After two lung transplants and long recovery, Lexington mom returns home for Thanksgiving

Lexington teacher Emily Presley spent her first Thanksgiving at home with her family since 2021 after returning from Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago with new lungs.

In May 2022, Presley was finishing teaching STEM — science, technology, engineering and math — at Wellington Elementary School in Fayette County when a cold developed into severe infections that led to 16 months in the hospital, including nearly a year in Chicago, and two lung transplants.

“I have so much to be thankful for this Thanksgiving and I’m so glad my Northwestern Medicine lung transplant team could get me home to share that gratitude with my family, my friends and the Lexington community,” said Presley. “It’s wonderful to be home with my kids and my dog.”

In October 2022, surgeons at the Northwestern Medicine Canning Thoracic Institute performed a double-lung transplant on Presley, whose lungs were destroyed by viral and bacterial infections that had compounded into acute respiratory distress syndrome, or ARDS.

The life-threatening condition allows fluid to leak into the lungs, causing breathing to become difficult and depriving the organs of oxygen, hospital officials said.

On Oct. 30, 2023, Presley returned to Lexington.

“I would say that it’s been pretty horrible,” she told the Herald-Leader Monday. “All the procedures, all the poking and prodding. It’s been really, really difficult, but I’ve been able to get through it because I have a ton of support with my family, including Jeff, my husband, support from my friends. I have a really great community and that really did get me through.”

“I have said many times it was hell on Earth. And that’s a pretty accurate description,” said Jeff Presley, her husband.

Jeff Presley said his wife was previously a “picture of health” and rarely got sick. What she thought was just a cold on a Wednesday progressed to bronchitis by the following Saturday.

“I walked in the house and I couldn’t believe how Emily looked and sounded,” Jeff Presley said in a statement released by the hospital. “I could hear her breathing from across the room.”

He took her to Baptist Health in Lexington where she tested negative for COVID and the flu but positive for rhinovirus (the common cold) and parainfluenza (a respiratory virus), which made her susceptible to a bacterial staph infection that ravaged her lungs. Within an hour of arriving at the emergency room, Presley was put on a ventilator and placed into a medically induced coma.

“I knew it was bad because I had the mask on for oxygen and there were probably like 15 people in my room,” said Presley. “I remember thinking, ‘This is bad.’ And then I was out after that for a while.”

For four months at UK HealthCare, Presley was attached to ECMO, an advanced form of life support that does the work of the heart and lungs, but showed no signs of recovery. Additional infections compromised her lungs and other organs, and ARDS continued to cause inflammation throughout her body.

On Oct. 8, 2022, Presley was transferred to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago, hospital officials said.

Challenging months

The yearlong stay in Chicago saw some setbacks but mostly improvement for the patient who arrived there “incredibly sick.”

“Being able to see her go through everything that she’s gone through, and actually get her back to Kentucky is really bittersweet, because I’m going to miss her and Jeff, but that’s the goal,” said Catherine Myers, a pulmonologist with the Canning Thoracic Institute.

“Staph pneumonias are one of the most common pneumonias to occur after viral infections,” said Myers. “Because staph lives on our bodies, these pneumonias are often the result of people’s immune systems not working properly after getting a virus. Someone as healthy as Emily could usually fight this type of infection, but in rare instances it can be deadly.”

During the Covid pandemic, Myers told the Herald-Leader, the center had gotten a large number of patients off of ECMO with severe lung disease who needed transplants, so they were prepared for Presley’s case.

“Her husband, Jeff, in particular is one of the most dedicated caregivers I think I’ve ever met. He was an incredible advocate for her and really stood by her side through everything,“ said Myers.

“Emily was just incredibly sick, but her determination to continue living, to continue fighting and, and the trust that she and her husband placed in us was really very remarkable,” Myers said. “It’s easy when you’re in the hospital for such a long time as she is to get incredibly frustrated, and even start to doubt your own ability to leave the hospital, doubt your medical provider’s abilities to kind of get you over the hurdles and get you out of the hospital. And they really put a lot of faith and trust in us, which also was very humbling.”

Ankit Bharat, chief of thoracic surgery and director of the Canning Thoracic Institute, in a hospital statement said he thought Presley was a good transplant candidate.

“When we got a call from Emily’s medical team in Lexington, I knew we could get her strong enough to list her for transplant,” said Bharat.

That transplant occurred on Oct. 25, but soon after, Presley’s immune system reacted negatively to proteins in the newly transplanted lungs, possibly some residue from COVID-19 proteins that may have been present from a prior infection in the donor, Bharat said.

Bharat and other members of Presley’s medical team told her family the best chance for Presley’s survival would be to remove her lungs, relist her for transplantation and transplant her lungs again.

“I told the medical team that Emily and I love our life together. We love our friends. We love our community. So if there’s a chance that she can survive and have good quality of life, then the answer to a second transplant is ‘yes,’” said Jeff Presley.

Within 24 hours, the team heard that new organs were available, and surgeons successfully transplanted the second set of lungs on Oct. 27, 2022. Over the next year, Presley focused on her recovery, relearning to walk and swallow. She also worked on improving speech, handwriting and other functions with physical and occupational therapies.

In all, she was in the hospital 16 months and then they rented an apartment in Chicago.

“It’s the birthdays, the anniversaries, the holidays, for more than a year they were spent in the hospital. And it makes it difficult. It makes it sad, it makes it challenging because the kids couldn’t always be with us,” said Jeff Presley. Their children are 14 and 17.

Jeff Presley said his mom Rita Presley, a retired school principal, moved from Somerset to Lexington to care for the kids and their dog at their home. Friends drove their children back and forth from Chicago and Lexington on school holidays.

Emily’s mother, Paula Cunningham, went to Chicago from Indianapolis and helped care for Presley.

Jeff Presley said the only way they could afford to keep their Lexington home and an apartment was a GoFundMe set up through friends and family.

For now, Presley is managing doctor’s appointments and twice weekly physical therapy. She said the family is readjusting, trying to figure out their “new normal,” and waiting on relatives to come to Lexington to celebrate the holidays.

And there’s something else. She plans on returning to teaching at Wellington Elementary as soon as she’s fully recovered, probably next school year, because she “absolutely loves it there.”