Transplant joy means Leicestershire mum has a real future
It is all thanks to the double lung transplant Anna had this year.
Without the operation, she knew she would not be able to watch Bobby grow up.
Anna, from Ashby, suffered from a rare blood vessel disorder called pulmonary hypertension. She was on the highest dose of medication and doctors told her that her only hope was to have a lung transplant.
Anna was put on the transplant list in January and the couple waited, hoping that news would come within the two years doctors had given her. She was one of the lucky ones.
Just 11 weeks, later Anna received a call to say a donor had been found.
Anna and Guy are now backing the Leicester Mercury's call for people to join the NHS donor organ register so more patients have a chance to receive a transplant, and look forward to the future.
She got the all-important call on March 24 and underwent a seven-hour operation at Cambridge's Papworth Hospital, the country's main heart and lung transplant centre, the same night. Now, just over seven months on, the future is looking bright and life has taken on new meaning for Anna.
She can walk her son to school and still have the energy to go shopping.
But the best part is looking forward to Christmas. Anna added: "I had always carried a donor card.
"I suppose I just thought it was the sort of thing you should do.
"I didn't realise how important it was at the time – you never really think it's going to happen to you.
"I was really, really lucky being able to have the operation so quickly.
"I was dying at the time and to have come so far since then is amazing.
"I want other people to be able to enjoy Christmas in the same way I will be able to this year."
Guy, 27, said: "This time last year we were getting ready for Christmas and I didn't know if it would be my last with Anna. Hearing her transplant was going ahead was better than winning the lottery.
"But while we are looking forward to it this year, the feeling creeps back that there is the donor family out there who cannot look forward to Christmas in the same way."
Latest figures show that 264 people in Leicestershire are waiting for a kidney, six for a liver, six for a kidney and pancreas, three for a heart and one for a lung.
Leicester surgeon Richard Power is the new clinical director responsible for increasing donation in Leicester's hospitals. He said: "It would be fantastic if we could get 1,000 people a week to join the register. We have to do this or people will die waiting for transplants."
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