JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Matt Rogers is a walking and talking miracle.
He says a COVID-19 diagnosis last year should have killed him.
"Apparently COVID didn't like me at all. So, we just had a rough time going through it," he remembered.
His lungs were failing -- filled with fluid and inflamed, limiting his ability to take in oxygen. At one point, his wife was urged to sign 'Do Not Resuscitate' papers but she refused.
After trips to two Georgia hospitals, Rogers, an Air Evac flight nurse, was life-flighted by his own crew to Mayo Clinic Jacksonville as a patient for a double lung transplant.
"They got me down to Mayo, and my doctors at Mayo said I had a couple hours left at best, probably, when I arrived," Rogers said.
Rogers spent 15 hours on the operating table. Doctors also performed a double heart bypass during the same surgery.
He is one of six patients at Mayo Clinic Jacksonville to receive a lung transplant since the start of the pandemic.
"We definitely have a lot of patients currently, who, unfortunately, are being diagnosed with COVID, and that is resulting into lung disease that is not recoverable," Dr. Sadia Shah of Mayo Clinic Jacksonville said.
Not all patients are candidates for transplants. In some cases, they may be too sick and others may die waiting for an organ, which highlights the need for more donors.
"It has been good that we have been able to provide patients the organs that they need on time," Dr. Shah said. "But having said that, that's something that as time goes on, and more and more patients are affected by this infection, those numbers are going to change, unfortunately,"
Transplant patients 12 and older are prioritized based on a scoring system. Information about that score is tallied can be found here.
The United Network for Organ Sharing, under contract with the federal government, manages the national transplant waiting list. From March 2020 through the end of 2021, 282 lung transplants were performed on patients whose primary diagnosis was COVID-related.
"Lung transplants are done not in terribly large numbers across the country, and prior to the pandemic, obviously nobody had the need for a lung transplant because of COVID," Chief Medical Officer of UNOS Dr. David Klassen said. "But, since the pandemic, that has steadily increased."
UF Health Shands in Gainesville is leading the country in lung transplants. Since early 2020, 32 patients have received new lungs under the care of the transplant team and Dr. Abbas Shahmohammadi.
"We go through the emotions, we feel the emotions," Shahmohammad explained. "We feel the sadness, we feel the setbacks of all these patients and we use that as a strength for us to provide us to want to push more and more to help as many patients as we can."
All 32 patients were unvaccinated, but Dr. Shahmohammadi says some of the transplant surgeries happened before a vaccine was available.
"Our hope and desire is that nobody has to go through the suffering of lung failure and multi-organ failure from COVID. Vaccination is the key to that," Shahmohammadi said.
Rogers is doing much better and he credits the doctors and the nurses who were by his side pushing him to reach his goal of walking out of the hospital which he did after a 227-day stay.
"When I look back on it, it was an amazing experience. It was an agonizing, torturous, gracious and humbling and spiritual adventure," he said through tears.
It also left him with a new lease on life and a new perspective on what matters most.
"Love your families," Rogers said. "Hug them because you never know. If there is one thing I could say, it's that. We take so much for granted in this life and it's a shame that we do it."