Andrea Maechtle feels like she received a second chance at life with her double-lung transplant surgery, performed March 17, and she believes the Statesboro community played a huge role in her miracle. In 1998, after suffering a lung infection, Maechtle was told that she had a rare disease: alpha-1 antitrypsin deficiency, a genetic disorder that causes severe damage to the kidneys and lungs. At that time, she was living in Chicago, but moved to Statesboro in 2005 because she struggled to breathe in the cold climate of Illinois.