CANFIELD — For a decade Linda Kneen has been able to breathe easily thanks to a double-lung transplant she received in November 2013, as a patient at the Cleveland Clinic.

Kneen, 71, six weeks ago also received a new kidney, after it was discovered that the anti-rejection medicine she has been receiving for her lungs negatively impacted her kidney functions.

“I have a lot to be thankful for,” Kneen said earlier this week. “I am grateful to doctors and nurses at the Cleveland Clinic, to my husband, Timothy, and our children; as well as members of St. Michael Catholic Church and others that kept me in their prayers.

“There are so many people that kept praying for me,” she noted.

Kneen sent her words of thanksgiving to The Vindicator, along with hundreds of other readers’ submissions, to be published inside today’s Thanksgiving Day edition.

Kneen said she needed the double-lung transplant because since 2010 it has become increasingly difficult for her to breathe and do activities she previously could do.

“I was diagnosed with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, commonly known as COPD,” she described.

COPD refers to a group of diseases that cause airflow blockage and breathing-related problems. It includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. COPD makes breathing difficult for the 16 million Americans who have this disease.

Kneen became winded and found it hard to breathe even after doing the simplest things. She previously worked at her family’s business, Kneen Veterinary Clinic in Warren, before her husband, Timothy, closed it and went to another clinic in Boardman.

Linda Kneen is especially thankful for her husband of 50 years.

“Tim has been so supportive,” she said this week by telephone. “I call him Saint Timothy. He has been unselfish.”

Timothy Kneen could only describe the journey to improved health as amazing.

“Before Linda received the lung transplants, she could barely walk with an oxygen tank,” he said. “Now, she can exercise and play with the grandkids. She could do things she was able to do prior to the COPD diagnosis.”

She was placed on a transplant list in early 2013, where she remained for nine months. In addition to the COPD, one of her lungs became infected, so her physicians recommended she receive the organ transplants.

She had to keep a phone near her at all times, because when matching lungs became available Kneen and her husband were expected to rush to the hospital as quickly as possible.

“This was difficult for my family,” she said.

Shortly after receiving the lung transplants, the then-61 year old’s life changed dramatically.

“I have been able to walk, do housework and exercise,” she said. “Breathing has been so much easier.”

During a regular doctor’s visit earlier this year, it was determined that now her kidneys were failing.

“I was asymptomatic,” she said. “I did not know anything was happening.”

She was placed on the kidney transplant list in May and received a kidney six weeks ago.

“One reason I was on the transplant list for such a short period of time was (I was) willing to accept a kidney from a deceased donor that had hepatitis C,” she said. “I’ve been told a survival rate is very high. The cure rate is three months.”

The couple acknowledges both the scientific advances of modern medicine that have allowed Mrs. Kneen to receive the transplant and blessings from God for her survival.

“We don’t have control,” she said. “There has been someone higher watching over us.”