Like many other children growing up, Luke Maeding played hide and seek with his siblings. But one thing always got in the way: his oxygen tube. “They would follow my oxygen tube cord, and they would always find me like that,” Luke says. Born with a rare lung condition, Luke needed help to breathe and couldn’t do many of the activities other children could. At 9 years old, he received a lifesaving double-lung transplant. After that surgery, Luke felt like he could do the things he wanted to do before. But soon came another medical setback: a rare digestive condition that made it painful for him to eat. “My guts kept shutting down,” Luke says. “I was in so much severe pain.” The condition eventually became so serious that Luke needed a feeding tube for sustenance. And ultimately, he needed another transplant. Just over a decade after one lifesaving transplant, Luke got another when doctors performed a small bowel transplant on him in 2020. He became part of a small group of patien...