Coast-to-coaster shares her heart transplant journey

Christine Sabin has never been one to sit still. The social worker, mum-of-five, triathlete, is always looking for her next challenge. Very little in life has slowed her down.

So it’s not surprising that even on the day of her heart diagnosis in 2013 the then 57-year-old had started the day with a 5am bike ride before heading to her job as a social worker at Waitakere Hospital.

Just hours later, however, Christine was an inpatient herself.

In hindsight, there had been a few warning signs, but Christine put them down to age and asthma. She’d never imagined it could be a problem with her heart.

Admission to the cardiac ward

Christine survived the day at work, but later that night she felt so unwell that she headed back to the Emergency Department (ED). They assessed her and quickly realised the seriousness of her condition.

From ED she was admitted to the cardiac ward, where tests revealed her heart function was just 14%. After further testing she was diagnosed with a rare and incurable heart condition called cardiac sarcoidosis, which had put her into heart failure.

Christine spent a few weeks in the heart unit. She was discharged with a host of medications to help her ailing heart and a plan to have a type of pacemaker called an ICD (implantable cardiac defibrillator) inserted.

“It was stressful waiting,” she admits. “My daughter used to poke her head in my bedroom door every morning for those 3 months just to check that I was still breathing.”

Christine was hopeful that between the ICD and the medications her heart would improve, but sadly the treatment couldn’t repair the damage.

“The reality was it was just stuffed. I did a little bit, you take a million drugs and you do this and that. I went up to about 25%, but that was it,” she recalls.

Onto the heart transplant waiting list

Keen to stay active, Christine got an electric motor added to her bike and continued to cycle and walk. But over time her symptoms began to increase again, and doctors referred her to the transplant team with a view to being added to the heart transplant waiting list.

“When I told the transplant team I was still cycling I could see that they thought I wasn’t sick enough. But then they saw the results of my treadmill test. The doctor rung me up straight away and said you’re on the list.”

Christine admits there were some nerves at that point, but she was happy to put her faith in the medical staff.

“I asked the doctor if I was likely to die on the table and he said, ‘no the heart transplant bit is the easy bit’. I thought if he’s fine with it then I’ll be fine with it. And I thought I’m going to die without it anyway.”

The life-changing call

Two months later, Christine received the call she’d been waiting for. It was late in the evening and she was in the midst of making a huge quilt for her grandson.

“I’d cut out million pieces and I had it over the whole of my floor. I’d just finished laying the whole thing out when I got the call. So I had to leave it all just lying there.”

As someone who lives alone, Christine alerted a friend on standby and two of her daughters who live in Waikato.

She went into surgery around midnight after saying goodbye to her girls. At 4am they got the call to say the surgery had been successful and their mum was now in recovery.

After four weeks she was deemed fit to return home and start her second chance at life.

Gratitude and forward thinking

Christine has already created a new bucket list for her new heart and her new life.

At the end of October, she walked the 11km traverse over the Harbour Bridge at the Auckland Marathon.

This year she’ll focus on building up her strength to attend the Transplant Games in Australia in September and participate in a fundraising bike ride the length of the UK in 2025.

Christine is hugely grateful to her donor and their family for their incredible generosity.

“I wrote them a letter a few weeks ago telling them what I’m doing. I’d love them to know that I am doing the heart justice,” she says.

The transplant itself has made her even more focussed on living in the moment.

“Just don’t put off until tomorrow what you’re going to do today,” she says. “It’s like you’ve got another chance to live, but of course you don’t know how long you’ve got. Nothing in this life is a given.

 “I’ve a funny feeling I’ve got too many things on my list. But you’ve got to do as much as you can. I’m just trying to cram it all in.”