The Press and Journal (Aberdeen and Aberdeenshire)
Transplant gave Kelly the gift of life
Kelly Watson says she was “basically dead” when her shocked loved ones found her in bed the morning she was supposed to go on a family holiday.
Miss Watson had stopped breathing and had to be put in a coma as it became clear she would need to undergo transplant operations to receive a new heart and lungs.
This was in 2015 and she spent the next two years too weak to even climb the stairs as she all but gave up hope of a donor being found to help her lead a normal life.
Then on Christmas Day in 2017 she received a call which was to change everything.
And now, almost three years on, she is hoping to raise awareness of organ donation and raise money for the hospital which helped save her life.
The 32-year-old said: “I was born with pulmonary hypertension, a heart defect, but I lived a mostly normal life growing up with no medication and only one bad spell during my childhood.
“My parents were told I might not make adulthood but there has been lots of developments since and it wasn’t until I was 22 that I began being generally ill and coughing blood.”
A stay in hospital in her early 20s confirmed that only one lung was working correctly.
A few years later, things took a further frightening turn for the worse for Miss Wa t s o n , her partner Richard Noble, dad Steven, elder brother Steven and cousin Gemma.
She added: “In 2015 I was living in Peterhead with my dad. We were meant to be going on holiday with my brother, his partner and their two kids.
“My brother came to pick me up and was surprised not to find me ready as always.
“He walked in to find me in my bed, blue. I was dead b a s i c a l l y. I was not breathing.
“He tried to resuscitate me and I was rushed to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary where I was in a coma then spent two months recovering. I was put on the list for a heart and double lung transplant.”
And so began her threeyear wait for a lifesaving call.
“When you first go on the list you are really anxious and even now I won’t go a ny w h e r e without my phone. The first six months, all I thought about was waiting for the call.
“Then I went to college because I realised if it never came I wanted to live before I died.
“I didn’t think I would get the transplant and spent as much time as I could with my sunshines – my nieces and nephews.”
But her call did come, at 7pm on Christmas day 2017.
Miss Watson’s mobile rang as she was picking up her German shepherd puppy Ruaridh.
She rushed home to collect her suitcase, packed three years before, for an ambulance journey to Aberdeen and a helicopter transfer to the Freeman Hospital in Newcastle.
With her partner offshore and cousin 100 miles away in Laurencekirk for Christmas, she made the journey alone and spent the hours before the operation calling her loved ones.
“Flying over Aberdeen on Christmas night with all the tree lights was quite magical really,” she said.
“At the hospital I was trying to call everybody as
I thought it might be my last goodbye and it was important to tell them I loved them in case I could never say it again.
“I was just being wheeled into theatre when my family bounded up the corridor having driven down. They got there just in time; you couldn’t make it up but it was Christmas day after all.”
After her successful operation, Miss Watson spent three months in hospital learning to talk, eat and drink again and since then she says it’s been “up, up, up”.
She added: “I could collapse walking up a flight of stairs before but one year after the transplant I did the Race For Life in memory of my late sisterin-law and now I enjoy long walks with Ruaridh every day.”