afklegion

Breathing feels a lot different to what I had gotten used to over the 12 months I was sick, but its hard to tell from before I was ill. And yeah the fact that a lot of people when they get a cold just say stuff like "Oh its just a flu" is very scary and I'm trying to get the word out that the flu is a lot more dangerous then people think

The heart shaped line were the two drains that they put in to get any excess liquid out of my chest cavity :)

At first I had heard that the life expectancy post lung transplant was only three to five years, but the doctors who are looking after me have patients in their 60s who are over 20 years post transplant. As I'm only 17 this year, they believe I could get more then that from these new lungs.

There is also the chance that medical science progresses a little bit further and they can make a new set of lungs out of my own tissue

In Australia we don't get told anything about the donor, all we get told is whether the lungs came from your state, or out of state.

For the first few days after receiving the lungs, i was still scared to do anything without having an oxygen mask as I'd grown used to it, and it was neurologically embedded that I needed it to walk, talk etc. after a couple of days though, breathing became MUCH easier then it had been in over 12 months, which was very satisfying