch or in bed.”
But in 2022, David’s condition had deteriorated to the point that his doctors said a double lung transplant was his only option for survival. They referred him to INTEGRIS Health Heart Hospital Advanced Cardiopulmonary Care in Oklahoma City.
“When Mr. Walker first came to us, his lungs were so shot that he couldn’t even excrete the CO2 that you normally do,” remembers Mark Rolfe, M.D., a pulmonary critical care and lung transplant medicine doctor with INTEGRIS Health Advanced Cardiopulmonary Care. “He was in respiratory failure and was on oxygen. He was definitely working his way toward an unhappy outcome.”
David was placed on the organ transplant list in 2023. A year later, he finally got the call. “It's startling. I mean, you've waited for this day for so long and then you get it and it’s like, ‘wait, I’m not ready.’ It’s truly a combination of elation and just raw fear.”
"Lung transplantation is a technically demanding operation that requires precision and coordination at every stage,” says Daniel Freno, M.D., a cardiothoracic and transplant surgeon at INTEGRIS Health Heart Hospital. “From removing the diseased lungs to connecting the donor organs, every step is critical—and the opportunity to restore a patient’s quality of life, like Mr. Walker, makes it incredibly rewarding."
David recalls waking up after his surgery. “I woke up in the recovery room with people around me and I was breathing with a cannula in my nose like I had for the last four years. The doctor came in and asked if I wanted to leave it on and I said, ‘yes.’ He came back in an hour later and asked if I was ready to take it off. Again, I said, ‘maybe later.’ That’s when he said, ‘David, it’s never been on. You have been breathing entirely on your own from as soon as you woke up!’”
He adds, “I could feel my lungs expanding or my new lungs expanding, which I had not felt in probably ten or 15 years. It was truly a miracle.”
David was back at home a little over three weeks later, where he says he kept improving by leaps and bounds. “It was rapid improvement from being totally docile for two years, gasping for air, to going out and exercising. It was just amazing.”
He started with the treadmill, then racquetball, then golfing and then swimming with his ten-year-old grandson. “It slapped me in the face realizing that I hadn’t really been there for him for half of his life. It woke something up in me that I think I had just let go dormant. I had not taken good enough care of myself. And that's the lesson I want to spread is to take care of yourself and spend time with your family when you can.”
This year on the second anniversary of his double lung transplant, David went rock climbing. He says that was the last thing he had written down on his original “bucket list.” He thinks it might be time to start a new one and says he is toying with the idea of running a marathon.
This year on the second anniversary of his double lung transplant, David went rock climbing. He says that was the last thing he had written down on his original “bucket list.” He thinks it might be time to start a new one and says he is toying with the idea of running a marathon.
“I want to live a life worthy of the second chance I have been given,” David declares. “You are dependent on somebody else dying to provide you the organs to live. That’s the dichotomy of all this and I still struggle with it. But that is why I will continue to do everything I can to honor these new lungs as a tribute to the person who gave them to me.”
Oklahomans have three options to register as an organ, eye and tissue donor. Residents can sign up when renewing their driver’s license, visit LifeShareRegistry.org to sign up online or call 800-826-LIFE (5433) and request a donor registration form.
To inquire about a referral to one of our lung transplant specialists, call 405-951-8523.
