Bobbie Wilson

After Bobbie Wilson had a double lung transplant and could walk around unencumbered by an oxygen tank, she would still look behind her for the tank and reach up to her face to adjust the oxygen tube. The tank and tube weren't there anymore, but she'd had them with her for 24 hours a day for more than a year and they'd become part of her life.

"It was amazing to be able to breathe without exhaustion — and it still is," she says. "When I started using oxygen, I was only 30 years old. I'd had to quit working. I didn't go out much. I went to a wedding once and ran out of the reception early because I'd run out of oxygen and felt like I couldn't breathe. Part of it may have been panic at the thought of not being able to breathe without the oxygen — it was so much a part of me."

Four years after her transplant, she can do most anything she could do earlier in her life. Although she was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at 6 weeks old, she was healthy until her mid-20s.

"I did sports and all the normal stuff," she says. "My parents let me do everything I wanted to do. That helped me develop confidence. I didn't grow up feeling sick."

In her 20s, Bobbie started getting winded and sick, she got lung infections and coughed a lot, she was hospitalized more often.

"It happened gradually, so I just dealt with it. I knew the disease was progressive, but I didn't think about that," she says. She surely didn't foresee needing a lung transplant. But the disease progressed rapidly.

Bobbie lived in Chicago at the time and saw specialists there. They recommended she get on a transplant list. Bobbie worked for Wal-Mart, which pays 100 percent for transplant and related expenses for employees who go to Mayo Clinic. So off to Rochester she went. She was on the transplant list for a year and a half before she got her first call for transplant. Bobbie went to Rochester, but the lungs, which were coming from Iowa, were delayed by bad weather and couldn't be delivered to Rochester in time.

Three months later, Bobbie got a second call. She flew back to Mayo Clinic and had an eight-hour double lung transplant the next day. She spent 11 days in the hospital.

"When I did my lung capacity tests for the first time after transplant, I cried because it was so effortless," she says. "Everything at Mayo went well. Every department interacts with the others, which is nice. I recommend it to everyone."

Bobbie spent three months in Rochester at a hotel and then went to her sister-in-law's home in Missouri. Now she is back to work and enjoying the activities she couldn't do as her disease progressed. She is as grateful as ever for the opportunity she has been given.

"A friend who had cystic fibrosis and was waiting for a transplant died before she got to have healthy lungs," says Bobbie. "Without the generous gift from the donor and his or her family, I probably wouldn't be here. When you donate organs, you give someone the opportunity to have a new life. It's a difficult decision to make, but it's certainly worth it to the recipient.

"Being sick has taught me a lot about being appreciative, and I think it has taught my friends and family even more," she says. "They say they value their health, family and friends more. They realize there's more to life than things. Just being able to take my dogs for a walk is a gift."

And she doesn't have to worry about the dogs stepping on the oxygen cord anymore.