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Transplant Changes Life

CHRISTINE BELL was told she had just two months to live - and that was four years ago.

Now forty-one-year-old Christine has never felt better.

"The whole quality of my life has changed", she said.

It was a heart transplant operation carried out in Glasgow Royal Infirmary in 1998 which changed Christine's life.

Until then she has suffered 17 years of being continually tired because of problems with her heart muscles, a potentially fatal condition.

Over the years, despite treatment, her situation looked grim. But four weeks after being put on a transplant list, a suitable heart became available.

The rest is history.

Any fears that Christine, who lives at 40 Motehill, Glenluce, had disappeared as soon as she awoke after her operation.

But she did face a difficult 18 months as doctors battled to balance her medicine.

Then signs that her body was trying to reject her new heart emerged meant more hospital treatment.

But as Christine told the "Free Press" this week, that is all behind her now.

In the near-four years since then she has been in hospital only twice, once with a cold and then because of a viral infection.