LAST Christmas Julie-Ann Morris was coming to terms with dying young.
The 41-year-old, from Shawlands in Glasgow, had been told by doctors that her only hope of survival was a heart transplant after her health deteriorated suddenly.
But within weeks, she would become one of the first patients in Scotland to benefit from cutting edge transplant technology at the Golden Jubilee hospital in Clydebank.
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Ms Morris had been diagnosed with cardiomyopathy as a teenager, a condition where the heart muscle becomes thick and rigid, eventually destroying its ability to pump blood.
Although she had two separate defibrillators implanted in her heart in 2006 and 2012 to help regulate its rhythm, the senior insurance underwriter said she had already accepted she would probably die young like other members of her family.
She said: “I always just lived with cardiomyopathy, as I was physically restricted I sometimes felt I was just existing rather than living.
"I have had many affected relatives who have died of sudden cardiac death, so I never really feared death, I just accepted I was likely to die young."
After her health took a turn for the worse in December 2017, surgeons concluded that a heart transplant was her only hope.
Within four days of being put on the transplant list, Ms Morris was told that a life-changing donor heart had become available.
She was only the second person in Scotland to benefit from the revolutionary 'Heart in a Box' device, the world’s first portable system which keeps human organs warm and functioning outside of the body for longer.
Officially known as the Organ Care System (OCS), it is roughly the size of a lunchbox and replaces the traditional 'ice box' method where organs were preserved simply by keeping them cold.
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OCS keeps hearts beating using more than a litre of the donor’s blood, with oxygen and glucose pumped into the chamber.
Ms Morris said: “When they said I could get a transplant, it wasn’t scary, it was quite exciting.
"I didn’t have long to live when I was admitted and I then knew I was never going to get out of hospital again unless I had a transplant, so you just go for it when it’s offered.
“Now I have a chance to have more of a life than I ever had. Before I was physically unable to walk even short distances, but now I can look forward to a future where I want to climb a Munro.”
OCS is the first technology to enable transplants using hearts donated after cardiac death, as long as hearts are placed in the box within 30 minutes of stopping beating.
Previously only hearts from patients who had suffered a brain-stem deaths could be used as cardiac death hearts were considered to be too high risk.
As a result, OCS has the potential to eventually increase the number of donor hearts available - although, for now, the Golden Jubilee has stuck to using brain-stem death hearts only.
Roger Marr, from Prestonpans in East Lothian, was the first patient in Scotland to benefit from OCS after developing severe heart failure in November 2017 as a result of a viral infection he had initially believed to be 'Aussie flu'.
Within weeks, the 46-year-old rail construction manager, was told he needed a heart transplant to survive.
Mr Marr said: “It was a bit of a shock. It was weird when I was shown my own heart to show me how damaged it was, it looked terrible."
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Adding to the stress of his ordeal, it was while he was in hospital awaiting his transplant that his wife Caroline discovered she was seven weeks pregnant.
Luckily a suitable organ became available before their baby son Rocco was born in June this year.
“I owe so much to the donor, their family and transplant team at the Jubilee, I cannot put into words my gratitude or how I feel," said Mr Marr.
"They saved my life and gave me a life with my newborn son, who is now running me ragged.”
Golden Jubilee transplant surgeon Phil Curry said: "Roger and Julie-Ann are both young and were critically ill, but they are now making good progress and I have little doubt that using the OCS helped keep the donors’ hearts in premium condition before transplantation."
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