# @upmchealthbeat on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/ChAPQSCMu-p
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/20935366-upmchealthbeat-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/thumbnails/6f14d273dd.jpg
- **Posted:** 2022-08-08T15:34:46.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** UPMC (@upmchealthbeat) — https://gondola.cc/upmchealthbeat

## Caption

Natalie Wasserman Kingston, 33, of St. Louis, appreciates the simple pleasures life has to offer – having a conversation, cooking, or getting a full night’s sleep. 

For more than 15 years, these activities were incredibly challenging for Natalie, who suffers from #cysticfibrosis (CF). CF is an incurable disease that causes the airways to be dehydrated because of inherited mutations in the cystic fibrosis transmembrane regulator (#CFTR) gene.

When Natalie’s condition rapidly deteriorated in January 2021, her only hope was a lung transplant. She was referred to Pittsburgh to receive a double #lungtransplant at UPMC.

Natalie was hopeful yet scared – she had been declined for transplant by several other transplant centers across the country. Even if UPMC accepted her case, that would still mean moving to a different state in the middle of the pandemic, all compounded by her condition continuing to decline. 

When she arrived in Pittsburgh with her family, she was very sick and immediately came under the care of UPMC’s comprehensive CF and lung transplant teams. 

UPMC experts cared for Natalie for two weeks in the hospital after she arrived in Pittsburgh, and after an evaluation she was added to the waiting list for a lung transplant in June 2021.

About a month later, she received the call that a suitable donor had become available for her. Her double lung transplant took place in July 2021. 

After the surgery, Natalie’s initial recovery was trouble-free and unusually quick, which she gratefully describes as “miraculous.” She only spent 4 days in the intensive care unit (ICU), less than half of the median time spent in the ICU for double lung transplant patients, and she was discharged from the hospital just over 2 weeks later. 

She considers her care team at UPMC her heroes. 

“The time that I spent in the hospital at UPMC, and the staff, the nurses, the doctors; everybody was so amazing,” Natalie says. “Being out-of-state in a new place and getting medical care under extreme conditions – it was the most incredible team of people in medicine that I have ever experienced. That gave me so much relief and optimism that I was in the right place.”

## Stats

- **Views:** 0
- **Likes:** 34
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- **Comments:** 1

## Tags

cftr, cysticfibrosis, lungtransplant

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