(WBBM NEWSRADIO) -- A teenager who triumphed over a double lung transplant is now digging into his dino dreams, getting some inspiration from the Field Museum.
17-year old Josh Burton grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. His mom, Kelly Burton, said his passion was there for the start.
"You know all kids go through that phase I guess, of the dinosaur, but he has never outgrown that."
In 2020, Josh was diagnosed with a rare lung condition, leading to a double-lung transplant and subsequent lung failure, which then led to rejection by over 20 hospitals to perform a second transplant.
That was until Northwestern Medicine's lung transplant team accepted his case.
"He particularly had a really severe form of rejection where
the body just completely destroys all the tissue," Dr. Ankit Bharat said.
With Josh's new second pair of lungs and his senior year approaching, he's thinking about what to do next.
"My life has changed, because I don't have to carry around the oxygen tank anymore and I guess I never lived in a big city before too either- how it has
changed that way...like see a career path and stuff, " he said.
Josh's passion for paleontology led the Field Museum to make him an "honorary paleontologist for a day."
"Training the next, the paleontologists of the future, is one of the most rewarding, but also important aspects of my job here at the Field Museum," Dr. Jing-Mai O' Connor, Associate curator of fossil reptiles said.
Josh is glad to know that despite his past health issues, he can still be a paleontologist.
"When I was fourteen, I kind of gave up on the dream, especially with my first transplant, because it didn' t seem like it could happen, because of the dust and the dirt and now it seems more realistic that it could happen."
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