Kalispell man's life saved by lung donation

Mark Delorme received the call at 6:30 p.m. on July 12, 2017. A pair of lungs was available, and he was a match. Did he want them?

Mark and his wife, Chris, longtime residents of Kalispell, had been living in an apartment near the University of Washington hospital in Seattle for a month, waiting for a lung transplant to save Mark’s life. They had 30 minutes to decide whether to take this chance or wait for another that could never arrive.

If he had been alone, Mark says, he may have hesitated. But with Chris by his side, there was “no hesitation. We were ready for the process.”

Mark said yes and went into surgery. The next day, he was breathing with someone else’s lungs.

The story of getting one man’s lungs to breathe in another man’s chest is more than a surgical procedure. It’s a combination of good and bad luck, a foundation of friends and family, a network of doctors, and one young man’s extraordinary gift.

It starts as a fluke diagnosis. Mark went in for a chest screening in 2009, a routine pre-admit for knee replacement surgery, and left with a diagnosis of Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis (IPF). At the time, he wasn’t too concerned. He was extremely healthy with no previous lung issues — an avid skier and outdoorsman who regularly skinned mountains and took on the backcountry.

Yet the diagnosis was concrete. “Idiopathic” means no known cause; “fibrosis” means scar tissue. Mark’s lungs were progressively stiffening. Eventually, they wouldn’t be able to take in enough oxygen.

Close friends, particularly Dr. Craig Harrison, urged him to take the diagnosis seriously. He began seeing Dr. Tim Obermiller at Rocky Mountain Heart and Lung and Kalispell Regional Medical Center. Dr. Obermiller monitored the progression of Mark’s IPF, which was slow, at first. He continued to ski, road bike and enjoy the outdoors. It wasn’t until 2014 that he noticed friends outpacing him on the slopes. Dr. Obermiller referred Mark to his mentor, Dr. Ganesh Raghu, a leading pulmonologist at the University of Washington.

Dr. Raghu informed Mark that he would eventually need a transplant. The diagnosis was medically concrete, but beyond the horizon for Mark and his ever-active lifestyle. “I thought, that’s never going to happen to me,” he says. “I was in far too good of shape, doing too many things...I was healthy.”

But then, in the summer of 2015, his breathing regressed rapidly. By the next summer, he had given up all outdoor activities — no golfing, no skiing, no road biking. By the fall of 2016, he was on supplemental oxygen and Dr. Raghu officially recommended him for a transplant.

In February 2017, he was approved and listed for a full lung transplant. He was already on oxygen 24/7. By June, Mark and Chris moved to Seattle to await a call about a match, if it came.

Family and friends stepped up to hold everything together. Mark’s eldest son, Mark Jr., manned the family business, American Homestead Mortgage, while his father was away. His younger son, Adam, put his professional skiing career on hold and returned home from Colorado. Mark’s daughter, Elizabeth, immediately flew to Seattle from her home in Florida. Dear friends Drs. Craig and Robin Harrison also traveled to Seattle to be trained as backup caregivers, should something happen to Chris.

An organ match is not a guarantee. UNOS, the national organization that manages transplant waitlists, has to consider many factors in finding a match, including blood type, body size and proximity. The harvesting time for donated lungs is four to six hours. Patients have to be ready at a moment’s notice.

So Mark and Chris waited. The biggest surprise, they say, is that the call came. The procedure on July 13, overseen by Dr. Michael Mulligan, went smoothly. The recovery was painful, but successful — Mark could breathe again.

“The story couldn’t have been scripted better,” he says.

This is a success story. But it’s a bittersweet success, a tragic one, because behind every lung transplant is a donor who made it possible.

His name was Garrett. He was a young man. Mark and Chris don’t yet know other details of his life — there’s a process of disclosure currently in the works with his mother — but they do know one thing: he’s the ultimate hero of this journey.

“I’m breathing with his lungs.” Mark says, pausing as his emotions well up. “When you get up every day and you’re breathing with someone else’s lungs, it is surreal. And we feel ... pretty blessed. And grateful.”

It’s a gratitude only amplified by the sacrifice. “It’s a struggle to not feel guilt because you know that somebody else lost someone they love in order for me to keep somebody I love,” says Chris. Every day since the surgery, they say, is “a gift.”

It’s a daily miracle — the people and process that allow Garrett’s lungs to breathe in Mark’s body — but it all comes down to Garrett’s decision to be listed as an organ donor. “First thing I do in the morning is thank a young man for his incredible empathy — empathy for another human being to donate his organs and allow your flame to continue while his was being extinguished,” says Mark.

That empathy allowed for nearly 2,500 lung transplant recipients in the U.S. last year, part of the 35,000 transplants using organs from over 10,000 deceased donors. Those donors are responsible for saving at least three lives each.

In Montana, as in other states, becoming an organ donor is as easy as registering your driver’s license or state-issued ID through the DMV or LifeCenter Northwest. Anyone can become one, regardless of age, gender, race or health. Mark, now sitting in his living room thanks to Garrett’s choice, puts it bluntly: “This story is completely lost without organ donation.”

Holding this story together, though, is an army of friends, family, colleagues and professionals whose hard work, kindness and support allowed Mark to keep breathing. “Through this whole amazing process — I’m the one who received new lungs, but everybody else did the work,” he says. There are “literally thousands of people to thank.”

This includes Dr. Obermiller, Ann Rigg, physicians in the Flathead Valley, the “incredible nursing staff” at the University of Washington, UW’s physicians, Dr. Michael Mulligan, Dr. Erika Lease, Dr. Raghu, Drs. Craig and Robin Harrison, and the numerous friends in the community who have kept the Delormes in their prayers.

“You hear about it all the time when people go through things like this, but when you actually experience it — pretty heartfelt,” Mark says of the support in the valley. “What a place to live.”

And, of course, there’s Chris, who stood by Mark’s side through the whole ordeal. “Without Chris, I would’ve never made it through the process.”

Seven and a half months post-op, Mark and Chris are looking forward to borrowed time together and with family and friends. There’s a trip to Italy in the works, and a second grandson on the way. And for Mark, there’s the particular joy of getting back to the outdoors. He skinned a mountain again just four months following the operation — an “unheard of” return that, he says, “put a huge smile on my face.”

Skiing, spending time with loved ones, making plans — all things Mark once thought he’d never do again, extended by a process he readily admits is far larger than his one story.

“It’s an incredible process but again, I’m such a small part of it. I have the lungs, but there are hundreds, even thousands, of people who are responsible along the way. And that’s the difference.”

Reporter Adrian Horton can be reached at ahorton@dailyinterlake.com or at 758-4439.