I had never even heard of lung transplants at that time (1992). I had actually seen sets of lungs, in the course of post-mortem examinations, which I had attended as part of my work as an attorney in murder cases. I wonder how they deal with such delicate, floppy things? I speculated, in the course of that first evening after I had been told that this was probably what was coming. With great difficulty - I now know the answer to be! However, that first night, I just settled down to sleep, quite untroubled with this news.

Within a very short time I was sent for the full transplant assessment. In the specialist centre I saw many people who, to me as a layman, looked much sicker than I felt. I felt better.

I also started to find out some of the realities of heart/double lung transplantation. I felt worse! This did not now seem to be such a routine procedure! In fact, it seemed to be a thoroughly risky procedure!

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeelp! ! ! !

The more I thought about it, the more I panicked. Everything they told me seemed to be more scary than the last thing I'd heard. I was only 42, I had two young kids, I was NOT ready to die!

Furthermore, my wife at that time had her own problems, which meant she would be quite unable to care for the kids on her own. What was going to happen??? The more I thought about this, the gloomier I became.

I had just spent about 25 years advising people about litigation,and had discovered very early in that time to always try to foresee the worst. I warned clients about the risks and pitfalls of their intended course of action so that, if it all went wrong, they would have kept going at all times fully alive to the possibility of failure. This then had unconsciously become my general way of thinking. I had become someone for whom my bottle was always half empty, never half full!

So, the more I thought about transplantation, death, kids and so on, the more depressed I became about it.

The brightest piece of news they gave me at the end of the transplant assessment process was to tell me "Not yet". I went home but before I had even got there, I again started to see my half-empty bottle. If they said "Not yet", then that HAD to mean that it would be some time.

I had not been at home for more than a couple of months when I got a third-hand message from my GP, via my local specialist from the Centre, to tell me "OK - now".I was devastated! All the risks I had speculated about were no longer abstract, academic possibilities! They were HERE - NOW! I panicked more. I was to go back to the Centre for some formalities and to be given the beeper and so on.

I was TERRIFIED! Every time the phone rang, I thought, Oh, God! Is this it? Every time the kids went out to school and I said goodbye, did I really mean Goodbye - forever? They were just at that stage of early teens when they affected an air of total indifference. I wanted them to know what was really going on, what I really felt, but they found any such conversations embarrassing. "Yeah, right Dad. I'm going out now. Bye!" The fact that I was not truly communicating with them just made matters worse for me.

This unhappy state of affairs continued for a number of weeks, till I returned to the Centre and they told me they had changed their minds. I was, once more, a provisional rather than an active list member. I did not know whether to laugh or cry! It was certainly some emotional roller coaster!

When I got home again, I was so upset by all that was going on that I took time off the job I had just started a few weeks before the initial diagnosis. Although they never put the smallest amount of pressure on me, my thinking had become sufficiently disordered that I was convinced they would believe that I had "seen it coming" and just a few weeks before the diagnosis was made, had run to the cover of their generous pension scheme without telling them of my condition.

I became distraught! Not only were all the previously seen or imagined problems still there - and growing, at least in my mind - but now I had to add to this that the kids would be destitute as well as homeless, as I'd be without a career. How much worse could it get? None, I felt sure. THIS was the very darkest bottom of the slough of despair!

Oh no it wasn't!

The kids, who were now about 14 and 12, took to coming to me tearfully in the very middle of the night. They were adult enough to have seen that they could not yet care for themselves if the worst happened to me and that their Mum would not be able to cope with them. They too became TERRIFIED!

This turned into a self-stoking, downward spiral! They could see I was unhappy, they got worse. I could see they were unhappy, I got worse. And so on and so on and so .....

Days off work became weeks, became months. I felt VERY much alone. This had all started in February 1992. We had just moved to the area, a long way from our previous home, in January 1992. We knew almost nobody in the area. I had joined the local church on my arrival and the Minister was very generous with his time, giving me a disproportionate amount of it. But he too had his own problems. (Who hasn't?!). He had wakened up stone deaf one morning about three years before and although he had learned to lip read to a certain extent, he was by no means a fluent communicator.

This reached its low point when he came round one day and I poured all of my troubles out to him. So what is my way out of that? I asked him after about fifteen minutes of self-pity, as if he were the custodian of a magic answer to EVERY problem! "Oh yes it is, isn't it?" was his reply! He clearly had followed almost nothing of my plaintive wail. But that only seemed to make it all worse.

I felt totally alone. I doubted there was anyone in the WORLD who had a bigger problem. I became seriously depressed. Here in Scotland, it is not at all "the done thing" to run for help in a crisis of this sort. "Pull yourself together!" is about as sympathetic as it gets! I sat and stewed in my own misery for WEEKS.

Thank God, the words of this Prayer became particularly relevant and  helpful.

I used to say it several times each day, with a vengeance and an intensity strong enough to just about take the enamel off my teeth. I soon found that I HAD to accept certain realities of my life, my PPH was not going to go away, I could not change that, so I had better accept it and do the best I could with the rest. I at last came to my senses and managed to work out that whatever the future might bring, this was not the best way to be spending whatever amount of time might be left to me.

I had already outlived the first "end point" that had been estimated for me - an initial diagnosis of six months. So I supposed there would not be too much more time left. I therefore decided to make the best of it!

I got myself back to work and was immensely uplifted by the warm welcome I was given. I started to make some realistic contingency plans for the kids. They would go to my brother and his family. My brother had plenty of room and could well afford to have them.

I began to feel MUCH better. What was it again that just a few weeks before had had me so depressed? I couldn't remember! It had all been SO easy to resolve when I at last approached it in a sensible way. I even returned to my previous pass-time of taking LONG walks in and around our beautiful Scottish hills. At last, EVERYTHING seemed to be in an acceptable proportion. And thus it has stayed.

I feel I have done a fairly reasonable job since by continuing to live by this credo, the Serenity Prayer. I repeat it to myself - out loud sometimes - whenever I have the audacity to start to feel sorry for myself again. On the odd occasions when I feel self-pity beginning once more to stir, I very quickly remind myself of its wholly negative effect.

God, grant me the serenity
To accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can
And the wisdom to know the difference.