Heart-lung transplant patient tells of her dreams and fears

Press, 16 August 1985, Page 25

Heart-lung transplant patient tells of her dreams and fears

By

ROBIN CHARTERIS,

in London

For almost 10 years Ann Crawford has had a dream — she has wanted to walk across farm paddocks in the rain and smell the wet earth. It was the last conscious thought the 24-year-old Invercargill woman had as she was being sedated for her life-saving heart-lung transplant surgery at London’s Harefield Hospital at the end of last month.

“As I drifted off, I thought to myself, I will be able to walk in the fields again after all,” said the happy, smiling Miss Crawford from her hospital bed. “Now I know it’s just a matter of time and I will do it.”

In an exclusive interview, the first since her rare operation, New Zealand’s first double organ transplant patient spoke of what it is like to face life with a new heart and lungs. “Mainly, it’s scary,” she said. “I have to learn to breathe all over again, to trust myself without oxygen. “I get very frightened when I’m not on oxygen. Perhaps I don’t remember what life used to be like without it,” she said, recalling more than nine years spent mainly in a bed in Dunedin Public Hospital, almost all of it linked to lifegiving oxygen equipment. “Now I’ve got a new heart and lungs — my Scottish bagpipes, mum calls them — it’s all up to me

now,” she said. “I’ll overcome it.”

Ann, accompanied by her parents, Mr Ossie and Mrs Isobel Crawford, of Myross Bush, outside Invercargill, came to Britain on March 23 and waited four months in a Harefield Hospital flat for a suitable donor. She had portable oxygen equipment at her bedside and made regular trips to the hospital for tests and treatment.

“It was a Sunday when the call came,” said Ann, speaking in the whisper she has become used to using to spare her previously damaged lungs.

“We couldn’t believe the news. We thought we were all prepared for it and wouldn’t be emotional, but we were a bit. I wasn’t scared. Just thrilled that my chance had come at last.”

The donor organs became available in Scotland and a light aircraft chartered by the hospital carried a team of five experts to remove and tranship the organs packed in ice. Fog delayed its return, however, and the Crawfords spent an anxious 12 hours waiting for the onagain off-again surgery. “It was so frustrating and disappointing just waiting around, but finally Mr (Magdi) Yacoub, the surgeon, gave me the word and I was sedated,” Ann said. Just before going under, Ann made the last entry in her diary, a daily record she has kept for years. It reads: “The valium has made me weepy. I’m in room 17 wait-

ing. It seems all I have ever done for the last nine years is wait. I feel sleepy and a little sad. I’m just so excited . . .” and the writing wobbles off.

The thought of not surviving the surgery never crossed her mind, Ann said.

“We’ve been though so much, my family and I, that there was no way the operation could not work.”

Ann’s mother, sitting with her husband at her daughter’s bedside as they have so often done since the influenza epidemic of 1976 permanently damaged Ann’s lungs, ascribed much of the family’s confidence to religion.

“So many people, so many churches, have been praying for us that we have never had any doubts that the operation would be a success,” Mrs Crawford said. Ann shares this belief. “I was confused about religion as a 14-year-old when I was taken ill, but the last few years have made it more clear to me. It has been of immense help,” she said. Throughout her ordeal, before and after the operation, Ann’s optimism and determination have been an inspiration to her parents. “She’s a great little fighter,” said her father, the former manager of the Southland Frozen Meat Company. “She never gives in and she keeps pretty cheerful.” There have been times of depression and sorrow and Ann has had her share of

tears. Having to give up sport as a schoolgirl was a blow, but she turned to bookwork and from her hospital bed in Dunedin gained passes in School Certificate and University Entrance and grade seven music examinations. Her sense of humour has not been affected either. Ann has found she has to learn to walk again. Her legs are very shaky and her motor co-ordination “needs re-learning.” “I suppose it really was a major operation, though, and I can expect to take a while to get over it,” she said.

She is now on a twice daily regime of the drug cyclosporin to combat rejection of the new organs and will continue to take it for the rest of her life.

Doctors alter the level daily in an effort to find the precise dose that suits her.

“I take it with water and it tastes awful, like a mild whisky — I think.” Going home to Invercargill is still a long way off for the Crawfords. If present progress continues, Ann should be able to move back into the hospital flat with her parents soon and continue receiving treatment there. Rejection of the organs is still a worry, but the worst period is over. All being well, Ann could have a further 50 years in which to look back on her troubled times.

The Crawfords hope October 5 will be an auspicious date. It is her father’s birthday and also the date in 1976 when Ann first left Dunedin Hospital after four months there.

Besides, said Ann, spring would be a fine time in New Zealand to go walking in the paddocks in the rain, smelling the wet earth, living old dreams . . .