BREATHING EASIER LUNG TRANSPLANT FOR MAN WITH CYSTIC FIBROSIS HELPS NEWLYWEDS GET MORE OUT OF LIFE.

Byline: VALERIE KUKLENSKI

>LA.COM 

The May 5 wedding celebration of Billy and Danielle Senopoulos should have been a purely joyous occasion.

But it nearly turned tragic when, just hours after the ceremony, the groom was in respiratory failure and the bride was living the "in sickness" and "for worse" parts of her vows.

Danielle, 26, a third-grade teacher, had some idea of her future with Billy, a psychology student at Tufts University. The Medford, Mass., couple -- now living in Glendale -- had a traditional Greek wedding, with Danielle in a long white gown and Billy towing an oxygen tank up the aisle.

Diagnosed in infancy with cystic fibrosis, the 29-year-old groom was approaching the average life expectancy of those suffering from the lung affliction that causes thickened mucus to impair breathing. He had been on the lung transplant list for about five years at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Danielle said it was the undetected disconnection of his tank, twice, during the wedding and the reception, that left Billy dangerously low on oxygen. He had been relying on it around the clock for more than a year.

"He woke up the next morning and had been coughing up blood, so I called downstairs (at the hotel) for 911 and the ambulance came. ... He had never done that before. It was quite alarming to both of us," Danielle recalled.

"My lungs, they say they were about 11 percent of a normal person's lungs, so I was teetering on the edge of respiratory failure," Billy explained, adding that the tank malfunction "was just the little extra they needed to push me over the edge."

Billy needed a ventilator to breathe and was growing weaker. After years of searches and appeals on YouTube, MySpace and other Internet resources, his family had lined up one volunteer to give a lung segment, called a lobe, and seemed to be near final arrangements for a second donor.

After the harrowing post-wedding experience, the couple made plans to fly across the country and try for a miracle in California.

"He heard about our program doing lobar transplants," said Dr. P. Michael McFadden, a cardiothoracic surgeon who is surgical director of USC University Hospital's lung transplantation program. "Since they had been on the (transplant) list so long and he was deteriorating, they figured they would do a lobar transplant here at USC."

On June 11, Billy was flown with a medical team to Los Angeles to await a pair of donated lobes. It took several days for USC doctors to stabilize his condition in preparation for surgery, and the Senopouloses were ready to send for their prearranged lobe donors.

Miraculously, a dying donor was located in that time, and another family's loss became Billy's chance at longterm survival.

Now Billy is breathing freely in Los Angeles, healing from receiving the pair of cadaver lungs at USC, home to one of the top lung transplant programs in the nation.

"His mom and Billy and myself, we all just grabbed hands and said a prayer, and knew that this was going to be the beginning of his new life," Danielle said. "We knew that it was going to be great."

He came through the June 22 procedure well, McFadden said. Billy checked back into the hospital for a few days last week because of seizures that may be a response to anti-rejection medication, a complication his doctor said was not unusual.

While USC University Hospital is renowned for living lobar transplants, McFadden says transplanting a pair of well-matched cadaver lungs is preferable because it doesn't require putting a donor patient at risk.

Still, suitable lungs are difficult to come by, he said.

"We get contacts almost daily about donors," McFadden said. "Unfortunately, out of all the donors, only about 15 to 20 percent of lungs are able to be harvested."

Often the lungs are traumatically injured, harmed by environmental exposure or infected with pneumonia because the brain-damaged donor was connected to a ventilator, he said.

Danielle said her husband is a natural go-getter, which is contributing to his recovery.

"Billy's the type of person who goes forward with force with everything he does, whether it was getting up and walking with (a physical therapist), even though it was tremendously hard because it was a month of doing nothing," she said. "He gives 100 percent all the time."

For the next few months, Billy and Danielle will continue to live in Glendale, until his surgeon releases his follow-up care to the Massachusetts transplant team.

They will devote some of their free time and energy to B Nice, the foundation his family established to help transplant patients of all kinds with the expenses that insurance does not cover. (More information is on Billy's site, www.nicelungs.com.)

Billy also has big plans for all sorts of activities that will demand, and let him enjoy, breathing deeply. He speaks somewhat slowly about his frail years, but on the subject of his future, the words pour out.

"I have about a hundred things I would like to do," he said. "I used to play tennis and baseball. Danielle and I are looking forward to joining a health club, an indoor tennis club. It's going to be the first thing I do when I get back to Boston. I can't wait to run. Roller-blading, riding a bike."

He also intends to get back into classes at Tufts, after taking a long medical leave. "That's been a long road," he said.

"I just feel free, after being connected to the oxygen for a year and a half and having to drag that everywhere," he said. "Also, I've been short of breath for so long, it feels great to be able to laugh and just walk without getting out of breath. It's a great feeling."

Valerie Kuklenski, [phone],

[e-mail]

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1 -- 2) Danielle and Billy Senopoulos live in Glendale after his lung transplant surgery at USC University Hospital. Billy suffers from cystic fibrosis and suffered respiratory failure just hours after their wedding ceremony.