New pumps, bellows, and no regrets

Press, 27 November 1986, Page 3

New pumps, bellows, and no regrets

By

KAY FORRESTER

Each day was a battle but one that could be won. Then it seemed to Ann Crawford that her heart and lungs suddenly changed sides. Her “pumps and bellows” that had been working feo hard since she became ill at 14 were now working against her.

She decided therefore to have a heart-lungs transplant, the first New Zealander to have such surgery.

It was not an easy decision, the 25-year-old Southlander remembers.

“It had always been me and all my bits and pieces fighting together. It was very hard to decide to give away a part of myself ... but if they weren’t helping me I was better off without them.”

The decision to go allout for the expensive surgery at England’s Harefield Hospital added extra pressures to those of simply staying alive. The publicity of the appeal for transplant funds did not sit comfortably with her

own private nature. “What had started as a very private commitment had somehow become public property ... I had spent such a lot of time through the years trying to disguise my illness and appear as normal as possible. Now' it seemed that everyone knew everything about me.” It also meant acknowledging very publicly just how sick she was. It was a comfort, amid the bewilderment and confusion she felt settling into the London hospital in early 1985 to wait for the operation, to meet other transplant patients. “On the second day I was there a boy came along and sat on my bed. He was a bit skinny but he looked all right to me. He asked if I was there for a heart-lung (transplant). He told me he had had the operation three weeks before. I couldn’t believe it. He had nothing attached to him, no tubes, no machines. I asked him to just walk past my door every day so I could see him.” Six months later Ann

Crawford had the chance to offer that same comfort to the relatives of a young woman about to undergo the same surgery. “This young man was watching his girlfriend go down for the operation. It’s very public. They take the patient down the corridor. There’s a hushed group of relatives. Everyone knows you’re going for the operation.

“It was awkward. I didn’t want to push in and say, ‘Look what I’ve done,’ but he was just sitting there, smoking up large. So I went over and said, ‘lf it’s any comfort I had the same operation two months ago.’ The relief in his eyes ... He asked so many questions. He wanted to know everything.”

Since her return to New Zealand after the operation other patients travelling to Harefield have got in touch with her. She had been able to answer some of their questions. “But I can only say how things happened for me. People expect you to be an authority on all sorts of things but you're not.”

Ann Crawford has become adept at fielding the questions everyone asks. Yes, she can do anything she feels well enough to do. Yes, she does have to be careful. She is particularly prone to colds. No, she hasn’t done anything wild or exciting since coming back. But she gets a thrill from being able to cook breakfast for herself and not having to have someone carry her oxygen bottle when she goes to the toilet.

Yes, she still gets tired. No, her voice will never quite lose its huskiness. “People always ask about my voice. I’m practically shouting now compared with just mouthing words.”

Perhaps to head off some of the questions and certainly to tell her story, Ann Crawford has used the many diaries she kept to write a book she has called “Pumps and Bellows.” She says she is just telling her story, not preaching about hospital care or heart transplants, although she believes transplants should be available in New Zealand.