'Forever grateful': How a stranger's selfless decision saved a young woman's life
It was a stranger’s decision to register as an organ donor before their death that saved 26-year-old Stephanie Wilson’s life.
The grateful young Melbourne woman has spoken to Yahoo News Australia about taking her story to social media to urge others to also donate organs.
“My new life wouldn’t have begun without the selfless act of kindness by an anonymous donor and their family,” she wrote in her original Facebook post.
“Their family’s hearts were breaking knowing they had to say their final goodbye and coming to terms that they weren’t bringing their loved one home.
“But they still had it in their hearts to make that decision to give me a second chance at life.”
Diagnosis of a crippling disease
At the age of seven, Ms Wilson was diagnosed with idiopathic primary pulmonary hypertension (IPAH), a form of high blood pressure in the pulmonary artery.
The same disease killed her brother in 2000, and then went on to severely affect her own quality of life.
Complications from IPAH made many activities other young people take for granted, like travelling, swimming and working, a struggle.
By the time Ms Wilson was 18, the disease had become crippling.
“It’s was just the simple things like walking,” she told Yahoo News.
“Like it got to the point where I’d walk 100m and have to stop three times, four times, and I would be like breathing really heavy, like I felt like I was going to pass out.
“I was just working like half days, like it got down to I was working two days a week, half days, and I’d be knackered.”
Losing a friend who needed a heart transplant
Ms Wilson told Yahoo News Australia much of 2017 and 2018 was a time to forget.
She is unsure whether it was the trauma of losing a friend in October or the drugs doctors gave her to numb the pain when she herself was close to death.
“I lost my best friend while he was waiting for a heart transplant,” she said.
“He was waiting for his second one – he had his first one at about two.
“They only just found that he needed another one through a routine checkup.”
On life support a day after hospital admission
Feeling unwell, Ms Wilson went into hospital on December 17, 2017.
One day later she was on life support.
“I don’t really know what happened in that space,” she said.
“They couldn’t stop the bleeding in my lungs.
“All I remember is being in the ward and coughing up all this blood, and then in the lift coughing up all this blood, and they stopped the lift until I could kind of like settle.
“Then they just rushed me to Angio (coronary angiogram ward) and everything went downhill from there.
“It was just fortunate that I was in the hospital when all this happened because if I was at home I wouldn’t be here.”
While on life support, doctors determined that Ms Wilson needed a double lung transplant.
The wait for a lung donor
Her condition was so dire that she was put to the top of the national list, but finding a donor in time is never easy.
For the next 21 days Ms Wilson moved in and out of consciousness, shackled to her bed by life support machines.
“They purposefully gave me drugs so I wouldn’t remember it,” she said.
“It was really horrible, so I don’t think I’d want to remember it anyway.
“I don’t know if that’s affected my memory for months before that.”
News came through that a suitable donor had been found, and doctors rolled her into the operating room on January 7.
She woke with a new breath of life – surgeons had successfully given her a double lung transplant.
‘Felt like a new person’
For many Aussies, going to the beach is the highlight of the summer, but for Ms Wilson it had been a place she’d grown to hate.
Her friends would splash about in the water, but due to her lung problems, she’d have to wait on the hot sand.
After her lung transplant, that was going to change.
She headed down to the beaches of Philip Island for her birthday, and walked into the water, submerging her body in the sea for the first time.
“It was the most bizarre feeling – it was just like the things under your feet, but then it was so peaceful,” she said.
“It felt like another world out there because it was so open and big.
“I just felt like a new person really.”
Forever grateful to donor and Alfred Hospital
One year on from her transplant, Ms Wilson hopes that by sharing her personal story, those reading it will sign up to be organ donors.
She will be forever thankful to the team at The Alfred Hospital who saved her life, but it is the anonymous organ donor who gave the doctors the ability to do so.
The mystery person who gave their lungs would have needed the support of their own family, to give Ms Wilson the lungs that now breathe below her strong beating heart.
“A family has saved my life – I just wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for them,” she said.
“You can say 1000 times thank you but no words can say how thankful I am to them.
“Like every day I wake up and I’m forever grateful.
A fortunate life
As Ms Wilson recovered, a fellow organ transplant recipient, who had been mentoring her through her recovery, succumbed to her illness in December 2018.
“She really helped me through my transplant like with gym and we became really friendly,” she said.
“We’ve all got different stories and where our stories lead, but I don’t think anyone who’s got a life to live, they shouldn’t die because they can’t get an organ donation.”
Ms Wilson is now back at work and saving to take her first ever trip overseas.
Top of her list is England where she would love to watch the Australian Cricket Team play in the Ashes.
Despite ongoing problems stemming from her disease and time in life support, she is thankful and looking to the future.
“I was just fortunate I guess.”
Organ donors needed
DonateLife figures reveal that in 2018, 1782 lives were transformed by donations from 554 deceased and 238 living people.
There are currently 1400 people in Australia on the waitlist for an organ transplant, and a further 11,000 people on dialysis could have their lives transformed with a kidney donation.
Intensive Care specialist Dr Rohit D’Costa works with DonateLife to inform terminally ill patients and their families about donating organs.
Ninety-three per cent of families say they would uphold the wishes of their loved one’s donation wishes if they were made aware of them.
“When someone is dying we think about whether someone can save others,” Dr D’Costa told Yahoo News Australia.
“When they have a conversation with their loved ones, then their loved ones are left in no doubt as to what their decision about donation is.
“It’s so much easier when families are clear about what their loved one who does not have a voice any more would have wanted.”
Dr D’Costa said organ donation in Australia is altruistic with no financial benefit passed on to the donor.
“In Australia, a donation can be given from someone who is living or deceased,” he said.
“It truly is something that you give to someone without expecting anything in return.”
Despite 69 per cent of Australians believing organ donation is important, only one in three are currently registered.
Registering to save lives through organ donation takes 60 seconds and consenting adults with a Medicare card can sign up here.
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