‘Me and my new heart are like an old married couple’

Family and friends earlier this year joined her at a party, exactly a decade after undergoing what she calls “a controlled road-traffic accident.”

The operation that was to extend the Oxford psychologist’s life was made possible by a donor, a 31-year-old woman who had died suddenly of a brain haemorrhage.

Dr Sanders, 56, knows how lucky she was – only about three heart/lung transplants a year are carried out at Papworth Hospital, Cambridgeshire.

Over the years she would write letters to the donor’s parents, without knowing who they were, to inform them of her progress and make clear her gratitude.

And by chance after her party at her home in Headington – which raised money for Papworth – she received a response which made the poignant anniversary complete.

She explained: “Soon after the party I had a follow-up appointment with the transplant coordinator, who told me a reply to my last letter had been received and that the donor family were happy to speak to me.”

Dr Sanders was to have an emotional telephone conversation with the donor’s mother.

She said: “I often think about her. I have always felt guilty in some kind of way; survivor’s guilt, that it should have been their daughter who should be alive and not me.

“I never underestimated the devastating impact of them losing their daughter.

“But I was relieved to hear from the parents that they had found it a very big comfort to know that she had been a donor and that other people had been able to benefit from her donation.”

Thirty people were able to benefit from the organs the young woman had donated.

Dr Sanders was comforted to learn that the family had also survived, and said: “They were able to find a way back to a good life for themselves and their family without their daughter.

“Knowing that has helped me to feel that my new heart and lungs really are a gift, and are now mine. “ Ten years on, Dr Sanders says she and her new heart are like “an old married couple”.

She still has to take many different medications and 24 tablets a day. But she has been able to resume her career, with the Oxford Health NHS Trust and now as a freelance, and travel widely with husband Mo Chandler.

“I once thought having to take all this medication was a big issue,” she said. “But I remember a nurse telling me it is a small price to pay.”

Dr Sanders’ own health problems began almost from the moment she was born with a congenital heart condition.

Before she had the operation, she would struggle to walk up a flight of stairs, eventually becoming dependent on oxygen and a wheelchair.

“It has all made me think carefully about what is important – how Mo and I want to spent our time together.”

She is currently having to oversee her mother’s move into a nursing home after a recent illness – something once barely imaginable.

Dr Sanders added: “I’m 56. If I get to 66 I will get to my pension. But I do not think long-term.”

While lung and heart transplants remain rare, some 3,960 transplants were carried out in the UK over a year.

GROUNDBREAKING SURGERY

1968: Surgeons conducted the UK’s first heart transplant at the National Heart Hospital in Marylebone, London. The operation was led by South African-born surgeon Donald Ross.

1983: The first heart and lung transplant operation was carried out at the Harefield Hospital. The patient, a Swedish journalist, survived for 13 days.

1984: Europe’s first successful combined heart and lung transplant was performed at Papworth Hospital, Cambridgeshire.

2009: Brenda Barber, a patient with fibrosing alveolitis, went on to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the operation. Around 50 heart-lung transplants take place each year in the UK, mainly treating people with congenital heart disease with pulmonary hypertension, primary pulmonary hypertension (PPH), and those with severe types of lung disease.