As her organ rejection disease progressed, she was in and out of the hospital for nearly three weeks each time in NYC since Jen is only listed at NYU Langone Health in NYC. For the fourth time in four months, Jen had to be taken to the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania’s Emergency Department before the hospital could transport her by ambulance to NYU Langone in NYC since Jen is not listed at Penn.

Jen was listed at Temple University Hospital for two and a half years and paused on the transplant list in April 2024 due to too much weight loss. While Jen has waited over two years in the Philadelphia area, she has lost 15 pounds as her body is burning through calories as she struggles to breathe even on 10 liters of oxygen, the most you can be on in a home setting.

Jen has been admitted to NYU since July 19th. Her first three weeks were a nightmare. She couldn’t breathe well and needed to be put on a high-flow and BiPap ventilator oxygen machines. She was vomiting for three weeks until the nausea, pain, and oxygen starvation could be under control.

During this time, she was paused or deactivated on the NYU lung donation list because she was in deplorable condition to survive such a critical and high-risk double-lung transplant surgery.

On August 8th, after a lot of hard work and breathing through the nausea and pain, Jen was reactivated on the transplant list. For the next few weeks, Jen was busy doing daily physical therapy, eating again by mouth, and using the gastric feeding tube, which was put in in July, to help her gain weight.