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Sunday, February 10, 2002 }.ujtin Amtrican· attsman statesman.com Section K

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shut-in as she hoped for a new lung to save her life

STORY BY JANET WILSON

PHOTOGRAPHY BY RALPH BARRERA American-Statesman Staff

n the 1980s and '90s, a party wasn't a party in Austin if Lee Kelly wasn't there. For 13 years, she rubbed her Christian Lacroix-clad shoulders with the city's powerful

and elite, chronicling movers and shakers at glitzy fetes and charitable events for the Austin American-Statesman.

With ubiquitous notepad in hand, she flitted from bigwig to doye e, gleaning tidbits about the personal and professional lives oflocal luminaries: their pricey mansions, exotic vacations and elaborate soirees, as well as behind-the-scenes rendezvous among the city's power brokers.

If grandchildren became the topic of conversation, Lee drifted to another corner of the room, looking for elusive morsels of news her readers could wash down with their morning coffee and croissants.

Lee was Austin's Liz Smith and Maxine Messinger. Her three-times-a-week column in the American­Statesman, called "People," was the city's version of People magazine.

She could determine if you were somebody ... or nobody. If you wanted to know who mattered, you read Lee Kelly's column. Her address files bulged with unlisted home numbers of everyone who was anyone, from Lady Bird Johnson to Frank McBee, a founder and head of Tracor Inc.

She dined with the likes of Edward Clark, a former ambassador to Australia, and Allan Shivers, a former Texas governor. Sometimes she would go to five events in one night.

The next day she would hit the newsroom early. Her desk was easy to spot; it was the one overflowing with clutter. Three-foot stacks of newspapers, reports, let­ters and magazines teetered precariously. Her tele­phone cord was extra long so that she could pace up and down the aisle between desks, coaxing one more detail from a reluctant source.

There was no husband, no children. Lee was married

to a job that, like an abusive spouse, controlled her life. She never relaxed. Her idea of fun was to get a scoop that eluded the news reporters on the other side of the room. Even on her nights off, she plopped down in a chair at her kitchen table and chattered on the phone for hours, calling source after source to nail a rumor.

And much of the time she had a cigarette in her lips.

• Lee was a poster child ofpre-P.C. Austin, when the environment wasn't king and smoking in public -and in offices and especially in a new room - was accepted. At parties, at her de'k, at home, she would light up a True. She smoked a pack and a half a day, a habit born when she was in her 20s that had grown into a full-blown addiction by the time she was Austin's social arbiter in her mid-30s.

She bragged about never m1 sing a day of work, but by the early '90s, she was cough· g through telephone interviews and constantly battling bronchitis and nagging colds. Allergies, she told the person on the other end of the line.

Until 1992. After 24 years of smoking, she learned the ugly truth from Dr. David Pohl, an Austin physician

See A close, K9

Courtesy of Lee Kelly

The back story: During the 1980s and early '90s, Lee Kelly lived for her high-profile job covering Austin society for the American-Statesman. She hobnobbed daily - and nightly - with the elite, such as Willie Nelson, and made the news herself on the cover of Third Coast magazine in 1984.

LIFE & ARTS Sunday, February 10, 2002 K9

.. WAITING TO EXHALE

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who specializes in lung diseases. Her lung capacity was severely

reduced compared with that of a healthy person her age and size. Bouts of asthma and pneumonia had taken their toll, but the devil now was emphysema, a chronic deterioration of the lung. Lee's lungs were getting larger because air became trapped. She could take a breath, but she had trouble ex­haling.

Quit smoking, Pohl told her. Now.

She had tried before - acu­puncture, American Lung Associ­ation and American Cancer Soci­ety programs, and a few cobbled­together methods of her own.

But the longest time she had gone wi out pufl1ng was three months.

"lf a doctor tells· you that if you continue smoking you will end up on oxygen, you quit," Lee says.

She drove home and lit up her last cigarette. It was 3 p.m. Al­though she cheated a few times after, she considers that day in April the day she quit for good.

Unfortunately, the damage had been done.

Fouryearslater, the woman who lived and breathed the social life would be forced, at age 49, to stay home, away from people and par­ties, away from work. She was facing a life of isolation, a daily grind of fighting for a breath.

She couldn't imagine that with­in a few years, she would be spending her days stretched out on a worn sofa in the living room of her small Northwest Hills town­home, listlessly watching MSNBC and "Lassie" reruns, refereeing spats between her two hyper dachshunds. Her lungs would grow so large and rigid that she

seca

Critical checkup: After Lee was placed on the donor transplant list , she had to maintain a certain health status in case a lung became avail­able. Her condition was monitored by Dr., David Pohl, an Austin . lung-disease specialist, who told her in 1992 to quit smoking.

would barely be able to exhale. had even packed a bag. time, as Lee was going into respi-Now, she had to decide what she But he wasn't totally ratory failure .

was willing to do, how far she wa._s_ -Mlitllbw;io.!.:1£llt:.All0lltil0lliLSJ1QJtQlj;_ _ _.UtJtloluuLLI-1"-'l£u:u=_...,,,"'-" ______ wilJin to a a to t--<>lzo,_o .-1,,nn~+-h

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Exhausted: Pohl's breathing tests would leave Lee teary-eyed and in need of oxygen.

tried to stabilize her, rushing her to Seton Hospital's emergency room. A tube, attached to a venti­lator, was placed down her throat to her lungs, allowing the machine to breathe for her. Versed, Ativan and morphine kept her quiet, se­dated and still.

"It was a really scary time," re­members Tyson, who followed Lee to the hospital. "She was so vulnerable."

For two weeks Lee lay in inten­sive care. Her brother Rich flew down from her hometown of Bal­timore, sitting by her side froni morning to night. Holding her hand, he told her how much her mother and Jack and Kris and Pat and Linda (her brothers and sisters-in-law) loved her. And he prayed.

"Her condition was so critical I was afraid to leave her side," Rich Kelly says.

Friends dropped by, but Lee, still unconscious, never knew.

Twice a priest gave her last rites.

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problems. At night she used a nebulizer, a device that delivered medication to her lungs to ease the work of breathing. Sometimes she would tote ~ e bowling-ball-size machine into the newsroom.

Stubborn arid still in denial, af­ter three years she finally relented and took a six-month medical leave. Afterw d, she was ready to return to work but Pohl as~ed her not to. He wanted her to stay away from the stres and take care of herself.

She ignored again, return-ing to work p time for three months, hoping t increase to full time. But her bo wouldn't coop­erate. She was sick and not capable of doing the type of stories she wanted.

Lee took an ther six-month leave and enroll in a pulmonary rehab program. It helped stabilize her condition, but it was not a cure. The woman who was always searching for facts finally had to face some - she was unable to work and would have to go on long-term disability.

Even her closest friends didn't know how damaged Lee's lungs were. Lee was an expert at denial, wasting energy s e didn't have to make others think she was healthy. If friends were coming for a visit, she wo d start getting ready the day before. While they were at her home, she talked and laughed and asked questions, rarely mentioning her illness. Af­ter they left, she was wiped out for days.

"I didn't want to be pitied," she says now. "I wanted to talk about positive things d stimulating things, not illnesses."

The day before a doctor's ap­pointment, she w uld get clothes from her downstairs closet, then rest before climb· g the stairs to the bathroom. er bathing, she dressed and slowl made her way

Sunday, February 10, 2002 @ Austin American-Statesman

WAITING TO EXHALE .

So close: In Ju 000, Lee Kelly made it to the top of the transplant list after the first two chances for a lung slippe away. That October, during a third attempt, Dr. John Calhoon consoles Lee a

A ife-saving support system Continued fro the previous page

to plays and, most of all, immerse herself in crowds.

Butafter the Valentine's Day scare in '99, that was no longer possible. The picture changed after those two weeks in intensive care with a breathing tube down her throat and another two weeks in intermediate care with a tracheostomy, a hole ih her throat through which the breathing machine was attached. Because she was sedated so long, Lee was emaciated and weak. Pohl had her transferred to Specialty Hospital of Austin, a rehabilitation hospital on Burnet Road, where she could get physical, occupational and respi­ratory therap .

She had to learn how to talk, walk and eat solid food again. She would need all the strength she could muster to qualify for a lung transplant.

Her family begged her to come back to Balti­more, but she refused.

"The weather in Baltimore is horrible," she says now of er decision. "And I'm more com­fortable in m own home. I only have one friend left in. Balf ore, and my brothers have de­manding jobs, so I'd only see them on weekends. That would have been a pretty shriveled-up life."

Finally she was able to. go home, but there was no freedom there, either.

On some days she didn't have enough breath or energy to even talk to friends.

After years of hiding the severity of her illness, and after finally taking full-blown disability, she stared at the ugly truth. Once fiercely indepen­dent. she was now virtually housebound, depen­dent on friends, social servi~e agencies and strangers to Survive.

Even food became an issue. Lee had never been a cook. Her oven doubled as a recycling bin,

Ralph Barrera/American-Statesman Something to cling to: Lee kept a stuffed dachshund, a reminder of her beloved dogs at home, with her during her hospital visits.

crammed with old newspapers and magazines. When successful businessman Dick Rathgeber realized how sick she had become and that she was living off frozen dinners, the man known around Austin for his charity work decided to make sure his old friend had something good to eat. ·

Once a source for her column, Rathgeber began delivering home-cooked soups, ·spaghetti and ham to her door. He said he would drive her to University Hospital in San Antonio when she got the transplant call.

Roy Butler, Austin's former mayor and a wealthy businessman, and his wife, Ann, were prominent features of Lee's society column. They became close friends, and Roy stepped in to take

Lee's car to the mechanic when necessary. He too stood ready to help transport her to San Antonio.

Accomplished gardener Barbara Vackar of­fered to come in twice a year to give Lee's back­yard patio - a tiny concrete pad surrounded by a wooden privacy fence - a makeover. Six households volunteered to help with MayBelle and Zorro - the frisky, shorthaired dachshunds Lee loves like children. Some dog-sat whenever Lee was hospitalized. One took the dogs for their veterinary appointments.

Tyson, a former American-Statesman business writer and one of Lee's best friends, battled the insurance companies, making sure Lee got every nickel she had coming. And she constantly, but unsuccessfully, encouraged Lee to rid her home of dust-filled clutter - all the scraps of paper, old magazines and newspapers that overflowed from every table and shelf. Lee was saving them all for the screenplay she planned to write someday.

Whenever Lee was hospitalized, Tyson sifted through the debris, tossing as much as she could, trying to give Lee's lungs a cleaner environment.

Meals on Wheels provided food and a driver for doctor appointments. Mark Griffith, a technical editor for Compaq Computer Corp., drove Lee one day, and she liked his driving so much she re­quested him every time. The two became close friends. Coincidentally, Griffith was training to be a lay minister at her church - St. Theresa's Catholic Church - and soon began bringing her Communion on Sundays.

As she became more housebound, an informal network of friends periodically picked up the slack, dropping off prescriptions, taking out thl;! trash, scooping dog poop off the porch, bringing groceries, stopping by for lunch, checking in by phone or doing the laundry.

Despite this list, Lee bristles at the suggestion

•

that she was dependent on anyone: "I rarely asked anyone to do anything. They volunteered, ' she says. "I'm grateful, but I was not dependen . In my mind, if everyone had stopped helping, would have found a way to do it myself. "

But a momentlater, she admits she might ha died without their help.

Her friends did everything they could for Lee, but breathe.

Ill

In the upper-middle-class neighborhood suburban Baltimore where she grew up, Lee w a social animal. She organized a dog show an fair for the locals. She piled logs in the back y and jumped them, pretending she was on a hor

As she got older, she was popular, with shortage of dates.

And she had ink in her veins. She started own newspaper - The Weekly Banner - wh she was 10. Lee carbon-copied it by hand ands it to 20 subscribers (family and neighbors) for dime a pep. She became editor of her high sch l newspaper and at 18 was the youngest reporter work for the now-defunct Baltimore Ne American's Young World section.

While attending English classes at the Coll of Notre Dame of Maryland, Lee kept working a reporter.

That's when she started s oking. "'[twas pressure and insecurity, though I ne

thought it looked cool or that it was cool to Smoking did two things that I liked. When wanted to be revved up, I could smoke cigar and the nicotine would give me that kick. Whe I wanted to be slowed down, or calmed do smoking did that. That's what's so insidi u

Continued on the next page

. . ( Austin American-Statesman @ Sunday February 10, 2002

Successful surgery: Dr. Calhoon checks on Lee after she finally received a new lung in December 2000. Only half of all lung transplant recipients live · more than five years after the operation, Calhoon says, so careful monitoring is crucial. Lee would remain in the hospital for more than a month.

Recovery begins: With the help of nurses at University Hospital in San Antonio, Lee takes her first steps after her lung transplant. Soon; her room would be brimming with cards and presents from loved ones, but because her family lived out of state and her friends were in Austin, she spent much of her hospital recovery period alone.

unday, February 10, 2002 LIFE & ARTS @ Au.stin Americain-Statesman • •

WAITING TO EXHALE

A grieving tamily$ gift Continued from the revious page

vicious and dan rous about smoking. I don't know of anything else that both speeds you up and slows you down." ·

At age 25, Lee left Baltimore to work as the religion editor for the St. Petersburg Times in Florida. She won several national awards ' before the American-Statesman recruited her. In 1976 she joined the Austin staff, covering the Univer­sity of Texas and religion beats as well as writing general news and feature stories. She was a tena­cious, tough reporter and at first she refused when her bosses asked her to take on the society colwnn in 1981.

"I said, 'No way,'" she remem­bers. "That's not serious writing."

But she began to see that the scoops she sought surfaced easily from big shots' soirees, where .al­cohol flowed and talk was loose. And so she relented, moving into a job that for a while became almost as dear to her a the air she breathed.

Finally, the seriousness of her condition got Lee's attention: She started taking bett r care of her­self. She won acceptance as a can­didate for the lung transplantpro­gram at University Hospital in San Antonio. People with the hint of a sniffle were refused entry into her

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before going under the knife. Even when her lung capacity dipped be­low 11 percent, Lee never lost her ability to talk.

"Lee's that kid in school who got 'Talks too much; on her report card," Dr. John Calhoon, a surgeon, says. "But we love her."

As doctors told her the risks, Lee tried to change the subject. ·

"I don't want to hear about neg­ative things,'' she said. "Tell me about your patients who have walked out of here."

Finally, she was rolled into the operating room. It was Dec. 2, 6:30 a.m. As anesthesia began to take hold, she continued to babble, big

. fat tears rolling down her cheeks, fighting the sleep she knew was inevitable.

"Tell Richard I love him and tell Kim I love her and tell MayBelle and Zorro Ilove them. We're gonna go walking and we're gonna ... "

Then her voice faltered. A ma­chine breathed for her now. Edgar Gutierrez's lung would breathe again.

• At 7:07 a.m., Calhoon picked tip a

scalpel. Lee was turned on her side, draped in a blue cloth. He made an incision between her fifth and sixth r ib on the right side. He poked holes in that lung and deflated it,

· · flat. Her lung was

Ralph Barrera/Amencan Statesman g her just before su gery that the lung won't work.

Ralph Barrera/Amencan-Statesman Generous hearts: For the past several years, Lee's friends have h lped in whatever ways they can, from bringing food to taking her dogs to the vet. Alfonso De Grazia is part of this caring circle. Before her transplant he would style her hair at home that she wouldn't venture out and risk catching a cold.

Coming home: Feeling slightly bloated from her steroid treatments, Lee manages a smile while hug­ging MayBelle for the first time after her lung trans­plant. Close friends cared for her dogs while she was in the hospital for more than a onth. She came home in January 2001.

B. The lung wouldn't work. Lee was lying on a gurney only a

few steps from the operating room when she got the news.

"I've got two bad lungs. I don't need a third," she quipped, trying to be upbeat, gripping her sur- ' geon'shandasi:letoldher. She tried to hide it, but she was clearly devastated.

On the ride home, pre-surgery drugs still coursing through her veins, Lee was frenzied, gabbing and wide awake, seemingly full of energy. But the drugs were hiding . the truth: Lee Kelly - bubbly, chatty, curious, people-loving gos­sip columnist was suffocating.

And if she didn't get a new lung, she would probably be dead in a few months.

• As Lee fought for a,nother day, a

mother in San Antonio faced a family crisis that s eked her so deeply she felt as if t e breath had been knocked out of er.

Juanita Gutierrez sat beside her son Edgar's hospital bed, praying that God would spare his life. He was only 14. He had shot himself in the head. His mother says - knows - the gunshot was an accident.

Why would Edgar have wanted to die, anyway? He loved the out­doors and sports, though asthma kept him frustrated and on the sidelines.

"He started to practice American football," his mom, a housewife, says now. "There were times he couldn't play and he would get sad. Despite that, he was a happy child with us, and every night before he went to bed he would tell us, 'I love you. Dream with the angels.' "

Edgar, handsome big brother to Alma and Thelma and much-loved, only son of Juanita and Roberto Gutierrez, had moved to San An­tonio seven years earlier from the small town of Nueva Rosita in Coahuila, Mexico.

He liked to tease his sisters, was a good listener and wanted to be a lawyer.

But after hours in the trauma center at Wilford Hall Medical Center and despite his family's

Ralph Barrera photos/American-Statesman Careful steps: In the weeks after her transplant, Lee worked with physical therapist Deb Meyers to help build strength. Last year was one of careful recovery; she often wore a mask to protect her from germs. Lee 'has had a miraculous, almost unbelievable improvement in her breathing function,' Dr. John Calhoon says now.

The mother: Juanita Gutierrez holds her only portrait of her son, Edgar, who at 14 died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. His or­gans would help save the lives of seven strangers, including Lee.

such a thing. But Juanita Gutierrez said yes.

"When they told me they are go­ing to disconnect him (from the machines) I felt something. I don't know. mavbe it was him." a tearful

that were in need and desperate for organs so they could go forward with their lives," his mother says. "He was just one life, and if several could be saved, that was good. What better gift than to have his organs

have a lung. Lee called Rathgeber and Tyson,

then took an Ativan to calm her nerves, but it didn't help much. Kim lirrived. Despite the pages of typed instruction she'd given Ty­son earlier, Lee was giving orders like a drill sergeant: Put the dogs in the bathroom. Don't let MayBelle eat Zorro's food. Call the oxygen supply company and stop my oxy­gen. Be sure and have my newspa­per stopped.

Tyson, always calm, asked Lee about her will as she gathered Lee's things. Then Lee and her oxygen tank slid into the front seat of the Buick Park A venue with Rathge­ber. His wife, Sara, sat in the back. She would be good company for Dick on the late-night trip home.

Traffic on Interstate 35 was · sparse. Lee and Rathgeber cracked their usual jokes, but the mood was more subdued than the last time.

"The drive was exciting because we were neither here nor there," Lee remembers. "It was all possibility.''

They arrived, and the hospital lobby was deserted, except for a wheelchair waiting next to the door. Lee was rolled down quiet halls to an elevator that whisked her to the transplant unit on the 12th floor.

In her lap sat ZoBelle, a small stuffed dachshund named after her dogs that always accompanied her on hospital trips. Clutching it to her chest soothed her more than A ti van.

Upstairs she endured hours of pokes, prods, drugs, X-rays and tests.

"I've had more HIV tests and less

the new lung to Lee's windpipe, veins and artery.

Surgeons and their assistants stepped back and waited for Edgar's lung to inflate. It didn't take long. Lee's body hungrily ac­cepted the gift. Then doctors closed her up. It was 9:30 a.m.

Next door, another woman with emphysema was getting Edgar's other lung. Across the hall, doctors were cutting Edgar's liver in two, preparing to transplant the pieces into an 18-month-old baby and a woman. The 14-year-old boy's heart and left kidney were being trans­planted j.nto two people at other area hospitals. His right kidney was headed to a patient in Indiana.

Juanita and Roberto Gutierrez couldn't save their own son. But they saved seven dying stranger s.

• Nationally, 1,451 lungs were

transplanted in 1999. In 2000, San Antonio's University Hospital, which serves patients in South and Central Texas, transplanted seven. Seventy-five percent of lung transplant patients survive the first year. And if they escape major complications, their chances im­prove.

Still, the odds for lung trans­plants are poor, Calhoon says.

Only 45 percent to 50 percent Ii ve five years. Chronic rejection is the major culprit. And because pa­tients breathe germs into their new organ every day, they are at risk of infection.

Lee knew the statistics, but she wasn't worried about them now. She was waiting to take that first deep breath.

It's just that she couldn't yet. Despitetheeaseofthesurgery,in

the days afterward, frustrating complications plagued her.

Unlike most seriously ill patients who have family members with them in the hospital after surgery, Lee was alone unless a friend was visiting. Once, trying to get to the bathroom, she fell, seriously in-

• juring her face and requiring re­constructive surgery to repair her lip.

Then she had to have a blood