Mother with cystic fibrosis thrives after groundbreaking quadruple-organ transplant

CHICAGO (WLS) - A 36-year-old mother with cystic fibrosis has received a new chance at life after Chicago surgeons performed a first-of-its-kind quadruple-organ transplant.

Doctors at Northwestern Medicine gave 36-year-old Elizabeth Wehrle new lungs, a new liver and a new kidney. It marks the first time a patient has received four new organs when retransplanted lungs were involved.

Wehrle, who has a cystic fibrosis diagnosis, had a double-lung transplant at another hospital in 2017. She fell sick again in January of this year and was eventually diagnosed with a severe form of chronic rejection that some lung transplant patients get.

Doctors also discovered Wehrle was suffering from organ failure because of complications from the cystic fibrosis and would need a liver and kidney transplant, too. Her health deteriorated to the point where she was on both a ventilator and a life support machine.

Wehrle was admitted to Northwestern on March 17 and had the eight-hour retransplant and transplant surgery five days later. The procedure was made possible by an organ donor and donor family.

“It’s been incredibly difficult, mentally, physically,” Wehrle said. “The first time, it was just the lungs, so there was a faster recovery. This time, I wasn’t able to use my abdomen to get up to do basic things. I wasn’t able to use my arms for a very extended time. So, it was just physically challenging and then mentally of being independent and then having that taken away from me.”

The mother is getting ready to go back home to Iowa and her 11-year-old son later this week. She says she’s walking three to four miles a day and is looking forward to going swimming, so she can show off her “battle scars.”

“It’s just one of those things where I earned them, and I’m going to be proud of them,” Wehrle said. “I hope that that lets other people, gives them hope to or gives them inspiration to just be OK with who they are.”