Up until two weeks ago 56-year-old Limerick woman Veronica Doyle was on oxygen 24 hours a day.
She couldn't walk from her bedroom to the kitchen of her home in Abbeyfeale and she found it difficult to put on her socks in the morning. But yesterday, 14 days after what she herself described as a miraculous operation, she was back walking, laughing and able to dress herself.
The mother of three was speaking as she was discharged from Dublin's Mater hospital after she underwent the first lung transplant operation in the State.
An emotional Ms Doyle thanked the many doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals in the national transplant unit who had given her a new lease of life as well as the organ donor who had made it all possible.
"I'm doing this press conference today because I'm so grateful to be given a chance to a new lease of life. I also want to give others who are in the same position as me hope," she said.
"Before my lung transplant I couldn't walk from my bedroom to my kitchen. I found it hard to put my socks on in the morning and I needed help during the week from my home help.
"I found it very difficult to do the basic little jobs that everyone else would do. Recently I even found it difficult to bring my hot-water bottle from the kitchen to the bedroom. I couldn't lift it down.
"I haven't walked on my own driveway for nine years . . . so I'll be looking forward to that. I was on oxygen for 24 hours a day," she said. Today, 14 days after my lung transplant, it is wonderful.
"I can walk out the hospital door, I can wash my hands, I can wash my teeth, I can dress myself. To me it's a pure miracle really. It still hasn't sunk in how wonderful it is," she added.
Ms Doyle admitted to being anxious about being the first person to undergo a lung transplant in the State, but said she hid her worries from her children by putting what was ahead out of her mind and telling herself over and over again she was only going to have a tooth out.
Asked how she felt when she woke up after the operation, she said: "I was delighted, very excited that I had survived."
Ms Doyle had been suffering from emphysema for 14 years. This is a condition in which the lungs lose their normal elasticity, leading to severe breathing problems. She was now looking forward to doing simple things again, she said, like walking around her local supermarket, walking to Mass, and walking on the beach near her sister's house in Castlegregory in her native Kerry.
Thanking her medical team she said: "I want to express my thanks to so many people, especially my hero Dr Jim Egan [ lead transplant physician] who I trusted and loved from day one. I believed in him and he gave me the courage to do what I have done."
Of the nurses who cared for her, she said: "I'll get an awful land when I go home. I'd love to bring a few of them home with me because they have just been superb."
She also thanked her three children, Geoffrey (32), Jeremy (30) and Emma (27) for their support, her sisters and brother, neighbours and friends.
And she had a special thank you for her donor. "Thanks is never enough is it, for the donor and the donor's family for giving me the opportunity of life," she said.
She went on to urge people to carry organ donor cards.
Her sons said they were very proud of their mum. "She's a battler and a fighter and she never gives in," Geoffrey explained. Up to now Irish people in need of lung transplants have had to travel to Britain and Mr Freddie Wood, lead surgeon, said it was hoped the hospital would be able to repatriate the entire service to Ireland in the next two to three years.
"We are really very pleased that it went well because there was a one in eight chance of it not going well,`" he said.