A Co Antrim primary school teacher waiting on a double lung transplant has welcomed £500,000 in lottery support for patients with serious respiratory illness.
Mary McGrath (49) from Newtownabbey has lived with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis for the last 20 years.
The condition scars her lungs and can make it difficult to breathe properly, which she said at times can feel like “the scariest thing in the world”.
In recent years she has had to rely on oxygen tanks while teaching at her school in north Belfast, but said practical support from Northern Ireland Chest Heart & Stroke has been life-changing as she waits for “the phone call” to approve her transplant.
The lottery funding will now support the three-year Breathing Better programme from NICHS, helping others with similar conditions.
“The transplant has been a long time coming as it’s such an exhausting condition, it’s every day and there’s no let up,” she told The Irish News.
“But you just have to fight it and go on with your life or let it get to you, which wouldn’t be good. That’s why I try to stay in work.”
Primary school teacher Mary McGrath still needs her oxygen tanks while in class.
Needing to wake up around 6am to get ready for class, she said even simple tasks like putting on her shoes could be exhausting.
“If I wasn’t working, it can just be easier to stay at home instead of forcing yourself so that’s why it’s so important to me.”
She said the often direct questions from her pupils were also refreshing.
“I ask them if they had seen something like it before and they were so funny,” she said.
“One boy said ‘my granda used it when he was dying,’ so I had to explain that not everyone on oxygen is going to die.
“Explaining to them is so important. Children also love to help you, the boys in my class would hold the doors open when I get an oxygen delivery.
“If any children don’t know they’ll just say ‘miss, why have you got that up your nose, what’s wrong?’
“They’re always direct and always challenge you, they’ll ask you questions that adults don’t think of.
“It’s better to be honest with them, because then they’re not afraid.”
Dáithí Mac Gabhann after his succesful heart transplant operation last year. (Mairtin Mac Gabhann/PA)
Mary said another source of hope was the recent news that Belfast boy Dáithí Mac Gabhann had finally received his heart transplant, and his family’s successful campaign to change the law on organ donation,
“There has been evidence that is making a difference. So to have that conversation with your family is so important, because it can save so many lives or extend their lives.
“That’s why I want to keep talking about it as well as the work that NICHS do.”
Respiratory consultant Dr Martin Kelly and Ursula Ferguson, Director of Care at NICHS.
Ursula Ferguson, NICHS Director of Care, said the Breathing Better programme will focus on self-management, wellbeing, peer connection, community capacity and health inequalities.
“This is absolutely vital given the facts more than 220,000 people are estimated to be living with respiratory illness across Northern Ireland and it accounts for 12.5% of deaths- numbers that will probably surprise a lot of people,” she said.
With respiratory illness characterised by frequent emergency admissions and long-term care, Ms Ferguson added that the programme would ease pressure on a health service struggling with “unacceptably long” waiting lists and an ageing population.
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