Pictured, from left, are the Kleyers’ granddaughter Reagan, daughter Kimberly, Maurice Kleyer, wife Jeanne, and daughter Kristin. (submitted photo)

“When I got the call, which surprised me, I was taking inhalers and sipping coffee,” Maurice Kleyer, 67, told the Republic-Times, describing the lifestyle he had succumbed to over a period of five years.

“And they said they had a set of lungs for me.

“I thought it was a joke, and when they finally convinced me it wasn’t, they asked me how soon I could be there.”

“Of course, he was crying,” added his wife, Jeanne. “It’s a very emotional time. It was surreal.”

Thus began the tale of how a 2016 double-lung transplant he received at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis has breathed new life into Kleyer, the Waterloo man who spent years on the verge of collapse from chronic obstructive pulmonary disease — a group of diseases that blocks airflow into the lungs.

Kleyer, a 1967 Waterloo High School graduate, faced many challenges along the way before receiving the donor lungs, including when he was put on oxygen in 2011.

“I was taking my dad back to Oak Hill, and it was so bad that I called an ambulance for my dad and when it got there, they ended up taking me instead,” he remembered, adding he was hospitalized for a month.

He spent the next three years going from realizing the severity of the situation to being told he would need the lungs while muddling through various health issues before joining 118,000 Americans on the transplant waiting list in 2014.

“He was merely existing,” Jeanne described of the years leading up to the transplant. “If I think back, he was just focusing on every breath.”

“There was a stage where I could have and would have given up, but my family kept me going,” he explained.

Family, including his granddaughter, Reagan, and daughters Kimberly and Kristin, gave him hope while he spent two to three hours some mornings attempting to catch his breath.

They were also there during and after his surgery.

“The one thing that sticks in my mind is they’re rolling me down the hall to get me to surgery and they stopped for a minute to let Jeanne give me a kiss, and she said, ‘We’re going to Ft. Lauderdale,” Kleyer reminisced, adding that the thought of that gave him hope.

His adventure continues a year later after a set of lungs from a 61-year-old deceased male have renewed his vigor and zest for life.

“As soon as I woke up (from surgery, I felt better),” Kleyer said. “I felt like I got the lungs of an 18-year-old honestly, compared to where I was.”

That rejuvenation has allowed him to be enthusiastic about the simpler parts of life, and Jeanne also finds great joy in seeing how he has improved.

“This summer, he’s out working in the yard. I look out the window and I’m in awe,” she expressed.

Kleyer goes in for regular checkups and uses his story to inspire the people on the waiting list.

“If there’s somebody on the treadmill, I try to talk to them and give them encouragement to keep going,” he said. “It helps put it in perspective to where I was and where I am now.”

For more on organ transplants or to become an organ donor, go to organdonor.gov.

“We’ve always believed in being organ donors — our whole family — even before this,” Jeanne said.

Kleyer retired after 36 years as a line foreman for the Monroe County Electric Cooperative a year before he went on oxygen.

During the recent annual MCEC meeting, president and CEO Alan Wattles recognized Kleyer for his amazing recovery one year after the surgery.

“To see him here (at the meeting) was a great pleasure. A year ago, he looked like he wouldn’t be here much longer,” Wattles said. “Just in a couple months time from the transplant, he was a different person and looked like he could still be working for us.”

As this reporter exited Kleyer’s driveway, Kleyer recalled being unable to go up and down steps that connected his driveway to his lawn.

“Now I can run up them,” he beamed while not shying away from a demonstration.