Mateo Franco, 27, survived leukemia at age 7. Now he’s battling lung deterioration that might be related to contracting valley fever a couple of years ago.
According to his father, Joe Franco, despite numerous efforts — including rehab — his son’s condition worsened, ultimately requiring an intensive care unit stay at the Mayo Clinic in Phoenix. One $65,000 flight later and he’s scheduled to receive a double lung transplant on Thursday in Minnesota.
“When you have an artificial lung,” Joe Franco, a Santa Clarita resident and former editor of The Signal, said during a phone interview Wednesday morning, “you move up the list much more quickly.”
The elder Franco said that during his son’s battle with leukemia in the early 2000s, he underwent about three years of chemotherapy. During that time, a retired teacher came to their home to homeschool him.
Eventually, his son returned to school, played soccer, and he later went on to study business at Arizona State University.
“We think that’s where the problem started,” Franco said. “He contracted valley fever.”
Valley fever is an infectious disease caused by a fungus that lives in the soil of particular regions like Arizona, where Franco’s son was living. While dealing with that, his lungs began to deteriorate.
And then there were additional complications.
Franco said he’s unsure whether his son’s lung problems were caused by the chemotherapy or if they were solely the result of valley fever taking an unusual toll on him. His son moved back home to Santa Clarita for about nine months, hoping to receive care at either UCLA or USC.
“USC declined us, and UCLA was trying to get him to rehab his lungs,” Franco said. “Unfortunately, his condition just kept getting worse.”
Franco’s son eventually returned to Arizona, since he wasn’t able to get the care that he needed locally. According to Franco, his son was in and out of the hospital there. Then, on July 10, Franco and his wife, Sandi, got a phone call that sent them rushing onto a plane to Phoenix.
Their son was in the ICU at the Mayo Clinic there.
The couple was told that rehab was no longer an option. Doctors estimated their son had about six months left with his natural lungs. They discussed a procedure to give what Franco called an “artificial lung” to his son as a temporary measure.
According to Sandi Franco, the procedure was for extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (or ECMO), a life support system that acts as an artificial lung, providing temporary support for the lungs when they are failing. However, a full lung transplant would ultimately be necessary.
“(The Mayo Clinic in) Rochester, Minnesota, is the No. 1 transplant place,” Joe Franco said, “and they (the Mayo Clinic in Arizona) said, ‘Well, OK, they’ll see if they want to see you.’ And so, it was kind of a little iffy for a while, but then finally, Rochester said, ‘Yeah, we’d like you to come in.’ And because he’s on an artificial lung, they had to find a plane that could transport him — a private plane — and it was like $65,000.”
Sandi Franco said a private plane was necessary because their son was on the ECMO machine, which required a team of specialists to accompany him during the flight. He was flown to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, where he spent last week undergoing evaluations.
Doctors placed him on the lung transplant list, and on Wednesday morning, the family was notified that a matching donor had been found. The transplant was scheduled for Thursday.
During that time, the family launched a GoFundMe page to help cover the growing medical and travel expenses. According to Dawn Zirbel, Sandi Franco’s sister who organized the fundraising efforts, the family has already spent more than half of what they’d collected.
“The road ahead is long and expensive,” Zirbel wrote in an email. “But today we celebrate the good news.”
According to Sandi Franco, the surgery, they’re told, should take around 12 to 15 hours. She said that they wouldn’t know anything about the results until early Friday morning.
“We’re super excited because this needs to happen,” she said, “and super scared because this is super scary. But this is his only chance to get a normal life back.”
To view Mateo Franco’s GoFundMe page, go to gofund.me/4bcc0a24.
