News
Ireland's first lung transplant recipient is an Alpha
Independent.ie
May 12, 2005 was a defining date in the life of Limerick woman Veronica Doyle — as well as marking an epoch in the annals of Irish medicine, that was the day that Veronica underwent a lifesaving lung transplant.
“It goes without saying that May 12 is my Special Day,” Veronica says, smiling. “Every year I like to thank the wonderful team at Mater Hospital, Dublin who took care of me, as well as remembering the most important person: my donor. I hope that their families know how much they changed my life.”
Almost 18 years ago, Veronica, now a sprightly 60-year-old, started to display symptoms of what she thought to be asthma. However, blood tests showed that she was suffering from Alpha 1-antitrypsin Deficiency, a hereditary illness that left her with chronic emphysema.
“Over the years, my health continued to get very, very bad,” Veronica recalls. “I went on 24-hour oxygen and I wasn’t able to do anything. I had two carers as I couldn’t do the basic jobs around the house. I couldn’t walk out to my own gate — I couldn’t even dress or wash myself.”
Veronica was eventually put in the care of her team of “three wise men” — Jim Egan, Freddie Wood and Jim McCarthy. “Mr Wood, my surgeon in the Mater, told me I had 18 months to live if I didn’t get a transplant.
“They put me on the list, and I was very lucky because I only had to wait six days. I remember clearly the day I found out. I was here in the kitchen. The coordinator Barbara rang,” Veronica recalls. “She talked away to me casually then said at the end, ‘Oh, by the way Veronica, we have a lung’.
“I really didn’t think it would happen for me. My first reaction was, ‘I can’t go, I haven’t had a shower or anything’. I had no time to think — an ambulance came and I was rushed up to Dublin. Veronica says she wasn’t at all scared about being the first person in the country to undergo the procedure. As she points out, the alternative was much scarier.
“At that point, I would have done anything to live and to survive,” she states. “When I was told I had 18 months to live, I looked at my children, Geoffrey, Jeremy and Emma, and I thought, ‘I don’t want to part with them yet. I’m not ready’.”
Some 13 days after the operation, Veronica was well enough to walk out of the hospital. “I was one of the lucky ones,” she says. “At the time, everybody kept asking me what I was going to do with my new lease of life, assuming I was about to go on a big adventurous holiday. I only ever wanted to be able to walk down my road and do normal things.
“I can do my shopping, and I can tend to my garden. I’ve joined a class. My other lung is bad, but they have it under control.
“I just take one day at a time,” says Veronica. “I get up every day and the first thing I think is, ‘Today is great’.”
