Melissa Benoit, with her husband Chris and their daughter Olivia, celebrates her 33rd birthday last November seven months after surgeons removed her severely infected lungs, replacing them with healthy donor lungs six days later. Credit: Melissa Benoit In a bold and very challenging move, thoracic surgeons at Toronto General Hospital removed severely infected lungs from a dying mom, keeping her alive without them for six days, so that she could recover enough to receive a life-saving lung transplant.