New intestines fail Tucsonan, 39

Breaking the hearts of everyone who knew her, Shirley Krasne died this week — nine months after undergoing the rarest and riskiest of all organ transplants, the intestines.

Krasne, once a strong, lithe cross-country runner and a "big brass" musician, was 39.

Her long, brave and painful battle ended early Thursday due to overwhelming infection and complications related to the transplant, performed in May at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha.

It was a fight for life that drew emotional and financial support from across Tucson — from many who'd never met her, and from those who remembered their gifted, athletic classmate from Catalina High School.

With her husband, Seth, and close friends and family members at her bedside, Krasne died peacefully in Nebraska as doctors slowly turned down the ventilator that was breathing for her. She had decided she did not want to live on life-support machines, her husband said.

"She knew she would never be able to leave intensive care, that she would have no life," said Seth Krasne, who married Shirley in Tucson six years ago, despite her disabling intestinal illness, and joyfully supported her throughout her fight.

"We cried and talked with her during those last hours, and she said she was ready … She gave me one last hug at the very end," he said, as his voice broke. "I will always cherish her. I was so blessed to have the time I had with her. I learned so much from her, and I will try to continue to live my life on the path she showed me."

Krasne's last-resort intestinal transplant gave her a chance to defeat a rare bowel disease that struck suddenly when she was 19, and left her unable to eat for nearly 20 years while slowly destroying her vital organs.

Tethered to intravenous feeding tubes, with only a few years left to live, at best, Krasne decided to try a life with new intestines from a healthy donor, despite the high risks linked to the transplant.

Only four medical centers in the United States, including Nebraska, are authorized to transplant intestines — a surgery considered an experimental failure until just a few years ago.

"She knew it could be fatal. We talked very honestly about it," said Dr. Netley D'Souza, who'd been her general physician in Tucson for five years.

"I supported her decision, as did the third and fourth opinions she got from specialists in this field. We all agreed it was a reasonable chance to take. She was only getting sicker and more frustrated.

"But I have to say it was a real shock to lose her. She fought so hard, the whole time. And Seth was so strong for her."

If Krasne had not opted for the transplant, she likely would still be alive, D'Souza admitted.

"She might have had another three years or so — it's hard to say," he said. "The difficulty of this kind of transplant, and her poor nutritional status all along are factors in what happened."

During the first months with new intestines, Krasne looked like a transplant success story. For the first time since her teens, she was able to eat solid food through her mouth, though she did struggle to eat enough to keep up her weight.

Even so, healthy color flooded her face, her energy rebounded, and most of all, she was "free" — a word she used often — to live an almost normal life.

After three months in Nebraska, Krasne returned to Tucson in September. But her recovery lasted only a few more months. Then the complications began.

During a follow-up surgery at Nebraska in November to reconnect parts of her bowel, doctors found severe inflammation of the intestinal tissue. Soon afterward, sutures securing her new organ began to fail, allowing toxic waste into her abdomen, setting the stage for infection. Krasne endured 20 more surgeries in unsuccessful attempts to try to re-seal her transplant, her husband said.

"She wasn't absorbing any of the nutrition going through her," he said. "The intestine had failed."

To try to save her, the Nebraska team wanted to do a second, multi-organ transplant — liver, pancreas, intestine and duodenum. But last week, during a biopsy to determine the extent of infection in her lungs and bloodstream, Krasne hemorrhaged severely, and nearly died that day.

Though surgeons were able to stabilize her, that set off a cascade of organ failure. She was placed on a breathing machine a week ago.

"There was no chance of survival, except on the machines," her husband said. "But we have no regrets about trying the transplant. I know how badly Shirley wanted more of a life, more freedom. Without a transplant, her last years would have been agonizing."

As Seth Krasne recounted his wife's last hours, he stopped to thank all the Tucsonans who helped her. Forced to raise funds to pay for a medical flight to Omaha and living expenses while there, the couple was stunned by the donations — well over $20,000 — that poured in, including large gifts from BHP Copper Corp. and New York Life, where Seth works.

Recalling the fun-loving, tuba-playing drum major who became friends with her children so many years ago, Tucsonan Donna Branch-Gilby said, "With her tall, slim figure, Shirley was a striking presence on the football field.

"We came to love her wry humor, her good energy, her commitment to excellence in all she did. We will miss her loving smile … and her bravery."

As a close friend, Julie Szekely, put it, summing up the feelings of many, "I just fell in love with her the first time I met her.

"You never, ever heard Shirley say 'poor me.' Not once," said Szekely who, with her husband, spent time with Shirley in Omaha after the transplant. "She was the most gracious, most courageous girl, throughout everything she had to endure. Wherever she went, she left things of beauty.

"I just felt such love with her and for her. Everyone did."

Shirley Krasne is also survived by her father, Chester Cerski of Tucson; a brother, Warren Bruce Cerski of Phoenix; three sisters, Pam Cerski of Phoenix, Hayley Hancock of Crofton, Md., and Renee Rebolledo of Dublin, N.H.; and her rabbits, Kiki and Zelda.

Services are pending.