Dr. Sanjana Kochhar always wanted to be a physician, but never expected to undergo a heart transplant. At just 20 years old, while studying in Liverpool, she began to have strange symptoms. She thought her shortness of breath and becoming easily tired were due to asthma. But things were much more dire; she was in heart failure and needed a transplant to save her life.
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“I was really unwell. I wasn’t walking; I wasn’t eating, and I needed oxygen. I was running out of options. And that’s when I got the offer of a heart,” she told the British Heart Foundation.
The Heart Transplant Changed Everything
Dr. Kochhar explained that being a transplant recipient was an incredible blessing. She also had a hard time coming to terms with the entire process.
“For me, one of the hardest things to get through was accepting the fact that someone died for me to get a heart. That’s a really difficult thing to process because as a doctor my job is to help people get better,” she wrote.
Dr. Kochar’s partner, Paul, knew how special the transplant day was for her and wanted to do something incredible to commemorate the day.
“Paul proposed on the first anniversary of my transplant. It was a special day because we had been thinking about my organ donor, reflecting on the year and all we had achieved,” she said. “A year ago, I might not have made it, and here we were, planning our future.”
Per the BBC, Dr. Kochhar welcomed her first baby in August, just four years after her life nearly ended. She told the news outlet she is “so grateful” for the gift of life and lives every day to the fullest.
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