The hardest part was getting across the border.

The easier part was saving the life of Jon Sacker, 33, who was close to death at The University of Pittsburgh with a rapidly deteriorating lung disease.

Sacker desperately needed a double lung transplant, but was too frail for surgeons to attempt the procedure.

His only hope seemed to be a Hemolung Respiratory Assist System, a device that cleanses carbon dioxide and provides oxygen to blood. If one could be located, it might stabilize his condition so that he could be strong enough for the operation.

It might also buy time until a new set of lungs could be located to transplant into Sacker.

Hemolungs should have been an easy option. They are made in Pittsburgh by ALung Technologies. The hitch was that there were no devices available in the United States, since they were not approved for use there.

All of the Hemolungs made by ALung had been shipped either to Europe or Canada, where they have been government approved.

ALung CEO Peter DeComo heard about Sacker’s predicament around 11 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 21.

DeComo immediately called the Murray Beaton of Novus Medical Inc. in Oakville, the company that handles Hemolung distribution here.

Beaton was just leaving his son’s hockey game.

Beaton said he had a unit available and volunteered to drive south with it and meet DeComo just inside the Canadian border.

DeComo jumped into his car with Alethea Wieland, director of clinical affairs at ALung.

He said he drove his high-powered Infiniti MS6 at 120 km/h all the way up. Luckily, despite the snow season, the roads were clear.

When they reached the border, they realized that Wieland had forgotten her passport.

After a tortuous computer check of her identity, the border guard decided to let them cross into Canada.

They met with Beaton in the dark on a dirt road near Fort Erie.

“It was just an intersection,” DeComo said. “We flashed lights and both of us jumped out of our vehicles. We thanked him and shook hands.”

Then things got really tense.

At the border on the way back, the guard told them they couldn’t cross into the U.S. with the Hemolung, since it wasn’t FDA approved.

DeComo said that someone’s life was at stake.

Then he changed tactics. He said that he wasn’t really importing the device. Since it was an ALung product and he was ALung CEO, the Hemolung was his property and he was simply retrieving it.

“He closed his little cabin door,” DeComo said. “He made a call and he came out and said, ‘Okay you can go.’”

Before they sped off, the border guard shouted out one last comment.

As DeComo recalls, he said: “Hey, let me tell you something. I would recommend that you keep some of that (expletive) on your shelves and next time, you won’t have to make that drive.”

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DeComo and Wieland made it back to Pittsburgh by 8 a.m.

There were consent forms to be signed by Sacker’s family and the device had to be assembled.

By 1 p. m on Saturday, Feb. 22, Sacker was hooked up, becoming the first patient in the U.S. to be implanted with the Hemolung unit.

“He immediately started to improve,” DeComo said.

Twenty days later, he was the successful recipient of his second double lung transplant.

“That machine is a lifesaver,” Sacker told the Associated Press from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

Dr. Christian Bermudez, chief of cardiothoracic transplants at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, told Associated Press that the Hemolung was Sacker’s only hope, even though it remains unapproved in the U.S.

“We had no other options,” Bermudez said.

Sacker’s family has high praise for DeComo and his ALung staff and doctors. They call it nothing less than a miracle that Sacker — whom they called “Jon David” — is alive today.

“God used all of these people and circumstances to save Jon David,” a statement on the family’s blog says. “This … was nothing short of a succession of miracles and deliverance. Because of His great intervention, that hemolung kept Jon David alive. To God be the glory forever.”

DeComo visited Sacker at the medical centre, where he found him to be a gracious, polite man.

DeComo gave him an ALung baseball cap.

Sacker, who had been a fitness enthusiast before his illness, said he planned to return to jogging and wear the cap.

“I said, ‘I will be honoured,’” DeComo recalled

In the days that followed Sacker’s family came by en masse to ALung to thank everyone in sight.

“There was not a dry eye in the building,” DeComo said.