A KILWINNING grandmother will be featured in a moving BBC documentary charting her four year wait for a life saving lung transplant.

Margaret Murphy, from Blacklands, had been on the waiting list for years after struggling with emphysema, a respiratory disease that gradually damages the air sacs in your lungs and making it progressively harder to breathe.

Transplant Tales, which airs on BBC One Scotland on Monday, July 6 at 9pm, features Margaret’s journey and the frustrations she encountered as issues continued to arise in her hopes of receiving a transplant.

The 56-year-old was told by doctors three years ago that she only had 12 months to live and her last tests showed that her lung capacity was 15 per cent of what they once were and had culminated in her having to receive oxygen from a tank 24 hours a day.

The waiting was finally over for Margaret however as she received her lung transplant on April 24 at Newcastle’s Freeman Hospital, as Scotland does not have a lung transplant service.

The married mother of two recovered from the operation after less than a month in the hospital and is now at home, enjoying a life which would have been impossible if she had not received the transplant.

Margaret said: “I’m feeling fine and I’m getting there. There is a big difference to what I was before as I had to use a wheelchair and receive oxygen constantly.

“I couldn’t even bend over or walk but now I can walk so far, go outside whenever I want and even hang out a washing. This has been the first time that any of my six grandchildren have seen me without the oxygen tank or the wires so it’s new for them.” Margaret admits it was extremely frustrating being on the waiting list for such a long time and says that she started to lose hope in receiving a transplant.

She said: “This was the eighth time that I had been called down to the hospital in the hope of having the operation and was the second time that week. It got to the point where every time I went down I was expecting to hear that something had went wrong so when I finally got the thumbs up it was a huge relief. The doctors and nurses at the hospital were absolutely brilliant and gave me great treatment with them even transporting me down on a helicopter once and a private jet twice.

“Because of this we are arranging some fundrasing for the Freeman Hospital next year with some of my family members planning to do a sky dive, getting their legs waxed and even my GP in Kilwinning said he would like to get involved.

“I also plan to take part in some way, whether I do a wee run or something but it’s just all to say a massive thanks to the hospital for all they’ve done for me.”