Alicia Lang’s gift of life arrived just in time.

The 20-year-old West Chester Twp. woman was in respiratory failure and near death when she was airlifted from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center to Cleveland Clinic on Feb. 9.

Lang had been on a lung transplant waiting list for two years and still no transplant was imminent.

The next night, Jim and Mary Kay Lang learned a set of lungs was available for their daughter. Lang underwent a six-hour transplant Feb. 11.

“It was a great surgery,” Jim Lang said. “It’s a great pair of lungs. In fact, the pulmonologist said it was the best pair of lungs that she’s ever seen, on paper.”

Lang, a 2010 Lakota West High School graduate, was 5 years old when diagnosed with cystic fibrosis. The disease is caused by a defective gene that causes thick mucus to build up in the lungs and pancreas. Her 18-year old brother Nicholas, a Lakota West senior, was diagnosed at age 2.

“They test them basically at the same time,” Mary Kay Lang said. “Once one sibling has it, it typically happens that both do.”

Nicholas plays tennis daily and plans to play in college.

“We’ve got both extremes of the illness,” Jim said.

Since her freshman year in high school, Lang has been hospitalized up to 12 times a year for 14 days each visit.

“They did all they could for her, but her lungs had just deteriorated so much. Her lung capacity was right at 15 percent,” Jim said.

The Langs know only a little about the donor, a female from New York who died of an aneurysm. She was a lifelong non-smoker who took no medications.

Lang’s recovery period rests solely with her. The Langs have known of transplant recipients who remained hospitalized from 10 days to more than six months.

“We have no idea, because she was so severely ill,” Mary Kay said. “The doctors are happy with her progress. She’s right on schedule.”

Lang will take anti-rejection medication for the rest of her life. She has a regimen of medicines to take at 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. every day.

Her future plans are undetermined, but she wants to do something in the medical field. The family’s long-term goal is to get encourage others to become organ donors.

“Many people die waiting for transplants, and Alicia was very close to that,” Jim said. “Knowing that, I think she will be a very good advocate for signing people up for tissue and organ donors.”

The Lang family has coped with the support of the West Chester Twp. community, for which they are thankful.

“I know that it’s going to be a long and hard trek for her, so just continued support would be very much appreciated,” Jim said. “I don’t know anything other than cystic fibrosis and caring for my kids. That’s just a part of our lives. You’ve just got to deal with the cards you’re dealt.”

A double-lung transplant costs $800,000, according to the National Foundation for Transplants. To help defray expenses not covered by insurance, tax-deductible donations may be made for Alicia Lang at www.transplants.org. Also, a team will raise money for the Langs on March 9 during the Shamrock Shuffle, sponsored by the Community Foundation of West Chester/Liberty.