This is a story of a woman who faced her past without regrets and her future with determination.
'After all that I've been through, I think I can use the experiences I've had with both good and bad doctors to help others.'
In a young life blighted by serious illnesses, Allison John has unwillingly made medical history by becoming the first person in Britain to have all her major organs transplanted.
Her health problems date from infancy, when she was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis at six weeks old. The incurable genetic condition causes the lungs to clog up with mucus and sufferers are unable to absorb fats and other nutrients from food. At the age of 14 her liver began to fail and she was told she would need a transplant. An agonising 16-month wait for a match followed before the transplant was carried out in September 1995.
It was only during surgery that doctors realised how ill she was, with as little as three days to live without a transplant. She had originally been offered a donor liver four months earlier - but had generously given it to another patient. By then, her education had been affected to such an extent that she failed to get the A-level grades needed to start a medical degree, so she opted to study neuroscience at Cardiff instead. Six months after enrolling in 1996, however, she was told she was suffering from lung failure.
A match was found in August 1997 and Miss John was given four hours to get from her family home in Fishguard, Pembrokeshire, to Papworth Hospital, Cambridge, where the new heart and lungs - they are replaced together as a package - were waiting. She made it with only minutes to spare after the ambulance got lost.
She then enjoyed good health for several years and completed her neuroscience degree in 2001, graduating with a 2:1, enough to get her into the university's College of Medicine the following October. But in April 2005 came another devastating blow: The medication she was taking to stop her body rejecting the transplanted organs had caused renal failure and she would need a new kidney. Her father David, 61, was found to be a match and the operation was carried out in December 2006. On her epidural she remained fully conscious, feeling the doctors 'tugging and pulling but no pain'.
She received a new liver, kidney, heart and lungs in a series of difficult operations spanning 12 years to tackle the major health problems that at one stage left her just three days from death.
Miss John, who lives in Cardiff with her fiance Nathan Angell, 30, graduated from Cardiff University last month. She is now about to start work as a junior doctor at Neville Hall Hospital in Abergavenny, 30 miles away. Ever since she was a schoolgirl she had wanted to be a physician in medical uniforms. Today she has finally fulfilled the dream after graduating from medical college.
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