Conundrum of surviving

A neglected “by-product” of beating the odds after two bi-lateral lung transplants, is how hard it is to plan for your life financially and career-wise. I couldn’t finish my Honours in Accounting, as I was ridiculously sick. After my I got new lungs, I didn’t feel like going back to university, I wanted to work and become independent. When I started working at age 24 after my first lung transplant, I THOUGHT that I was financially behind my peers who started working slightly earlier, but looking back that was a joke… I was perfectly on par really.

However fast forward 7 years and about 3 months, and I was medically boarded, due to my transplanted lungs being rejected by my body. And for about 3 years prior to being medically boarded, I knew that I was in rejection and that I should stay put. Survival mode kicks in, ambition mode turns off. To paint the picture more clearly, at age 28 I knew that my life was in danger yet again, and that I just needed to stay in the position I was in for as long as my lungs held out.

I coped in a fast-paced environment for another 3 years, until I made the call, together with my lung specialist, that I should stop working. I was very lucky to have group life insurance at that point, so I continued getting 75% of my salary – tax free. At the same time the evaluation for a second lung transplant started. About 1 year and 9 months after being medically boarded I received another set of lungs… a miracle indeed! 

Now being an analytical person by nature, I was curious as to how long these lungs were going to last. My lung specialist refuses to give educated guesses on these types of questions, which is absolutely fine, but I wanted a vague idea. Dr Google said that the 2 year survival rate for a redo lung transplant is 32%. Obviously this is an average, but I decided to make the most of it. (FYI – I’m still the only surviving redo lung transplant recipient in SA). We travelled to New York and Mauritius during the first year after my second transplant, I fixed some things in and around the property that my ex-husband and I owned at the time, upgraded the little Peugeot 107 that I was driving… I didn’t want to go back to a corporate work environment, so I resigned once I was fit to return to work. This time around I took a much more slow-paced accounting job. Set for life…. If you’re going to live another two years that is.

Fast forward to beginning of 2022, and I was heading towards 5 years post redo transplant. I decided to study again, as I was lacking mental stimulation. I ended up picking a post graduate diploma in Financial Planning. A few months later I started a new job, more in line with my studies and a much more formal work environment again. But also in a way starting from scratch. The irony is that in my own life, applying financial planning skills is almost impossible. I think of where I would have been now, if that rejection of my first transplant didn’t happen. If all the retirement savings from those first two jobs kept on growing, if that salary kept on growing the way it would have. If I didn’t use savings for travelling. I’m not even going to bother wondering where I would be financially if my medical aid and the little co-payments here and there didn’t take a massive chunk of my salary. Also – there was divorce – but that is not a scenario unique to me.

The point that I want to get across, is that trying to figure out how to navigate saving/ having a career/ having a work-life balance when you have had two organ transplants (and especially lung transplants, because they have the worst outcomes of all the organs) at ages 23 and 33, is HARD. You can’t assume you’re going to live to age 65 when your first transplant was at 23! And hey, YOUR life is super short right? Live every day to the fullest! BUT you might end up living for a really long time and have to be able to support yourself and have a meaningful career, so there is that too. Nobody prepares you or warns you about this interesting tightrope, and you can’t expect that from anyone either, as each patient’s situation is so unique. But this is definitely an interesting challenge! One that I'm grateful to be facing.