I was lucky enough to receive a double lung transplant in December 2006 at the age of 40. My recovery was traumatic and long winded but I got back on my feet eventually with fantastic help from the Wythenshawe Transplant Team.

I’d always been interested in sport and keeping fit through my life and had managed to keep fairly active until my mid 30’s when my own lungs started to show the life-long strain of Cystic Fibrosis. During my transplant assessment my transplant co-ordinator mentioned that the UK Transplant Games might be something I’d be interested in. The Transplant Games are an annual Olympics style national event open to anyone in the UK who has had an organ transplant. The aims of the Games are to recognise a new start for all the transplant recipients; to promote the importance of organ donation and the benefits of keeping active and above all to celebrate the chance of new life following transplant.

Once out of hospital and home my rehabilitation started in earnest. Due to my extended stay in intensive care and slow recovery I’d been bed bound for around 5 months and the resultant muscle wastage was huge. With the help, support, guidance and extreme sadistic torture of the transplant physiotherapists I had to learn to walk again from scratch, starting with a zimmer frame one step at a time and slowly progressing to walking sticks and finally ‘going solo’ and abandoning my stick in July 2007. In the August I re-joined my local gym and a personal trainer developed a tailored fitness programme combining weights and cardio vascular machines to gradually build up my body and reverse the years of decline that my muscles had endured fighting the ravages of Cystic Fibrosis and transplant surgery. The first few months of exercise were a total nightmare as my non-existent muscles were assaulted by the various machines and exercises set out in my programme. Eventually things did get easier and I slowly started to improve.

6 months later, after regularly attending the gym at least 3 times a week, I had recovered all my lost weight, regained muscles I’d totally forgotten about, and drastically improved my fitness level. In December 2007 I was finally allowed to start swimming which had been outlawed up until then due to infection risk.

All too quickly July 2008 arrived and The Games were upon us. A huge number of sports are represented; from swimming and athletics, to volleyball, badminton, cycling, fishing, archery, table tennis, golf, darts and even ten pin bowling. Each year a different city hosts the games and for 2008 it was in Sheffield. The events are all held in prestigious venues around the city and the organisation is really professional and this really helps to create a great atmosphere. Some of the competitors are extremely talented and train very hard in order to do fantastic performances. However the spirit of the games is all about taking part and celebrating new life and new capabilities therefore many other people enter the games for the fun of competing, meeting old friends and making new ones and generally do it ‘because they can’. I fall into this latter category, I was never likely to set a new games record in any of my events, but to think just 18 months before, I was tied to 24 hour oxygen, hardly able to leave the house, had virtually no mobility and the biggest challenge I faced was getting back up the stairs again to go to bed at the end of another house bound day. I couldn’t conceive of a greater change for my personal circumstances and the future for my family.

I managed two personal best times for my swimming events so I felt really chuffed and realised I could only do that because of being in competition. The 2008 Transplant Games were a great success for all involved.The 2009 Games are being held in Coventry and I’ve set some new goals to improve my swimming times and this has really kept me focused on keeping active and using these new lungs to their full capacity. All of these new life experiences are only possible due to the wonderful gift of life given to me by my donor family; not a day goes by without me thinking of them and silently thanking them. Transplant can be a long winded, emotional journey full of ups and downs with many hurdles to overcome; this has certainly been my experience. However with the help support and unending commitment of every member of the hospital transplant team it can also offer the unique gift of new life with new opportunities and all the fantastic possibilities that this presents.

Transplants definitely transform lives