Why I’m so happy to be celebrating Hogmanay with a new heart...
A MAN who thought he had a bad cold after New Year’s Eve but discovered it was heart failure will be celebrating Hogmanay with a brand new one after receiving a transplant.
Ian Wilson, 21, spent the festive season at home in Glasgow after nearly a year of medical treatment down south.
Fiancee Lyn McQuade, 21, had to make a 300-mile round trip every weekend so they could see each other.
The couple went to primary school together and started dating aged 17 – but at the start of this year Ian struggled to recover from their New Year celebrations and dismissed it as being under the weather.
Doctors quickly assessed that the symptoms were more than January blues, and that he was suffering heart failure.
Ian was rushed into Golden Jubilee Hospital in Clydebank, West Dunbartonshire, that day, where he was treated for a month before being transferred to the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle and faced an agonising wait on the ‘urgent’ heart transplant list.
By the summer, he was so ill that the couple began to fear the longed-for transplant would never happen – and two false starts raised and dashed their hopes.
After seeing other transplant patients lose their lives while on the waiting list, Ian began to wonder if he would ever see outside of the hospital again. He even considered whether he would discharge himself so he could spend Christmas at home – as he knew other people had done.
And in June he popped the question to Lyn, who immediately said yes.
Now back at home in Glasgow since being discharged on November 8, Ian is looking forward to celebrating a day he feared he might never see.
Ian said: “I thought I was going to be in hospital for Christmas.
“My medication stopped working for a while and my heart started to fail. We were told that there might not be anything they could do.
“They were looking at bringing a heart from Europe but it’s a big risk.”
Born with hypoplastic left heart syndrome, Ian underwent three major operations as a child – and recalls being one of 10 children on a ward in 1998 who survived, following surgery.
Only one person older than Ian has the rare condition in the UK.
In the summer, Ian was told that two hearts had been found – but began to lose hope when he later learnt that they would not be a good enough match.
Ian said: “Sometimes you think ‘why am I spending the time here when it could all be for nothing?’ It just got to that point where I was thinking ‘why am I spending my time away from the people I love, when it could be my last hours?’ If I hadn’t had the transplant I might have made that decision, especially coming up to Christmas.”
Trainee nurse Lyn added: “We’ve spent every Christmas together in previous years.
“This would have been the first Christmas Ian would have missed, and there was a point where they didn’t have much that they could do.”
The couple got engaged in June, and plan to marry next year – when Ian will also return to his studies.
He said: “I’ve got a lot more energy than I used to.
“I’ve not had this much energy since I was about six or eight.”
Lyn, who graduated from her nursing degree in December, said: “Ever since Ian has come home it has been celebration after celebration.
“It’s good to be able to salvage this year – we’re looking forward to a new start in 2019.”
Ian plans to write to the family of the heart donor, who was a man aged between 20 and 30, to say thank you for the priceless gift.
Both he and Lyn believe the UK should adopt the French system of all citizens being automatic organ donors, unless they join a ‘refusal register’.
Ian said: “They want the best possible match. Before that, they had only done the operation on two people in hospital with that condition.
“One had survived, and one had passed away.
“The surgeons said it was a coin flip whether I got through this or not. It is very rare that anyone with this condition makes it through to the transplant stage.”