IN the seventies, Val Weblin said, having Cystic Fibrosis was a death sentence. His sister, Angie, was born with the same condition and she died in 1998 at the age of 11.
Val, now aged 47, recently won bronze at the British Transplant Games. Cheering him on were his wife, Julie, whom he met while a patient in hospital, and their son Thomas.
Val was a member of the Irish team, which included other competitors from West Cork, all of whom have their own heroic tales to tell.
He agreed to do the interview as a way of inspiring others: ‘It’s about making people aware of organ donation and the difference it makes to people, and their families, and how it offers them a second chance at life,’ said Val, who had a double lung transplant in 2000, and a kidney transplant in 2018.
Val was speaking The Southern Star in Leap, where he is from, but is currently on hiatus while their family home in Drimoleague is being renovated.
‘In the seventies,’ he said, ‘children with Cystic Fibrosis didn’t live long, many passed at the age of 10 or 11, or in their teens.’
‘How were you so well?’ was the first clumsy question that Val dealt with in his typically bright and buoyant manner.
‘I wasn’t well,’ he said in a voice that is naturally cheery and upbeat. ‘When I was about four I was in and out of hospital five or six times a year for IV antibiotics. I’d be there for 10 days to two weeks at a time. I’d missed a lot of school and it was pretty much that way until I was 18 or 19.
‘My sister, Angie, passed while I was in college. I’d just turned 20, and after that my health got very bad so I was in and out of hospital a lot.
‘They put in a kind of central line so I was able to do my medications at home and I was on oxygen 24/7. I wasn’t able to walk, or anything like that, so my mother Mary, who passed away in April 2016, and my dad Paddy, took care of me at the time.
‘I was on the transplant list and assessed in Newcastle in England. After I got the call lots of things changed for me.’ It was on July 20th, 2000 that Val, aged 22, underwent a double lung transplant.
He hilariously recalls that after he woke up from the surgery he discovered that he was able to eat. This was after years and years of trying to find the breath, the energy, to eat small seemingly indigestible snacks. He said he immediately downed two dinners!
‘I ate the two, consisting of meat, potatoes and two veg, pretty much straight away,’ he said. ‘That was grand, but then my system started shutting down because my chest muscles weren’t strong enough to expand my lungs.
‘I was put on a machine for 10 days to help me breathe but once I was off that I was sent out walking. I was quiet for the first couple of minutes,’ Val said when describing the sensation of standing, similar perhaps to the first tentative steps of a toddler.
‘I found I was able to talk to my father and it dawned on me: “This is incredible, I can walk and talk at the same time”. It took me by surprise. It was just the most incredible feeling. My fingers and toes were on fire as if life was being restored to my whole body,’ he said.
Then Val utters the killer line for anyone anywhere contemplating being an organ donor: ‘I love life and just always wanted the opportunity to live it.’
The interview touches once again on the beautiful necessity of eating. For a long, long time Val said: ‘I didn’t have the energy to eat. It was as simple as that.
‘Generally, I’d have two cheese and crackers and a cup of tea. I just couldn’t eat meals because I didn’t have the energy to eat them.’
Speaking of energy, at the recent Transplant Games in Britain, Val participated in five-a-side soccer, snooker, darts and table tennis, taking a bronze medal in the darts, and he made it to the quarter finals in the snooker and table tennis.
Val described Transport Sport Ireland, which has only been established in the last few years, as a very inclusive organisation. He said they are still trying to raise funds so that at the next Games they can provide for the athletes.
On an even more personal note, Val explains how he met his wife Julie, and it’s worthy of any Hollywood meet cute.
He said he used to go to hospital a lot with a girl from Bantry, and it was while Julie, who is a native of Bantry, visited his friend that they became acquainted.
‘When I came home after the transplant, Julie and her mother, Peggy, called to see how I was. She had just bought a car and asked me for driving lessons, and it went from there.’
The couple married on December 29th 2005 and Val seemingly sets to one side the double lung transport, the kidney transplant from his wife’s Aunty Rosaline, to claim life with Julie and Thomas is ‘the impossible dream for me’.
