Soprano sings on after getting new lungs — twice

The Seattle Times | By Maggie Fazeli Fard | The Washington Post
Photo: Charity Tillemann-Dick still sings opera despite having undergone two double-lung transplants. She also speaks about pulmonary hypertension and organ donation. Bonnie Jo Mount -The Washington Post

Singer Charity Tillemann-Dick overcomes a double-lung transplant and returns to opera, only to face a second transplant.

Growing up in a family of 11 children, singer Charity Tillemann-Dick accumulated what she calls “a lovely collection of scars”: pinched skin from the time one of her brothers accidentally twisted her right arm in a playground swing; a shaving nick on her right shin; a pockmark from tripping in a pothole.

But the collection’s hidden masterpiece is a long, narrow ridge under her breasts that marks not one but two double-lung transplants.

For an opera singer, lungs are a musical instrument â€" like a Steinway to a pianist or a Stradivarius to a violinist. Singers spend years training their lungs. To lose them is to face losing one’s dream, and, of course, one’s life.

“I always loved the heroines in opera. They were these beautiful, strong women in impossible situations,”says Tillemann-Dick, 29. “When I got sick, it felt like I knew these stories and now I was living one, music and all. The question,” she says, “was how to outsmart the tragedy.”

______________________________________________________ 
"You have the power to SAVE lives." 
To register as a donor in California: 
www.donateLIFEcalifornia.org | www.doneVIDAcalifornia.org 
Outside California: 
www.organdonor.gov | www.donatelife.net

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