Despite life's hurdles, O'Connor carrying on

Boston Globe - January 2, 2002

Athletics mean a lot to many people. On these pages are the chronicles of individuals who make sports their livelihood: the fastest, the strongest, the biggest, the best.

But athletics do not belong just to professional superstars. Dottie Lessard grew up in Haverhill, a tomboy who longed to join in the games but whose diseased lungs prevented her.

"I used to watch runners and my heart would break," she said.

Last Thursday, on her 35th birthday, Dottie Lessard O'Connor ran two-10ths of a mile carrying the Olympic torch.

Actually, she had to slow to a walk a few times, but she held onto her grin as she handed off the torch to the next runner and her husband folded her into his arms.

O'Connor was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis when she was six weeks old, but that hardly slowed her down. As she moved - through her teens, the disease worsened, and in 1994 she had a double lung transplant. That only sped her up.

But years of antibiotics and antirejection medications have done a number on her kidneys, and in June she learned she needs a kidney transplant. Still, it was not the time to slow down.

She suffered a blood infection several weeks ago that racked her body with pain and left her nauseated and vomiting as the date for the Olympic Torch Relay approached.

She slowed down. But she did not stop.

"What if I have to walk?" she asked her sister, Linda Graham (who nominated her for the relay) and her lifelong pal, Fredia Torrence.

They looked at her in amazement, again.

While O'Connor was worried about disappointing friends and relatives who were counting on watching her carry the torch, they were worried about whether she would survive. "I saw her Christmas Eve and I didn't think she was going to make it," said her mother-in-law.

But Dottie is hanging in there. Day by day, step by step. When she ran her leg of the Torch Relay down Gallivan Boulevard in Dorchester, she stopped two, maybe three times to walk, but she never stopped moving - which is the way she has lived her remarkable life.

It is a life saved by exercise and one womans belief that a strong body is strong medicine.

Despite her illness, O'Connor scrambled through her childhood, fueled by a ferocious optimism. "My parents never treated me differently,' she said. "They encouraged me to get up every day and play. If I had a coughing fit, they'd say cough it off and keep going. I don't know anything else but to fight. I want to live."

As the disease worsened, O'Connor had trouble keeping weight on. When she went on the transplant list in 1992, she weighed only 85 pounds and was restricted to her house. She started lifting weights - it was the only sport she could do because of her shortness of breath, and she concentrated on nutrition, building her body with Met Rx, a high protein drink, which helped her gain 15 pounds. And she waited for a call.

After two years and seven months, she got the call at 4 am. on Oct. 27. Donor lungs were available, and O'Connor happily rushed to Mass General for the surgery. Given her healthy appearance, doctors were surprised to see just how damaged her lungs were. Her heart failed twice during the operation.

"I was living in California at the time," said Graham, who is 15 years older than her sister. "When I got on the plane in San Francisco, the first lung was out. I flew for six hours, not knowing. When I got there, she was out of surgery. She looked like the Michelin Man. I didn't know then she had died twice during surgery, and once after.

"You know, we all see her as somewhat invincible. Even with as many hurdles as she's had."

"She always had a positive view," Torrence said. "She never let it get her down."

Five months after her transplant, O'Connor lost her mother to cancer. A few weeks later, at the age of 29, O'Connor walked out of her apartment to go for the first run of her life. She ran 2 miles across town to her mother's grave.

"When I got to run," she said, "it was the most amazing feeling. It was like winning a million dollars a million times.

"I love to run. I feel that's expressing life. I feel like I'm flying."

In the years since her transplant, Dottie has been flying faster and faster. At the US Transplant Games in 1996, she won a silver medal in the long jump. In 1998, she took the gold medal in the long jump, and added a silver in the 100-meter sprint. In 2000, it was all gold as she won the 100-meter and the 200-meter sprints. For so many years, the heart of an athlete had been beating beneath her damaged lungs, and now it had been set free.

"To be able to win a race and to see my father's face on the sideline -when he never thought I could run - his smile was worth it," she said.

O'Connor runs with the lungs of a mountain climber she never knew, and soon she expects to be running with a kidney given by her friend, Sue Ingham.

But waiting for the next transplant is difficult.

"I've had strep in my blood and it's making me pretty sick," O'Connor said. "Running the Torch Relay was definitely a chore, but it was worth it. I had all my family and friends I didn't want to let down. It'd be like I'd be giving up, and I can't afford to do that right now."

Still fired by incurable optimism, O'Connor has learned to lean on another athlete for support. Dottie met John O'Connor at a dance club in 1996. "He asked me to dance, and I didn't know how," she said. "He spent the whole night showing me, and we've never been apart since."

John O'Connor, who runs marathons and triathlons, is training for the Boston Marathon but looking forward most of all to the Dublin Marathon. It's Oct. 27,2002.

"It's the eighth anniversary of Dottie's lung transplant, and I'm hoping to do it this year for her," he said. "She's never been to Ireland."

Dottie Lessard O'Connor calls her- self lucky. "My husband is my main inspiration," she said. "We do have our bad moments and we cry together. But we have a love that not many people get to share. We hope to do triathlons together and then hope to adopt. This is just a bump in the road for us."

There is something called the Olympic Spirit. The definition is elusive, but it is the thing that makes the world pay attention every four years to the Olympic Games.

It is the life in Dottie Lessard O'Connor.