WILMINGTON, N.C. — In 1990, Howell Graham was so weakened by cystic fibrosis that he got winded brushing his teeth. He couldn’t work or socialize, reduced to a half-life with his arm attached to an antibiotics port.
Then at age 28 doctors offered him the stark and risky choice of a double lung transplant — first of its kind at UNC Hospitals and likely the Southeast.
Graham gambled and won, beating what his own surgeon called 50-50 odds and living another 32 years — the world’s longest survival.
