Wilmington's record-breaking lung transplant patient dies at 60

Howell Graham of Wilmington, the United States' longest-surviving lung transplant recipient whose inspirational story showcased advances in transplant surgery, died in hospice care Nov. 9. He was 60.

"I think about it just about every other day, how lucky I am," Graham told the StarNews in 2017, the year he became the longest-surviving lung transplant recipient in the U.S. "Organ donation truly is a miracle."

Graham was born in Florida and grew up around Charleston, South Carolina, moving to North Carolina to attend the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where he got a business degree.

As a child, Graham was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis, a chronic disease that affects the lungs and pancreas.

“Growing up, I guess I didn’t notice much. I really didn’t know there was much difference,” Howell told the StarNews in 2010. “With cystic fibrosis, the lungs end up eventually destroying themselves. The sickness frequency became more and more the older I got.”

More: Howell GrahamLocal defeats odds after double lung transplant

In 1990, doctors at the University of North Carolina Hospitals told Graham, who was 28, that his odds of surviving a double lung transplant, one of the first attempted in the Southeast, were about 50-50.

At first, Graham thought the operation was too risky. But when his cystic fibrosis got so bad he barely had the energy to walk across a room or brush his teeth, he decided to go through with it. The groundbreaking, 13-hour surgery took place Oct. 8, 1990, a date Graham and his family would go on to celebrate annually, like a second birthday.

Even with the successful surgery, which was done by Dr. Thomas Egan, Graham's live expectancy was only about five more years. But he beat those odds as well, and would go on live for more than three decades with the lungs of a Florida motorcyclist who died in a traffic accident.

A story on the UNC Medical School's website called Graham "the longest-surviving lung transplant patient in the United States, and one of the longest survivors in the world."

Graham's story attracted attention nationwide, and in 2011 was featured on National Public Radio's StoryCorps segment as part of a conversation with his mother, the writer Nan Graham.

In the segment, Graham shows off a sharp sense of humor but also talks about taking out his father's 17-foot sailboat just six months after the transplant, "Thinking I knew what I was doing."

At one point, he jumped off the boat and "the boat got away from me," he said. Far from land, "I really thought I was going to drown."

"The first thing that popped in my mind was Dr. Egan," the doctor who did the surgery, and "how mad he was going to be that he had given me this transplant — and I blew it just being stupid."

Despite that incident, Graham remained an avid sailboater his entire life, most recently on a craft aptly named Nine Lives. He also became an advocate for organ donation, and regularly spoke to various groups about it while also serving as a sounding board for patients considering transplants.

Those who knew Graham, however, said that just as remarkable as his survival was the way he lived his life, taking full advantage of the opportunity he knew he'd been given.

He worked for years at Joseph Robb Real Estate Appraisals in Wilmington and, just a year after his transplant, he met Dr. Debra Hensley, the woman who would become his his wife in 1993.

More: Howell GrahamEarly double-lung transplant patient celebrates 20 years of breathing free

"Howell has this drive in him that makes him unstoppable,” Hensley told the StarNews in 2010.

The immunosuppressive drugs he had to take to keep his body from rejecting the lungs led to other health problems, but “from my perspective, he seemed to take the news of complications from his ruptured appendix and diagnosis of colon cancer as if he had a cold. I guess this comes from his living with a chronic disease and pushing onward day to day.”

Graham's survivors include his wife; his sister, Molly Allred; and his mother.

Contact John Staton at 910-343-2343 or John.Staton@StarNewsOnline.com.

This article originally appeared on Wilmington StarNews: Howell Graham, a record-breaking lung transplant recipient, dies at 60