Donna Kohl was determined to make the most of her second chance at life.
“She fought to her last dying breath,” said Dan Kohl, her husband of 41 years. “I like to say she was a warrior, and she just ran out of arrows.”
Mrs. Kohl died Aug. 11 from metastatic renal cell carcinoma, just short of 23 years after receiving a heart and double-lung transplant. She battled organ rejection, infections, cancer and other complications, but kept going through it all.
“She understood what a gift God gave her, and she took every advantage of it,” Dan said. “She was a miracle.”
Mrs. Kohl grew up in De Soto, graduated from De Soto High School and attended Jefferson College briefly before going to work as a grocery store cashier.
She suffered from birth with a heart defect, which made it difficult for her body to pump enough blood to her lungs and other organs.
“I remember Mom would be up with her in the middle of the night,” older sister Marcia Phares recalled. “She’d get bloody noses, sometimes so bad she’d throw up.”
As she grew, the problems did too, and by the time she was an adult, Mrs. Kohl’s family was accustomed to her oxygen-deprived appearance.
“She’d walk from the bus stop to the house and her lips and fingertips would be so blue,” Marcia said. “But you’d better not say anything about to her; she’d go off on you.”
Mrs. Kohl insisted on working, however.
“She was a cashier at Gannon’s restaurant, then worked at several local banks before ending up at Eagle Bank (now Enterprise) in Hillsboro,” Dan said. “She was a teller; then Annie Portell hired her as an account manager.”
Unable to have children, Mrs. Kohl lavished attention on her nieces and nephews and her beloved dogs.
As her damaged heart and lungs struggled, her oxygen levels fell, and she was at risk for stroke, sudden cardiac death and kidney problems.
“She knew she was close to dying,” Dan said. “But she was just not a ‘feel sorry for me’ type of person.”
On Sept. 26, 2000, after two and a half years on the transplant list and at 39 years old, Mrs. Kohl got the heart and double-lung transplant. Improvement was immediate and dramatic.
“Even with all the tubes and wires, you could see her skin was pink, for the first time ever,” Dan said. “She had pink fingertips, and she could take deep breaths.”
There were some setbacks. She had complications from being on a ventilator, and she needed surgery to repair a part of one of her new lungs. She also experienced organ rejection.
But once the initial recovery was over, she went home and dived into her new life.
“She wanted to work, to be active, to get out and do things and see people,” niece Rachel Roth said.
Mrs. Kohl organized and participated in organ donation awareness activities. She eventually was promoted to branch manager at the bank. She enjoyed travel, both with her husband and with a group of friends and co-workers. She was active in community organizations.
“So many people said they had no idea about her health problems,” Rachel said.
Mrs. Kohl understood that a transplant is not a cure and that she faced health challenges in the coming years. But, for her, it was worth the risk.
“I have my life back,” she said at the time. “Anyone who gets a transplant – who is lucky enough to get a transplant – will tell you, ‘It's absolutely worth it.’”
In the years following the transplant, the Kohls got to meet and spend time with the family of the heart and lung donor, a 17-year-old named Rachael Budd who died in a car crash.
“We went to Stockton to meet them, and went out to dinner,” Dan said. “Her mom came to the Fun Run every year, even stayed with us.”
In 2011, Mrs. Kohl was diagnosed with intestinal cancer.
“The doctors worked to come up with a treatment plan for an immunosuppressed person,” Dan said. “She spent a week in the hospital, then did chemo treatments at home for a few months.”
She rang the “cancer-free” bell and went back to her normal routine for a few more years.
Then in 2017, she began to have kidney trouble.
“It’s the cumulative effect of the long-term use of anti-rejection drugs,” Dan said. “We knew that was going to eventually be an issue.”
Mrs. Kohl was placed on the kidney transplant list, and her husband took a crash course to be certified as a dialysis nurse so his wife could have her treatments at home.
She went on dialysis in June, and had her left kidney removed.
“They told us it was probably going to be October for a transplant,” Dan said.
But it was only a few days later that she began to run a fever.
“Within a few hours, she was too weak to walk,” Dan said. “She was laboring to breathe. But on the drive up (to the hospital), she was complaining about my driving, as always.”
Tests showed Mrs. Kohl had masses on her liver, lungs and ovaries.
“Fast-growing cancer had invaded her whole body,” her husband said. “It was going so fast, they couldn’t come up with a plan to treat it.”
At the end, Mrs. Kohl admitted her exhaustion.
“She said, ‘I’m done.’ So we said a prayer, and a monsignor came and gave her last rites,” Dan said. “They started her on morphine and Atavan.
“At the end, she told me, ‘We had a hell of a ride, didn’t we?’ and boy, she was right.”