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About Us
The kidney donor was actually his wife, Chris. The odds that Chris would be a match were extremely low, something like a million to one, but luckily she did. The date the hospital decided to do the transplant surgery was on their 9th wedding anniversary, which they felt would bring them more luck. It did. The kidney began to work right on the operating table and John no longer needed dialysis 3 times a week. After that they entered a brief 6 month honeymoon period where John was restored to health. They enjoyed a wonderful time of travel to family weddings, the birth of his first grandchild and just simple days not spent in a hospital or clinic. During 1993, they learned that John had developed chronic lung rejection. His health would worsen over time and they had to decide where and how to spend this precious time. They choose to come home to Massachusetts. Shortly after they arrived, in the fall of 1994, his health started a downward decline but there were some wonderful moments too:
In June of 1995, 11 days before his 55th birthday, John went home to the Lord, having been privileged to say his final good-byes to loved ones. Chris Lang reports the following: “John received wonderful care from many dedicated medical professionals. It was important to him that he fight his disease and that even though he was a patient in the early days of heart/lung transplantation, it was his hope that those caring for him would learn from his case and go on to help others reach improved results. John had between 12 and 15 different teams of medical staff working on his case. We thank them all and are grateful for the lessons they learned and their continued dedication to the transplant community. Over our 13 year transplantation journey, I learned the importance of serving as John's medical advocate. Multiple teams of doctors, each with its own focus, needed someone reminding them of the main and varied medical challenges of a patient. Long and multiple hospitalizations created over 28 volumes of medical files. No one trying to diagnose John had time to read them all, so we created a shortened form call a MED-DATA. In just a few pages, it contained all the background, medications, allergies, and medical contact information that any physician would need to treat John. Over the succeeding 14 years, I was privileged from time to time to work, as a private individual and volunteer, with people going through difficult and complicated medical challenges, always trying to make their medical journey a bit easier by sharing my knowledge.” What started out as one family's journey and experience has been expanded to those of many others through Chris' role as Executive Director as well as her service on the Board of Directors of PATHS. The goal of PATHS is to help more patients and their families during their medical journey. Patients need to choose someone to serve as their advocate and together learn how to navigate the medical system to achieve the best possible medical results for that patient. PATHS is here to help with education and empowerment. |
It all started in 1982 when our Executive Director, Chris Lang, married a man named John Furneaux. John had a defect in two chambers of his heart and over the years it also affected the functioning of his lungs. It was diagnosed in 1964, when he was 23 years old. The condition he had was called Eisenmenger's Syndrome, for which there was no medical treatment at that time. They married in April 1982. They waited together for medical science to catch up. Eventually medical science began to do heart/lung block transplants in the mid-1980s. In 1984, John was listed with UNOS out of the University of Pittsburgh but several years went by with no call. In 1986, John and Chris moved to MN and got on a new donor list. They waited a total of six years for a donor to be found. In 1989, the beeper went off and John had his long awaited surgery.
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