Up The Farway Tree

In Memory of Louise

I received the very sad and unexpected news yesterday that my friend Louise had died at the weekend, three years post transplant and 31 years old.  I have spoken about Louise many times on my blog (she posted in the comments as LouLou).  Louise had a really difficult time with her health from a very young age.  As a child she has Wilms tumour, which is a type of tumour on the kidney.  She had her kidney removed and underwent radiation therapy.  Unfortunately it is likely that this radiations therapy is what led to her developing Pulmonary Fibrosis in her twenties.  At this stage she had a degree in psychology, worked as a primary school teacher and also worked weekends as a manager at Thomas Cook.  That was the kind of girl Louise was - into everything!!  Her lung disease declined dramatically over a short period of time and she was turned down by the London transplant teams as being too unwell for transplant.  Freeman in Newcastle however agreed to take the risk.  She did undergo a lung transplant in summer 2008, shortly after my own transplant.  Unfortunately she had many post op complications and an extremely turbulent recovery in ITU.  This left her new lungs badly damaged but she was determined to carry on and make the most of her new life.   In the following years Lou developed many post transplant complications to further challenge her positive attitude.  She had post transplant lymphoproliferative disorder, a kind of cancer that can occur after transplant, for which she needed chemotherapy due to it affecting her liver.    To just add to the mix Lou only had one kidney, due to the childhood cancer, so her renal function started to decline due to her immunosuppressant medication and her already weak heart pre transplant started to suffer badly and she was diagnosed with end stage heart failure.   Essentially she had failure in every organ but somehow she just kept going.  

You might think that someone with all the above problems (and many more I haven't even mentioned) would hide herself away and feel bitter about the cards she was dealt.  Lou was the complete opposite!  She had managed to get back to doing some part time work in the school again, taken up a photography course (which she passed with distinction) and ran her own craft shop online.  She was an advocate for Live Life Then Give Life and was always coming up with fundraising schemes, which extended to other charities she supported.  She would be the first to send a home made card with words of encouragement to anyone going through a hard time, despite her own difficulties.  She was awarded Thomas Cook employee of the year and worked hard to represent them this year.

I think in many ways we often forgot how ill Lou really was because she rarely complained.  Her attitude to life was one that we could all take some lessons from.  Only days before her death she had posted on facebook that she was making up boxes for underprivileged children for Christmas.  Her blog was called Happy to be Me, and one of her sayings was 'It's not about what you have got, but what you choose to do with it',  which essentially says it all.  We will all miss you Lou  xxx