Our Beautiful, Strong and Inspirational friend Karen has begun her journey towards a double lung transplant. Karen is now on the transplant list and can be called as soon as a match has been found which can be anytime. This will not be an easy journey for her or her family, but one which we know she will come out the other side of and be able to live the life that she fully deserves to live. This page is for all of Karen's friends and family to show their love and support for a girl who undoubtedly is, and will remain to be an amazing daughter, fiancee, friend and mother to her fur babies as she embarks on a trying time in her life.

This is going to be a tough time in lots of ways for Karen and her family but finances are something we most definitely do not want her to worry about and this is one way where people can help and show their support. Karen will need to go to Newcastle for a minimum of 6 weeks where she will have the operation and recover and will need the emotional and practical help of those closest to her, not least her amazing fiance Greg, parents and brother, all of whom will need to be with her in Newcastle and will be unable to work. Karen will need a new home as she currently cannot manage the stairs in her two- story house so we want to use this medium to allow Karen's friends and family to show help in the only tangible way they can. Your love and support mean more to Karen than you will ever know and she is overwhelmed with the support of everyone to date and your kind words and generosity have restored her faith in humanity and help each day seem that bit brighter.

A bit about Karen's story:

Karen's sister Christine was born in 1981 very sick as a baby with lung problems and spent her first 18 months at Great Ormond Street. They were unable to pinpoint exactly what caused her illness but she gradually became stronger and healthier,living a normal active life. At the age of 17 she got her first collapsed lung and became ill. Over the years she got sicker and weaker which eventually lead to her passing away at the age of 27 in 2009.

Karen was always the healthy and strong one in the family and showed no signs of illness growing up. She finished school and completed her degree in Marketing the year after Christine passed away. She went to Australia a few days after graduating on her adventure! A week in, she met Greg and they've been inseparable since! She decided she wanted to live in Australia after living there for nearly two years so applied for her visa. As part of the requirements she had a chest x-ray done to rule out TB and they found that her lungs showed a lot of scarring. She had been struggling a little with breathlessness for a few months at that stage but she thought it was because she was unfit,partied too much and smoked socially after a few drinks (like any young 25 year old).

Both her and Greg packed up their life in Perth and said their goodbyes and returned to Ireland so Karen could get the health care she needed. Coincidentally as soon as Karen got home she started to deteriorate and had many tests done in England and Belfast to try and determine a diagnosis. By chance she was referred to an amazing geneticist who had a hunch and ran a test for a RARE genetic condition. Within a few months it came back it was positive. She had a condition called SMPD2 (pulmonary surfactant metabolism dysfunction type 2) that affected the amount of surfactant (lubrication) in her lungs to allow oxygen to pass through properly. Usually babies born with this will not survive so it was extremely rare that both Christine and Karen survived to adulthood.

Karen is the only person in Ireland/UK and most likely Europe to have this condition. Rare as hens teeth!

She has progressively been deteriorating and the scar tissue on her lungs (pulmonary fibrosis) has worsened causing her lungs to stiffen making it difficult to breathe. She now has lung function of just 20% and needs oxygen 24 hrs a day. At the moment Karen is just existing and a transplant which is the greatest gift that anyone can give will enable Karen to live a life that otherwise she would be unable to.

Karen is documenting her journey to raise awareness of Pulmonary Fibrosis and organ donation and it's importance and you can follow her story here.

https://www.facebook.com/mylungstory/

#lungtransplant #organdonation #breathe #oxygen