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by Sharon Lindsey
Defying the Odds
While standing on the starting line waiting for the gun to go off, 33-year-old Dottie Lessard-O’Connor knows this race represents her entire life. Defying the odds. Dottie isn’t supposed to be here. Dottie was supposed to die when she was two years of age. Doctors told her parents she would die by the time she was five. She was supposed to die at 15. Dottie should not be running wind sprints with donor lungs in her chest. But Dottie Lessard-O’Connor defies odds. Not only is she living but she is winning gold medals and living a life in which every day is a gift. She takes nothing for granted.
Thirty-three-year-old Lessard-O’Connor, of Bradford, Massachusetts, was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at six weeks old. Cystic fibrosis is most often a fatal disease which affects the lungs and the digestive system. Lung tissue deteriorates while the body has difficulty absorbing nutrition. She maintained her health fairly well with exercise until she was about 15 years old, then her lungs began to deteriorate. Dottie noticed that she was short of breath, she couldn’t walk or run like the other kids. Every five to six months she was admitted to Massachusetts General Hospital for IV antibiotic treatments lasting two weeks. By the time she was 25, her lungs were so diseased that she was hospitalized every two weeks with IV antibiotics. In 1992 Dottie was placed on the donor list for lungs. The stipulation for receiving lungs is that a candidate cannot be too sick or too healthy. It is critical to keep body weight up and in a healthy range prior to surgery because after surgery, weight loss will be very dramatic. If you can’t maintain the weight, chances for survival after such invasive surgery is questionable.
For several months Dottie was bedridden at home, weighing a mere 85 pounds. One day she was reading a fitness magazine and came across an article about A. Scott Connelly, M.D. Dr. Connelly, the pioneer of nutritional medicine, had created a high protein drink formulation called MET-Rx® Engineered Nutrition. The formulation was created while he was an intensive care physician at Harvard’s Massachusetts General Hospital treating patients whose greatest threat to life was muscle wasting. During his years in intensive care, he witnessed patients whose lives were constantly endangered or compromised due to muscle wasting, even though they were being administered high levels of calories intravenously.
As Dottie read about Dr. Connelly, she knew firsthand the challenges he faced as a physician. She very well could be one of the patients he treated in intensive care. What impressed her most were his stellar credentials. Dr. Connelly studied at some of the finest medical institutions and universities in the country. He received his post graduate medical training at Harvard Medical School’s Massachusetts General Hospital and continued his medical training at Stanford University as a senior fellow in intensive care medicine, where he subsequently became a member of the clinical faculty instructing medical students and residents in intensive care medicine. At UCLA, Dr. Connelly established the Connelly Lab for Applied Nutritional Science, a division of the Clinical Nutrition Center, Department of Medicine.
While taking a sabbatical at M.I.T. to study metabolic physiology, Connelly began developing a high protein powdered drink mix which would help grow and maintain muscle tissue. The key to MET-Rx was the proprietary METAMYOSYN® protein formulation he created. Connelly began administering the drink mix to his patients. Very shortly thereafter he saw that muscle wasting was dramatically reduced and so were the deaths of his patients. Connelly, also an avid weightlifter, began using his own invention during his residency with very noticeable results. People in the gym where he worked out started asking if they could try his protein formulation. Shortly thereafter, Connelly was blending the formulation in his apartment, packing it in coffee cans and handing it out to workout partners at the gym. Ironically, the MET-Rx protein formulation he invented was being used by the sickest and the healthiest people with the same results, building and maintaining muscle tissue. Some benefited by gaining size and strength, others were able to stay alive.
In any critical or traumatic illness the body will immediately go to lean muscle mass to feed and heal itself as muscle is the most nutrient-rich store in the body. Hence the importance of maintaining muscle. Cystic fibrosis, a chronic lung disease, demands a tremendous amount of energy and calories to simply breathe. The disease makes it difficult to maintain weight. As Dottie read this article, she knew that Dr. Connelly’s work and his MET-Rx drink mix formulation could very well help save her life.
As Lessard-O’Connor waited for donor lungs, she began using MET-Rx drink mix and lifting weights to help maintain and gain more lean muscle mass. MET-Rx was the only thing she could eat that would not upset her stomach during relapses and even better, her body was able to absorb the nutrition. Amazingly during this time, Dottie also received her certification as a personal trainer. Through a high-quality nutritional program using MET-Rx and weight training, O’Connor miraculously was able to get stronger. During reoccurring hospital stays she would have her father make MET-Rx “frappes” and sneak them into the hospital in brown paper bags. Dottie always listened to her doctors but she also has a very strong will and she believed in MET-Rx. Her doctors did not understand the value of nutrition in the healing process simply because most medical school curriculums do not teach nutritional intervention in the medical venue. Conventional medical practice includes prescriptions which during prolonged usage and high doses can actually be toxic to the body. MET-Rx was a non-toxic form of nutritional therapy which was working for Dottie. Nutritional therapy to this degree was foreign to the medical world and to Dottie’s doctors.
Prior to transplant surgery, Dottie was given an MRI. When the results of the MRI were being evaluated, doctors thought there was a mistake in the film, they thought they had the film of another patient. The film they were looking at could not be from someone so sick and waiting for a transplant because it showed too much muscle mass. Dottie told her doctors there was no mistake. When she finally received the transplant, her weight had increased by 17 pounds of lean muscle.
During surgery doctors were shocked by how much worse the lung damage actually was than what they had originally believed. Her lungs had to be scraped from her chest cavity walls. They say her determination to keep fit greatly contributed to the transplant’s success. Her doctors now think MET-Rx, along with her strong will and determination, saved her life; her surgeon now recommends MET-Rx to his patients.
Since Dottie’s transplant, further studies on burn patients were conducted at Braintree Rehabilitation Center outside of Boston which compared MET-Rx to traditional sources of protein drinks used in hospitals. During recovery from burns, a critically-burned patient can lose up to three or four pounds of muscle per day as the body cannibalizes muscle store to heal itself. The results of that study showed that patients using the MET-Rx METAMYOSYN protein formulation doubled the muscle gain over patients using traditional protein drinks and they were released from the hospital 30 percent sooner.
Dottie Lessard-O’Connor waited 27 years to take her first deep breath. Now six years post-transplant, Dottie competes in the Transplant Olympics on a yearly basis, plans on racing in a duathlon and will begin swimming and biking in preparation for triathlons. She has won an array of medals over the years including gold, silver and bronze. Not bad for a woman not supposed to live past the age of two.
Recently Dottie married John O’Connor, an electrical engineer, five years her junior and the love of her life. Dottie is now the Fitness Editor for Our Fitness Magazine, an Internet site for transplant patients awaiting transplants or having had transplants, where she offers nutritional and fitness advice as well as support. She is looked upon as a role model for other transplant patients who are fearful yet determined to live. She is also establishing a non-profit organization called “Dottie’s Dream,” the mission of which will be to raise money for those who cannot afford fitness equipment, proper nutrition and have physical limitations. Most people awaiting transplants cannot go to health clubs because they often become ill from the exertion. The funds to be generated from Dottie’s Dream will be yet another step in Dottie’s mission to help others defy the odds. In a recent note to Dr. Connelly, along with pictures of her in competition with medals adorned around her neck, Dottie wrote, “The purpose of man is to live, not just exist. Thank you for allowing me to live.”
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