I was just three when doctors said she would eventually need a life-saving heart transplant.This month she celebrates 10 years since having the operation that turned her life around. She tells Jane Bell how she’ll always be grateful to the donor who made it all possible.

A ‘blue baby' I was born, the first of four children, with four major heart defects. My heart had only two chambers instead of the usual four and I wasn't expected to live beyond my early teens. I was just three when doctors suggested I would need a life-saving heart transplant. That was 45 years ago, when the prospect was little more than science fiction — and four years before the first human heart transplant was carried out in Cape Town by a team of 30 doctors and nurses led by Professor Christiaan Barnard in December 1967.

Doctors and hospitals were a routine part of my childhood. I did my second 11-plus test on the Friday and went into hospital on the Saturday for open heart surgery.

After Glenlola Collegiate, Bangor I went on to graduate with honours in French and German from Liverpool University, studying abroad for a year. My attitude has always been to live now, while I can, because I might not see tomorrow.

Before my transplant, 10 years ago in July 1998 when I was 37, I was at a very low ebb. I was living with my parents because I was no longer able to look after myself, unable to lie flat in bed because the fluid in my lungs meant I couldn't breathe. I could eat very little as digesting food took up a lot of energy, and was only allowed to drink just over one litre of fluid altogether in one day — four or five small cups of tea or glasses of juice or water. I used to fantasise about being able to drink a cold pint!

It took me an hour and a half to get up and dressed in the morning because I had so little energy. Driving was too tiring, I couldn't walk more than about 20 metres at a time and I knew that I would be lucky to see my birthday in October, never mind Christmas or the end of 1998.

July 15, 1998 — France had just won the World Cup, Michael Schumacher had just won the British Grand Prix for the first time.

I was sitting at home watching television. At 8.45pm the phone rang. It was the transplant co-ordinator from Newcastle-upon-Tyne to say there was a possible organ for me. By 9.30pm the ambulance was at the door and, after two blue-light ambulance rides and a trip on a private plane, by 11.30pm I was in Newcastle's Freeman Hospital.

I was so unwell and the operation so long and complex that I was sedated for some days afterwards and was in intensive care for a week. Only when I returned to the individual barrier-nursed ward did I begin to appreciate how much better I was feeling — and how ill I had actually been.

Suddenly breathing was easier, even colours and smells seemed brighter and clearer. Looking at myself in the mirror was like switching from black and white to colour: my lips, skin and nails, bluey grey before the transplant, were now pink and rosy and, for the first time in my life, normal-looking.

After three months and a further spell in intensive care after developing septicaemia, I was allowed to leave hospital on October 6. Flying home was a very emotional experience — the last time I had flown over the North Down coast I was very unsure that I would ever see it again. I still had several months of recuperation ahead of me in the healthy air of Donaghadee before I was able to move back to my house in March 1999.

Before the transplant, my main hopes were that I would be able to walk a mile or two without having to stop frequently to get my breath back; that I could eat a meal without feeling sick and exhausted at the end of it and drink a long cold drink without having to be thirsty for the rest of the day.

I'm lucky enough to be able to do so much more. I can and do walk further than I was ever able to. Two years after the transplant, in June, 2000, I walked up Slieve Donard — another emotional moment — and I've also been able to participate in a number of Donaghadee ‘Wee Walks’ every summer in aid of Action Cancer.

Two years ago I went on a walking holiday in the Italian Dolomites and last year I joined a group walking along Hadrian's Wall across the north of England. Unfortunately I wasn't able to walk the whole distance but that was because I developed blisters — the heart and lungs were fine!

When I was lying in bed during one of the frequent spells of hospitalisation before the transplant and reflecting on the life I had led, one of my main regrets was that I had never visited Australia. Well, I made sure I remedied that when I was able to. Four years ago I spent the summer fulfilling lots of ambitions: I swam on the Great Barrier Reef, I rode in a hot air balloon at dawn, I walked across Sydney Harbour Bridge, I saw dolphins from the Manly ferry, I saw kangaroos in the wild — and I visited two very good friends and their families in Tokyo and in Fremantle, near Perth in Western Australia.

I’ve been able to return to my job working full time as a languages teacher at Bloomfield Collegiate School in east Belfast.

I wasn't sure that this would be possible as the anti-rejection medication reduces my immune system, but I don't seem to be sicker or more tired than any other staff members. Best of all, the transplant means I have been able to meet my nephew and two nieces — now 8, 7 and 4. I feel so lucky, not only that they are in my life and I have the chance to spend time with them but that I have the energy to do things with them, like go swimming or to the zoo or beach.

I feel very lucky that I've had what feels like a second chance at life. But I owe that second chance to so many people: to the doctors at the RVH who kept me alive and well long enough to have the transplant; to the doctors at the Freeman Hospital whose care and attention to detail was second to none and who refused to admit defeat even through all the complications; to the very many people who wished me well and wrote cards and letters and who prayed for me when I was particularly ill; to my family who have looked after me and supported me throughout my life — and let me be independent even though it must have been difficult at times to let me struggle.

However, all the care of all those people would not have been enough without the action of one person who one day took a few minutes to fill in a donor form and register on the organ donor register. That per

son didn't die any sooner because she was a registered donor but it meant that, when she did die unexpectedly, all the organs that she donated went to help people like me lead longer, healthier, more useful lives.

Part of the reason that I find doing things like climbing Slieve Donard or celebrating birthdays so emotional is because I remember my donor and feel like I'm celebrating for two of us.

As well as deep gratitude, I feel a responsibility towards the donor, to look after the organ and make best use of it. It is a very special gift. Barely a day goes past but I think of her.

My mother and I had the opportunity, through an intermediary, to each write a letter to the donor's family. It felt so important to say ‘thank you' to somebody. There was no reply, which is understandable, and we don't even know if our letters were accepted but it was important to write them.

Recently I wrote a letter to a woman I'd read about whose daughter had been killed in a car crash and was an organ donor: ‘You don't know me but I want to thank you for all those people that decision will have helped.'

There has been a lot of talk recently about whether or not the Government should move to a system where it is assumed that people consent to their organs being used after death unless they opt out. It's a system that would certainly provide many more organs which would help many more people like me. At the minute only about a third of people who make it on to a transplant list actually receive a suitable organ — the rest die. There is no system of assumed consent so, if someone dies unexpectedly and his or her organs are suitable for transplant, it is up to the family to decide whether to allow this or not — unless he or she has registered as an organ donor.

This is a really difficult decision for a family to make in such circumstances as so many people don't think about or talk about what they want to happen after their death.

Some people also think that if they are registered donors, then doctors won't try so hard to save their lives but that's just not true. Only when a patient has been confirmed brain-stem dead by two doctors is there any question of organ donation.

If even half the number of people reading this registered as organ donors, or even just talked to their families about what they would want to happen in the event of their death, it could potentially help very many people. Just because you register as a donor doesn't mean you will die sooner. But it means that, if you do, you just might help somebody else.

As a poster in the Freeman Hospital reads: ‘Don't take your organs to Heaven. Heaven knows we need them here.’”

Heart of the matter — Kay in hospital after her transplant (above), and enjoying travelling today (right)

Kay Johnston continues to live life to the full 10 years on