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www.insideHALTON.com | OAKVILLE BEAVER | Thursday, January 30, 2014 | 6 Breathing freely: a `bonus round' for Childerhose by John Bkila Oakville Beaver Staff Spotlight "Connected to your Community" N ot being able to meet and thank the person who saved your life can be a dif cult reality to accept -- for Keith Childerhose, he says meeting the children of the man who donated his lungs so that another could survive was one of the most amazing and emotional experiences of his life. A year ago yesterday (Wednesday, Jan. 29), the Oakville resident was given a new lease on life all thanks to one man's decision to become a donor. Now, every day has become what Childerhose calls his "bonus round." The Oakville Beaver dropped in on Childerhose and his wife, Sarah Taylor, at their Lakeshore Road East home Friday, to nd out how their lives have changed a year after his doublelung transplant. "It's been a year now and it's still the same thing; every day, I'm amazed that I can breathe in through my nose and mouth and breathe out. It's a miracle," said Childerhose, while sitting on his couch in his living room, sipping coffee -- a simple task, but something that was unheard of for him this time last year. "Then you think about your donor, who gave you this gift of life, this ability to breathe and you think about that every day." The 42-year-old father of ve underwent a seven-and-a-half-hour surgery at Toronto General Hospital on Jan. 29, 2013 to rid himself of the severe and rare disease diffuse panbronchiolitis (DP). DP causes uid to continually build up in the lungs, similar to cystic brosis, and is traditionally speci c to men of Asian descent living in China -- Childerhose is white and lives in Canada. He was diagnosed with DP at the age of 25 and had been ghting the disease for 15 years. Friday (Jan. 24) was the one-year anniversary of when Taylor, 48, received the call from the rehab facility Childerhose was staying at, telling her that he was having trouble breathing and being taken to hospital to be put on life support. Childerhose was brought into the hospital by ambulance, barely able to walk, move or breathe. "Getting out of there was a scenario where I walked out on my own two feet without any support structure and that was... just a feeling of freedom and independence from all the problems that prevented you from doing things before," he said. For three months after his surgery, Childerhose was doing physical rehabilitation three times Keith Childerhose and his wife, Sarah Taylor, at home a year after Childerhose had a successful double-lung transplant. Here, they mimic a similar photo run in the Oakville Beaver a year ago, under much different circumstances.| photo by Nikki Wesley ­ Oakville Beaver (Follow on Twitter @halton_photog or facebook.com/HaltonPhotog) a week at hospital until he was able to continue his own regimen to build muscle tone and gain weight. Within a span of three months, he went from 120 pounds to 155 lbs. Childerhose and Taylor now head to the gym regularly. "As much as all the big muscle groups are back, it's all the little muscles that need to return. The ones that let you lift your head, stand up, learn how to walk again, jump and turn while walking," he said. Childerhose is still on a lot of medication, taking approximately 30 pills that range from antirejection to antibiotics -- some of which he'll have to take for the rest of his life. His blood is tested every two weeks, and his hospital monitors his breathing on a bi-weekly basis, while he monitors it daily. "Most people, when they wake up, are thinking about what they have to do today; `I need to get a coffee; I need to get to work'," said Childerhose. "But for a person who undergoes a lung transplant, you're thinking, `Oh my gosh, I'm breathing.' It's such a little thing, but it's a big thing for me. When I think about that and the For a person who undergoes a lung transplant, you're thinking, `Oh my gosh, I'm breathing.' It's such a little thing, but it's a big thing for me. When I think about that and the donor, it's just something special every day. Keith Childerhose Oakville resident and double-lung transplant recipient donor, it's just something special every day." The day of Childerhose's transplant, Taylor says she received countless messages on the Facebook page she created to keep family and friends up to date on her husband's condition. She says the messages she was receiving from one individual, in addition to what she had already been told about the donor, had led her to believe they may be a relative. "We corresponded for a bit, with the person's siblings as well," Taylor said. "About two months after the transplant, Keith sent a thank you letter to the family and we got a letter back, and at that point, we determined that's who it (the Facebook messenger) was." During last summer, a nearby restaurant was closed down for a few hours while Childerhose and Taylor met with the donor's children, hearing stories and learning about the man that belonged to the lungs. "It was absolutely incredible. It was very emotional, but very positive," said Taylor. "And certainly for the most part, the children in this family, and the (donor's) spouse we were told, are happy and positive that from the death of their loved one, people have lived." In addition to the lungs transplanted to Childerhose, another recipient received a liver. Childerhose and Taylor say they believe the meeting gave a sense of comfort and some closure to everyone involved. "We learned who the donor was, what they were like and how we got to this point. While from their (donor's family's) perspective, they see Childerhose on p.7 NEIL OLIVER Vice ­President and Group Publisher DAVID HARVEY Regional General Manager JILL DAVIS Halton Region Editor in Chief Volume 52 | Number 13 447 Speers Road, Oakville ON (905) 845-3824 Oakville Beaver is a member of the Ontario Press Council. The council is located at 80 Gould St., Suite 206, Toronto, Ont., M5B 2M7. Phone (416) 340-1981. 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