Cystic fibrosis sufferer Lynette Armitage knew time was running out for her before she received a lung transplant in December.
In fact, Lynette, from Fallin near Stirling, had started thinking about planning her own funeral.
However, the 23-year-old had no idea just how close to death she had been until she spoke to surgeons after her eight-and-a-half-hour op.
“I asked for a photo of my lungs to see how they looked but, when they took my old lungs out, they disintegrated,” she said.
“It was only my rib cage that was keeping them intact. They told my dad I would have had two weeks left.
“They had to scrape the lungs out of the inside of my ribs.”
Courageous Lynette had already been thinking about what lay ahead for dad Robert, 54, mum Diane, 49, and 21-year-old brother Robert.
Robert said: “Just before the call came through, Lynette had been badgering us to start planning her funeral.
“We arranged an appointment with a funeral director but it was so difficult to face up to.”
Now Lynette is feeling better than ever, having been given a new lease of life by the transplant. And she is pleading for more people to join the organ donor register. But the family can’t help but look back on how the illness has overshadowed their lives.
“She was diagnosed when she was four weeks old,” Robert said.
“She just wasn’t thriving. No matter how many feeds we gave her, she was losing weight.
“I can remember the doctor rubbing his tongue along her forehead to see if her sweat was salty, as that’s a sign.
“We were totally distraught with the diagnosis and had no idea what it meant for us.
“The paediatrician said, through her life, Lynette would need a load of medication, a load of physiotherapy and her life expectancy was likely to be her early-20s.”
Lynette Armitage with Mum Diane, Dad Robert and brother Robert. (Photo Credit: Daily Record)
A genetic condition that clogs the lungs and digestive system with mucus, the illness began to hit Lynette seriously from the age of 10.
“Before then, I got the physiotherapy and took the tablets, and I’d be in hospital twice a year,” Lynette said. “I was embarrassed about it, hiding my medication from my pals. I didn’t want to be treated differently. My friends just thought it was asthma – but worse.
“It got progressively worse and the hospital visits started getting longer. When I was 15 or 16 I had a massive bleed on my lungs and was given three bags of blood. I also got swine flu from a pal of mine who also has CF.
“Then they started talking about a transplant. At first, I refused but I kept getting worse and spending more time in hospital.
“They talked about giving me a wheelchair and they gave me a machine that forced air down into my lungs to make me breathe better.
“About two years after it was first mentioned, I decided to go on the transplant list.
“Things were so bad that I was planning my funeral.”
From then on, the family faced an agonising wait.
“To start with, I always had my phone with me and I couldn’t sleep because of the anxiety,” Lynette said.
“At one point, I was taken off the list for six weeks to allow an infection to clear and I was told I wouldn’t get a call from the transplant co-ordinator in Newcastle.
“But two days later I got a phone call saying a pair of lungs was available. They hadn’t noticed I was off the list. It was like they were dangling it in front of me.
“It was 14 months before the phone went again.”
But throughout it all, Robert kept faith they would get the call they had been waiting for.
“I always said she would get a transplant,” Robert said. “After everything she’d had to put up with through her life, I was sure it would happen.”
The phone call finally came at 5am on December 5 but the journey from Stirling to Newcastle was a tough one.
Lynette explained: “The ambulance didn’t have a plug for my breathing machine, so we went to Edinburgh to change ambulances. But the plug in that ambulance wasn’t working, so we had to drive to the depot to change again.
“We were a delayed by an hour and a half, and it was also the day of the bad storms, so the driver wouldn’t put the blue lights on.”
But all that was forgotten when the transplant went according to plan.
“I got out of theatre at midnight and woke up at nine the next day,” Lynette said.
“I felt better immediately. I thought I’d be really ill but I’d never felt better throughout my whole life.
“The lungs came from a healthy 31-year-old with the same blood type as me. They were a perfect match and I haven’t suffered any rejection.
“They’ve told me I can live a normal life and have kids.
“The average post-transplant life expectancy is seven years but there are people in my clinic who are 30 years post-transplant, so I could live until my 60s or 70s.”
The transformation means Lynette is planning things she could only dream of before.
She said: “I’m looking forward to going to music festivals like T in the Park.
“I do volunteer work at the local nursery, so I’m hoping to start a course at Stirling University and pursue that.”
But the sacrifice made by her organ donor and their family remains at the forefront of Lynette’s mind.
She said: “After a year, a lot of donor recipients write a letter to the donor’s family. They can accept or refuse it.
“I’m going to write a letter as I’ve got my whole life to thank them for.”
