Bill, a 58-year-old builder from Roselle Park, first noticed he was winded while climbing a flight of stairs. But he brushed it off, time and again. He was busy running his residential construction company, which didn’t leave much time for health concerns. Until Sean Fedyna, MD, a pulmonologist at Atlantic Health Overlook Medical Center, put the pieces of the puzzle together for him.
Bill was diagnosed with nonspecific interstitial pneumonia. Although there was no clear cause why his lungs had become severely inflamed and scarred, it was clear they were failing fast.
“I smoked for a couple years in my 20s, but that was long ago. I’ve had no occupational exposures and there’s no family history of the disease. My lung condition just came out of nowhere,” he said.
Managing treatment in the short term
Bill’s prescribed treatment of oxygen and medication helped for a while. But in the fall of 2024, he fell and fractured four ribs. That was when his breathing began to decline rapidly.
“I thought my broken ribs were causing pain and making it hard for me to breathe,” said Bill, “but it wasn’t my ribs. It was my lungs getting worse by the day.”
Finding a clear path forward
Within weeks, Bill’s oxygen saturation had plummeted to dangerous levels, sending him to the emergency department at Overlook Medical Center.
There, pulmonologist and critical care medicine physician, Sean Fedyna, MD, recognized Bill’s rapid decline and added Selim Arcasoy, MD, at New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Irving Medical Center, to begin discussions about a lung transplant.
"It was a pivotal moment when Dr. Fedyna told me I needed a transplant,” says Bill. “I was worried, but he had complete confidence in Dr. Arcasoy, his physician assistant Angela and the entire surgical team at Columbia. This made me confident about them, too."
A double lung transplant takes shape
Bill was transferred from Overlook’s critical care unit to Columbia’s lung transplant team in New York City in December of 2024. His condition was dire, and his care team was working around the clock to find a donor.
Then, a miracle happened in early January, when a double lung donor match was found.
Following the seven-hour double lung transplant surgery, Bill’s critical care team guided him through weeks of touch-and-go recovery and intensive rehabilitation, which started in New York and finished close to home with Atlantic Health’s physical therapy team in Union. Slowly, with support from his wife and children, the Bill they knew began to return.
A surgery gives new life
“Recovery wasn’t easy because I had been unconscious for so long,” says Bill. “I had lost all my mobility, I had to relearn how to speak, walk, even write. My wife and kids pushed me through it all. They never left my side.
“I trust this care team with my life. The whole experience was about teamwork—from the ambulance that took me to Overlook, to getting me connected with the doctors who saved my life at Columbia. I wouldn’t be here without my family or my doctors. They gave me a second chance.”
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