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WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital Celebrates Donate Life Month

By DEREK REDD 4 min read

WHEELING – Amanda Jenkins spent the day after Christmas in 2015 in the hospital. Her lung had spontaneously collapsed for the ninth of 10 times between June 2013 and February 2016. Diagnosed with cystic fibrosis as an infant, by that day in 2015, her lung function had dropped to 27% and she was on constant oxygen. Her doctor knew she needed a lung transplant, and was placed on the transplant list in January 2016.

That lung transplant came on Valentine's Day 2017. A kidney transplant came in 2020. And Jenkins stood before a group at WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital on Monday to tell her story of how important being an organ donor can be.

The hospital celebrated the start of Donate Life Month on Monday afternoon, raising a new "Donate Life" flag given by the Center for Organ Recovery and Education. Shortly thereafter, Jenkins offered her testimony as to the need for organ donors.

Despite dealing with CF, Jenkins lived a normal life. But after she gave birth to her daughter, in 2008, her lungs began to falter, dropping to 40% function and falling further after that. Once she made the transplant lists, there were false starts. The first time she and husband Richard Jenkins got the call, they waited at the hospital several hours before learning one of the donor lungs was damaged. A second call came later, but the Jenkinses learned the lungs weren't useable before the valet even had time to park the car.

The third time was the charm, as the doctor told the Jenkins' daughter he would give her mom new lungs as a Valentine's Day gift.

"Recovery was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life," Jenkins said. "But within a few months, I felt better than I can ever remember. It’s now been six years and although I’ve had some other problems, my lungs have been perfect. I now have a normal lung function for the first time in my life and I’ve had no episodes of rejection."

Her transplant journey did not end there. Because of the anti-rejection drugs she needed to take for her lungs, her kidneys were damaged. The Jenkins family had hoped to find a living donor and, after several candidates were turned away for various reasons, they found a match via a stranger on a Facebook page.

Jenkins' kidney function was at 9% the day of her transplant, and she can't thank her donors enough for the gift they have been able to give her and her family.

"I’ve watched my little girl grow into a beautiful young lady," she said. "I’ve watched her outgrow me by five inches and will soon see her graduate from the eighth grade. I celebrated 18 years of marriage to the man who slept in the uncomfortable recliners, paced the waiting room floors and his mere presence made me feel safer, even in the scariest situations.

"Both of these transplants have given me six more years of life," she added. "It’s been a roller coaster, to say the least, but I would do it all again without hesitation because of my donors. I appreciate every day, every milestone and never take a single breath for granted."

Douglass Harrison, President and CEO of WVU Medicine Wheeling and Reynolds Memorial hospitals, said that CORE helped transplant 858 organs in western Pennsylvania and West Virginia in 2022. It's a great number, he said, but he said more work still needed to be done, especially when 17 people die each day in the United States waiting for a transplant.

"We have to help do our part to help that education process about what organ donation means and how it truly is life-giving to a lot of people," he said. "And we’ve got to do better as healthcare organizations at both in this valley and across the country as to what it means to be an organ donor ... to let people know that yes, I value life. And I want to I want to continue someone’s life."

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