Double Lung Transplant Celebrates 2 Birthdays

HURON - A South Dakota woman says she is going to be celebrating two birthdays from now on: Her actual birthday and the day she received a double lung transplant.

The Huron Plainsman reports that Michelle Gascoigne was diagnosed with scleroderma and pulmonary hypertension in 2009. Scleroderma is a condition that damages and hardens the tissue in the lungs. Pulmonary hypertension is high blood pressure in the lungs.

Because there is no treatment for scleroderma, Gascoigne underwent treatment after treatment.

Last year on her birthday, Gascoigne learned she had been accepted on the transplant list for new lungs.

On July 26, Gascoigne and her husband, Dave, received the call they had been waiting for: Her surgery would be the next day at the University of Minnesota Hospital in Minneapolis.

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