For so long, literally almost my entire life, it was just killing me to know what it felt like to just breathe. Without being scared of dying, suffocating, without that persistent junky cough, without that low oxygen saturation and needing supplemental oxygen to just merely exist. I longed to figure out how everyone around me looked to be breathing so effortlessly, carelessly even, I thought. I just couldn’t fathom it.
Yet I did hours of breathing treatments and therapies a day to manage, just to get by. I wore oxygen to run and snowboard, at night, and eventually 24/7. Then it allowed me the trek to get from the couch to the bathroom. I thought I was living. Now I know. I know what it’s like to breathe carelessly, except not at the same time. Someone passed away in order for me to get these lungs. Every. Breath. Matters.
There was a 50% chance I would survive for 5 years post transplant and yet here I am. Living, breathing, a miracle, 11 years worth of it. Breathing may be easy now. Unlike before. I may not think about it every second like I did before. I may be able to run, hike, bike, lift weights, and enjoy life to my heart’s content. I may not have hours of therapy and treatments to merely stay alive. But there is nothing I can do about that life that was lost that gave me this chance. They are gone. Hopefully to somewhere amazing and beautiful, with my grandma and my brother, but I just wonder about them a lot, where they were at in their life. Who they miss and what they wanted to accomplish before their time came, too soon, maybe without warning.
I think about my donor often. Their family and friends that miss them. That day I got my second chance being the same day they just faded away, to only be kept in memories. I hope to meet them one day, on the other side. Maybe we will be friends, who knows, maybe we are a lot alike. All I know is that they were my perfect match.