A New York woman is looking forward to the future with her family after receiving the first trachea transplant After years of struggling to breathe and fearing she might suffocate in her sleep, Sonia Sein says she feels well enough to dance around with her grandchildren after undergoing the first-ever human trachea transplant at Mount Sinai in New York. “For me, it felt like right after, I was able to breathe. When I took that first breath it was heaven,” said Sein, who had the life-changing surgery in January. The 56-year-old former social worker’s trachea was damaged in 2014 when she had to go on a ventilator because of a bad asthma attack.