The Incredible Moment When this Woman takes Her First Breath After Double Lung Transplant

I don’t know as I’ve ever heard of a double lung transplant, but thinking of how often we take breathing for granted the thought of taking your first breath after such an operation must be amazing indeed. You don’t tend to think about breathing until you can’t perform the function correctly, which means that we take it for granted far too often. You wake up in the morning, you do your daily routine, and you almost never once think about what it takes to keep you alive as you inhale and exhale automatically. Your body does the work for you, taking care of the whole breathing thing so long as you can manage to keep your airways clear and your health up to snuff by what you consume.

The moment you stop breathing correctly is when you know that you’ve done something wrong, or something else has happened over which you have little to no control. I don’t necessarily know why this woman had to have a transplant other than the obvious, that her lungs were failing her, but the look on her face is one of obvious joy and relief. Taking your breathing for granted is something that is done quite naturally since if a person doesn’t have to think about what they’re doing they tend not to at all. It’s not a failing really when it’s an automatic function that we all need to survive. If we thought about breathing all day then we likely wouldn’t get as much done and life would be a lot different.

But if you’ve ever had your breathing impaired in any way you come to understand the necessity of clean, fully-functioning lungs. They’re the only way our body can survive day to day while inhaling and exhaling in order to get the oxygen we need and rid ourselves of the waste materials that aren’t needed. Once you lose that automatic function life gets so much harder. Having had asthma since childhood I can fully relate to those that have to struggle to breath at times, though thankfully my own case has lessened as the years go by. But for those that don’t understand what it means to literally be short of breath and to need a surgery such as this just to breath, try sticking your head over a bucket of ammonia or bleach and inhaling deeply. That’s just a fraction of the breathing trouble that people with chronic breathing problems go through.

But the look of relief on this woman’s face should be story enough to tell you just how much of a boon it is to have working lungs that can bring the air into your body and revitalize it in a way that the body simply cannot do on its own without those organs. It might be nice if the human body had a backup for taking in oxygen if the lungs failed, but evolution wasn’t quite that kind. Until we find a way to breathe and exist without air it’s important to be grateful for the ability we’re born with.

Full credits to the original video and channel.