“She was swimming at the beach on Saturday, admitted to the hospital on Thursday and then the following Saturday the hospital told us to come and say goodbye,” says Jessica Sheerman’s mother Marion. After coming to Brisbane to support mum Marion through breast cancer in 2005, Jess Sheerman found herself unexpectedly needing a whole lot of family support too. Unless you saw the fading scar, you wouldn’t even guess Jess has been sick, let alone had had replaced what her surgeons called the worst lungs they’d ever seen. For 22 years Jess lived a perfectly normal life. For her 21st birthday she got a round the world ticket. She travelled to Thailand, America, and Fiji. Her friends thought her occasional cough was due to asthma. Even her best friend didn’t know Jess was born with cystic fibrosis, the world’s most common life threatening genetic disease for Caucasians. “I don’t want people to think of me as someone who’s sick,” Jess says. “I used to get sick and do IVs but I’d work it in and no one knew I was sick. Friends I had for years didn’t know.” During her 2005 holiday, Jess developed double pneumonia and pleurisy and was admitted to The Prince Charles Hospital. She crashed on Christmas Eve and two weeks later was listed for double lung transplant. After seven weeks in The Prince Charles Hospital, Jess was able to return to her parents’ home in Brisbane. She spent 18 months trying to get healthy enough to travel home to see the friends who had farewelled her for her brief holiday. The gifted artist started painting again and was invited to enter an exhibition in June 2008. From that show, she was one of 10 artists chosen to paint some pieces for another gallery later in the year but was already having trouble sitting for the hours required to do her work. In late 2008, 26-year old Jess got pleurisy again and was re-listed for transplant. She was admitted to hospital where she had constant physiotherapy during the day to keep her airways clear. “Everyone was great. The physios were amazing,” she says. “I didn’t eat for weeks. I was tiny, only 34 kilograms.” While she slept overnight, Jess would literally start to drown as fluid filled her lungs. She had a special bed that folded into a chair which could be lowered enough for her to get in and out. Jessica’s aunt, uncle and grandmother all flew over from the UK to give support. “They definitely gave me a lift and helped keep me going,” she says. For three months Jess held on, getting weaker every day. She was coughing up blood, but had torn too many blood vessels for them to be repaired. The hope of a transplant kept her going every day. “I would bet with myself, gamble. I knew if I gave up it could come the next day or the next week. I just had to hold on one more day,” she says. “You have to be stubborn. You need to hold on and refuse to give in.” A few days after she was told she wouldn’t survive another week, Jess was told at 6am on Sunday she was fasting. She assumed another test was going to be performed. At 6.30am, she was told she was having her transplant that day. Jess was prepped and sterilised. Because she was fasting, she was unable to drink which made it hard to clear her airways. For 18 hours, Jess and her family waited, unable to touch each other due to the sterile bed. She was sterilised twice because of delays, still unable to eat or drink because it could be any minute. “My bed was like a stage. It was like everyone was just waiting for the show to start and I was the star,” Jess says. Finally it was time. They wheeled Jess into surgery and her family had another eight hours to wait to find out if she would survive. Each member had tasked themselves with jobs to pass the time. They cleaned her room out, gathering up four months worth of home comforts. Anxiously they waited at The Prince Charles Hospital for surgeon Graeme Hart to deliver the news they needed. When he came out he told them he couldn’t believe she’d made it so far with such bad lungs. After surgery, the anaesthesiologist visited Jess to ask if she remembered what she’d said as she went under. “He said just before he put me out, I pointed my finger at the surgeon and told him, ‘Make the cut as low as possible. I want to wear a low-cut wedding dress!’” Because she was so sick going into the transplant, Jess’s recovery has been rough. She had lost her muscle mass and was weak. After needing so much salt and fat in her diet to keep her lungs working prior to transplant, she’s now adjusting to the discipline of the post-transplant diet. Jess is also adapting to being healthy again. She’s considering studying bookkeeping and her plan is to eventually start a children’s art class. Having already received a commission, Jess has started painting and is wondering how her recent experiences will affect her style. She says The Prince Charles Hospital’s great care and fantastic people make it the best. “This will always be my hospital. I couldn’t go through it all again starting from the beginning anywhere else.”