Julie Winters, who received parts of lungs from two brothers 12 days ago to slow the ravages of cystic fibrosis, died Monday in North Carolina from complications of the disease.
The 33-year-old Cincinnati police dispatcher had weakened over the past few days and especially since Sunday, said Tom Winters, her oldest brother.
Ms. Winters' parents and brothers William and Patrick -- who had each donated a section of their lungs to their younger sister during all-day surgery May 13 -- were with her at the University of North Carolina Hospitals in Chapel Hill when she died.
"She didn't feel any pain," said Tom Winters, a Mason resident. "We feel really strongly that she's in heaven, and that's just real comforting to us."
Ms. Winters, of Mount Healthy, had been hospitalized since December at Children's Hospital Medical Center here and moved to the North Carolina hospital at the end of April to prepare for the surgery.
"We think our brothers are heroes," Tom Winters said. "We did everything we could. She just asked for a chance, and that's what she got -- a chance."
After going on medical leave because of declining health, Ms. Winters created a Web page to communicate with other cystic fibrosis patients.
On it, she bemoaned the fact that she could walk only a few feet without resting and had to take oxygen into the shower with her. "So -- sometimes you just cry. You teeter on the edge of a precipice," she wrote.
"It is dark and frightening and you feel you can topple any moment." Still, she told readers she found hope in the prospect of a lung transplant and in her belief in an afterlife.
"I always knew I had this thing, and subsequently I enjoyed my life! . . . I appreciate the simplest things -- being at home," she wrote.
Trust fund
A trust fund for the Julie Winters family has been established at the Star Bank branch in Mount Healthy, 7433 Hamilton Ave., Cincinnati 45231.
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"I am grateful for the resurgence of hope I felt after reassessing the pros and cons of going for a lung transplant. Hope is an essential component to the human soul I discovered -- at least mine!"
Cystic fibrosis is a genetic disease that usually kills by gradually clogging the lungs.
Most of the Winters family remained in North Carolina on Monday, and funeral arrangements were incomplete.
