My life 3 years post transplant!

Well it has now been 3 ½ years since my heart and lung transplant and what a life changing 3 ½ years it has been! I never realised how difficult and mentally challenging it can be to rebuild your life after being so ill for so long and going through such a huge operation.

When you think of transplantation you believe that everything will be instantly cured and that you will be bounding about within days of the operation (just watch Casualty or Holby city).  However, reality is that you start off as a thin version of a couch potato in which your body is confused about the concept of ‘exercise’. Initially you mind learns fast that this is a taboo word and must be avoided at all cost (involving hiding from the physiotherapist who begin rounding you up like sheep to take you to the exercise pen, thus brain washing you into believing exercise is good!!).

In my case it wasn’t until a year later that I had to take exercise seriously because my immunity against weight gain had stopped and a belly was beginning to appear (which was quite nicely pointed out by my grandmother when shopping for clothes!).

I did say that if anyone ever mentioned to me that I had to lose weight I would laugh at them and I did. Unfortunately it was the transplant consultant who was being completely serious – whoops!  Therefore thought it would be a good time to join a gym and start losing some of the 20Kg I have put on since my transplant.

To join the gym was a mission on its own as they checked my pulse and blood pressure and basically looked at me in a gaze of astonishment and said I had to get a letter from my GP. Being prepared for this I was armed with a letter from the transplant consultant thus avoided that delay. The main delays were writing my mediation in the 2cm by 1cm box they provided and the gym trainer frantically going through the BNF! Despite all that I regularly go to the gym, play squash and go swimming (rubbish at the latter two but hey its exercise).

Therefore, with all this exercise I have manage to climb Ben Nevis 3 times (4406ft), abseiled and done Zip slides off and across Manchester Uniteds Stadium Roof, ran 1,7 miles in the Chariots of fire relay race for the transplant team, climbed poles of silly heights and jumped of them in a leap of faith and get to the pub and back.

In between all that I manage to visit Las Vegas and New York in 2004 and planned this year to go for a relaxing couple of weeks in Thailand and Hong Kong at the end of June. Also, another trip has been planned for America in November which I am looking forward to – basically a chill out year ?

To fund all this, a job was required and initially I wasn’t being accepted due to the amount of ‘sick leave’ I had had when I was ill. I had to go through an agency company to get a job which specialised in getting people back to work after having health related issues. Thus got a job with a large supermarket retail chain as a CCTV operator catching criminals. However, having a Ph.D this became very laborious and having trained as a pathologist I need to get back into that area. Fortunately an opportunity came up at a top transplant hospital, (yes Papworth where I had my transplant - scary) and now work as a research biomedical scientist in the department of immunology. Thus, thoroughly enjoying it and putting something back into the NHS.

I am now reaping the benefits of this transplant and enjoying everyday that I am here. There is no turning back now it onwards and onwards………………Yippee