MOULTRIE, Ga. — Gratitude has a face. It’s round, a bit puffy from medication, and framed by dark brown hair. Its smile lights up a room.

Six months ago, Bonnie Griner moved from Colquitt County to Durham, N.C., to await a double lung transplant that she hoped would save her life. The surgery took place May 1 at Duke University Medical Center, and she came home Aug. 11.

All the while, Griner’s supporters — longtime friends and total strangers — were raising money to support her fight against cystic fibrosis, a genetic illness that was destroying her lungs.

“I can’t even wrap my head around how much support the community did,” Griner said in an interview Tuesday.

Her mother, Sheila Griner, agreed.

“You don’t realize until you have hard times how much this community really cares,” she said.

Bonnie Griner’s support system called itself The Bonfighters. Working with the Children’s Organ Transplant Association, The Bonfighters have held several events to raise money to help cover her expenses during the transplant period.

Griner’s significant other, Nick Chastain, was hugely impressed.

“They’d already raised enough before we even left we could secure the apartment [in Durham],” he said. “We didn’t have to worry about losing the house [in Colquitt County].”

Griner said she saw the events The Bonfighters were holding — usually through FaceTime — and wished she could participate.

“That looks like fun,” she said with a laugh. “Can’t you wait ’til I get back to do that?”

While all three expressed appreciation for the community’s support, Sheila Griner summed up their thoughts.

“If I could say anything, I would say how much our family appreciates the community,” she said. “Nick and I would never have been able to do what we had to do if it hadn’t been for the love of her community.”

Bonnie Griner took a rough road to get to this wonderful spot. Diagnosed at age 5 with cystic fibrosis, she was not expected to live to graduate high school. In fact, she didn’t have much trouble until she turned 18. Medical advances twice increased the life expectancy of CF patients as Griner approached those ages.

Coming into this year, she was looking at a life expectancy of 37 years, and that was worrisome because she was to turn 37 on May 1.

Cystic fibrosis changes how your body makes mucus and sweat, according to the website WebMD.com. It can cause heavy mucus to clog the lungs, which makes it hard to breathe, and the mucus can trap bacteria in the lungs, leading to infections.

Griner had suffered deteriorating lung function for years because of CF, but things really came to a head about two years ago when she contracted a bacterium called Mycobacterium abscessus. Intravenous antibiotics killed the infection but made her very sick. Her lung function improved then deteriorated again.

“For the past two years we’ve been doing that on and off, and it hasn’t worked,” Griner said in February as she was preparing for the lung transplant.

Griner and Chastain moved to Durham to be near Duke University on March 28. Friends carried their furniture for them so they didn’t even need a moving service.

Griner began a period of pulmonary rehabilitation — 28 days of lung exercises for at least four hours a day — to strengthen her body as much as possible for the surgery.

On April 15, she went onto a list to receive a lung transplant.

“She graduated [rehab] on Friday and they called her the next Sunday [to schedule the surgery],” her mother said.

On May 1 — Griner’s 37th birthday — she received new lungs. She said the nurses came in at 2 a.m. to sing “Happy Birthday,” and that’s how they knew the transplant would go ahead; it wasn’t just a dry run.

Sheila Griner said her daughter couldn’t speak when she woke up from surgery, so they gave her a dry erase board so she could communicate. She scribbled, “Are you resting?” to her mother — then “How long was Nick alone?” because she knew her mother hadn’t arrived at the hospital when she went into surgery.

Don’t ask Griner anything about the next five weeks. She can’t remember much. Her mother and Chastain swapped 12-hour shifts tending her in the hospital, seven days a week for five weeks.

“Then they let me go to the apartment and I started rehab again,” she said. “It was terrible.”

Because Griner wasn’t strong enough to cough on her own yet, doctors had to put her to sleep to get a sample from the lungs to see if her body was rejecting them. On the third such procedure, they found minor evidence of rejection so they ramped up the anti-rejection protocol.

“Since then every other one was clear,” Griner said.

“None of the bacteria we were worried about before the surgery cultured at all,” Chastain added.

Griner was able to return to Colquitt County Aug. 11 “which was way sooner than we expected,” she said.

Chastain had had to come back several days earlier, so she was anxious to see him — but her emotions were all topsy-turvy. She wanted to be home but didn’t want to leave Durham. She was grateful and scared and tired and still on lots of medication. Sheila Griner said she and Chastain didn’t know how to deal with her daughter’s emotions because they didn’t know what all she was feeling. All they could do was try to be supportive.

“My lungs are still in North Carolina,” Griner said, “so a part of me is still up there. It’s weird.”

The reason Chastain came back early was he had a new job. He had served as director of special education at C.A. Gray Junior High School, which had him in contact with students much of the day. He and Griner were concerned that would expose him to germs he could bring home.

Now, he works in the offices of the Program for Exceptional Children, the school district’s office for special education.

“I’m just around adults all day doing paperwork,” he said. “… I don’t know how many miracles you can expect to see.”

Chastain said when Griner went for the surgery, she had 22 percent lung function. Now she’s at 76 percent. She can walk two miles on the treadmill and do four miles on the exercise bike.

“Before she left she couldn’t go from here to the bathroom without stopping to rest,” he said.

Griner still has limitations. She can’t be around children. She can’t drink water or tea from a restaurant; it has to be sterile water. All food she eats has to be cooked well-done — no medium rare meat and no cold foods. All water she uses has to be boiled, even for bathing or brushing her teeth. Over time, those restrictions should also go away.

Nonetheless, she’s exhilarated.

“I have to remind myself I’m only four months out because I feel so good,” she said.