Theresa and Todd Lint sit outside on their front porch swing in South Pittsburg, Tenn. Theresa Lint was placed on an ECMO machine after she contracted viral pneumonia last year and was the first person at Memorial Hospital to survive the treatment of the machine.
Dr. Richard Pesce demonstrates how the ECMO machine works Friday morning at Memorial Hospital. The machine routes a patients blood and oxygenates it.SOUTH PITTSBURG, Tenn. — Theresa Lint savors the moments in her kitchen — drinking coffee with her husband, cooking dinner for her two sons and stopping to pet the family cat sprawled in a chair.
It has been a year since she came home from the hospital after viral pneumonia paralyzed her lungs and nearly killed her.
She recovered after doctors put her on a extracorporeal membrane oxygenation machine, known as ECMO, at Memorial Hospital. Lint was the first adult patient at Memorial to survive after being placed on the machine.
But she says she is grateful for every day and wants other people to know about the procedure that saved her life.
“I look at every day as something the Lord has given me to experience. You learn not to take life for granted,” the 47-year-old said. “The reason I’m telling my story is because I want people to know there is a chance if it happens to you.”