Surgery opens up new door to future.

Byline: Jeff Wright The Register-Guard

When she awoke from the heart-lung transplant surgery, Crystal Houser had a ready question for the doctors and family members who surrounded her: Are my hands still blue?

The answer came back: No - they're pink like everyone else's. "If you want them blue, you're going to have to paint them," her mother told her.

And that's when the 21-year-old Eugene woman, in an ICU ward at Stanford University Medical Center, knew this was the first day of the rest of her life.

"I can breathe and not be out of breath," Houser said in a telephone interview this week from an apartment near the Stanford hospital. "I can walk anywhere I want to walk without getting tired. It's such a shock to actually be able to do what I want to do!"

She now looks to a future that no longer seems an impossible dream. Earn her college degree in psychology. Help others. Visit Paris. Live.

"I'm sure I'm going to end up with a whole list of stuff," said Houser, whose search for a transplant was featured in 1998 Register-Guard article. The heart-lung operation is much more rare than a heart-only transplant, especially for young people.

Houser was 13 months old before doctors diagnosed the hole in her heart. By then, surgery was too risky, and over the years extra blood pressure and blood flow from her heart damaged the smaller vessels in her lungs.

The net effect was near-constant fatigue, shortness of breath, an oxygen tank her steady companion. And lots of sweaters and blankets, as the lack of blood and oxygen meant constant chills - and blue lips, toes and fingers.

Her weight hovered at 75 pounds, and she devoted much of her time to the two things she could do: write poetry and wait for the beep of a pager that would tell her to board a plane fast to Stanford in Palo Alto, Calif.

Her doctors told her then that she only had about a two-year window to receive the transplant. Houser's beeper sounded in 1999, a year after she was placed on the waiting list. She was rushed to Stanford and anesthetized for surgery - only to learn that the transplant had been scrubbed because the donor organs were the wrong size.

The disappointment sent Houser into an emotional tailspin. For a while, she stopped wearing her beeper. Then she removed herself from the waiting list. "We were in standstill mode for about two years," said her mother, Hope Anderson.

Houser said things turned around when she started returning to church. "I got my spiritual life together again," she said. "Without God, you don't really have much of anything."

She got back on the waiting list - and was in Idaho visiting a girlfriend when the beeper sounded three weeks ago. Stanford sent up a jet to retrieve her, while her parents "drove down like maniacs" from Eugene, said Hope Anderson.

The surgery took eight hours. Stanford has performed more than 150 such transplants since 1981, usually about five to 10 a year, said Lisa Levin, heart-lung transplant coordinator. Most are performed on people who, like Houser, have irreversible lung and heart damage stemming from congenital heart disease.

Recipients have ranged from infants to people in their 50s, Levin said. The waiting period averages about a year, with matches based on a patient's blood type and height. Some recipients are still living 15 or more years after receiving their transplanted organs.

Houser said she plans to eventually write the family of her donor, to let them know "that their crappiest day was my best one. I want to tell them how much a difference it's made in my life. Even my worst day since the transplant has been better than any of the days before."

Dr. Geoffrey Simmons, Houser's family doctor in Eugene, said it's hard for others to appreciate Houser's ordeal - the countless trips to the emergency room, the pain and fatigue and confinement and fear. "She knew she could die at any moment," he said.

But Simmons was elated after speaking on the phone this week with Houser, who must remain near the Stanford hospital several more months for tests and surveillance.

"She sounds terrific - healthy and eager to go," he said. "Her whole world has been changed."

Hope Anderson sees it in the pace of her daughter's gait.

"She's in a hurry, trucking along, passing me now. We're used to her not being able to do anything, and now she wants to do everything."

"Until Then"

I'm not scared of death.

It's everything in between that hurts.

The pain of stabbing wounds,

False to the body,

Yet clear in my mind.

Or the headaches that never seem to end,

Making movement unbearable

And time endless.

The shocks through my body making it almost

Impossible to stand.

The lungs that don't seem to care whether or

Not they take in enough air - however

Content in their status.

The heart giving up on itself

Raging against the world, yet powerless to

Help itself in times of need.

I'm scared of the numbness in my body,

The fainting and passing out.

Will my body fail me today?

I'm scared of the unexplainable bruises that

Appear from the depths of nowhere.

And the bones that are slowly disappearing

From my body.

I'm scared of losing sight of the world I

Once Knew, its beauty and peace.

Remaining to only focus on the pain I know now.

I'm scared of the tears that I make my family cry.

Even the ones that come from my own eyes on

All the sleepless nights.

Will they melt away my fragile skin, leaving

A scar to mark my face on the way down?

I'm scared of hating the people who sympathize

For me, and the ones who always say I'm so

Strong.

I'm scared of all these things.

Yet Death doesn't scare me at all.

- Crystal Houser

HOW TO HELP

Insurance covers only part of medical costs.

Key Bank: Donations accepted at any branch in Crystal Houser's name

On the Web: Via PayPal account at www.geocities.com/d3konstruct/crystal