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My story of a Heart and Lung transplant
by
Gary Stewart, Ballymena
Member of The Northern Ireland Transplant Association
Gary, wife Julie, daughters Lauren and Ellie
"The Gift of Life"
Feelings of guilt dominated the consciousness of transplant patient Gary Stewart for months and months after his operation. He was filled with an overwhelming sense of guilt and sorrow that someone had to die for him to live.
Today he is finding that fact much easier to live with – he has been assured that the 18 year old girl who donated her heart and lung to him had no chance of survival. But he still thinks about the girl and says that someday he may try and contact her family just to say "thank you".
 Gary, 23, was only nine years old when a routine school medical discovered he had a hole in his heart. It was a devastating blow to the whole family. The everyday tasks that most of us take for granted were a great chore to Gary. "I couldn't even walk the length of the living room and I would be blue and my illness really interrupted my schooling. But I suppose the hardest thing of all was to watch my friends go out and play because I just didn't have the energy to join them", he said.
It was November 1996 when the call came from Harefield Hospital in Oxbridge that a heart and lung was available. He had been on the waiting list for six years and the emergency list for seven months. The flight over to England, the operation and recuperation are all a bit of a blur to Gary. It is the months afterwards that seem to haunt him.
"At the start I couldn't accept the fact that somebody had to die for me to live. That was very hard to deal with. I kept thinking that maybe she could have lived if I hadn't needed the organs. But the doctors have assured me now that there was no way this girl would ever have survived. To this day I don't know what happened to her, who she is or where she was from…..nothing. I could have found it all out if I wanted to but there was something which held me back. I don't know what. Maybe one day I will try and find out."
Mom Beverley is very proud of her son and said people must understand how important it is to carry donor cards. "Gary has just started to live. He is a completely different person," she said. "Everyone we know carries a card now because they have witnessed at first hand the difference it has made to Gary's life."
Gary still has to go to hospital in England every six months and he will be on medication for the rest of his life. But he is very nonchalant about that. "It really is a very small price to pay for a much improved quality of life. I can do anything I want now."
Gary is now the proud Father of daughter’s, Lauren, born May 2003 and Ellie born September 2006
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