“A stranger saved my life when I was hours from death”

On life support with time running out, organ donation was the only chance for Ashley Moore to survive

By Ashley Moore

Ten years ago, I was fighting for my life when an incredible stranger and his brave family saved my life by saying yes to organ donation.

I’ve lived with cystic fibrosis (CF) all my life. CF is a progressive, inherited genetic disorder that causes severe damage to the lungs, digestive system, and other organs. There is no cure. Instead, life is filled with an extensive drug regimen, breathing treatments, and airway clearance to clear thick, sticky mucous from the lungs. Life expectancy for anyone with CF is now 56 in the UK due to major advances in treatment for the condition, but when I was born in America and diagnosed in the early 1980s, my parents were told I’d be lucky to see 18.

Before my body failed me in 2015, my life had been full to bursting. I had a happy childhood growing up in Texas. I went to university in California and did a semester abroad in London, where I met my future husband, Alastair. We married on his 25th birthday in a gondola at The Venetian casino in Las Vegas, which still feels delightfully absurd and perfectly us.

After years of infertility struggles, our incredible sister-in-law, Michelle, helped us welcome our son via surrogacy in 2014. The future was looking bright as we settled into family life in London, thrilled to be a family of three.

Life was never easy, but I coped thanks to a daily cocktail of drugs, hours of airway clearance, and weeks-long hospital stays when needed. But a bout of flu devastated my lung function and health, and sent me into a downward spiral from which I could not recover. I was left bed-bound, tethered to oxygen, and unable to care for my baby. By late 2015, I had been an inpatient in hospital for 10 months. Ten months of being alive but not living. I missed moments that never come back - big ones, tiny ones - with my son, my husband, my family, my friends. For example, I had to watch my baby’s first birthday party, which I had planned, on a computer screen, while lying in a hospital bed, shivering so violently with a high fever that the bed was shaking.

I desperately wanted to live for my little family, but there were moments I wanted to die. End-stage cystic fibrosis is an exceptionally painful way to go. Every muscle in your body hurts from the constant coughing, your body is starving to death as you become too sick to eat, you are nauseated, the inside of your nose is raw and bleeding from high flow oxygen, and your body is battered and bruised from IV therapies and blood tests. You are drowning from the inside out, fighting for every excruciating breath that never fully satisfies your body’s need for air. I was terrified to die, to miss out on all the things I still wanted to see and do. I was terrified to live, not knowing how much more suffering I could bear. Teetering between life and death exhausted my soul.

By mid- October, my lungs, riddled with bacterial and fungal infections, had completely failed and were unable to oxygenate my body. I coughed up blood, and my CO2 levels spiked, causing me to black out for several days. I was in desperate need of a double lung transplant. My family rushed back from the States. They didn’t know if I was still alive when they landed. My medical team asked my husband a question: should they let me die peacefully, or place me on ECMO - a high-risk life-support machine which takes over the job of your lungs - while we waited for organs that might never come?

The answer for him was obvious - choose the option that gave me a fighting chance to live. He chose ECMO.

That decision catapulted me to the very top of the UK urgent lung transplant list. One week later, and after a night of near-catastrophically low oxygen levels, the call came. New lungs were available because of the generosity of an organ donor and his family. To make such an emotional decision while dealing with their own grief of losing a loved one is nothing short of heroic. The gift of new lungs, of life, when I was so close to death, is still hard to comprehend.

Surgery went ahead and was successful. Recovery was brutal. I was absolutely skeletal and had lost so much muscle that I had to learn to walk again. My feet and legs were horribly swollen, and they felt like they were on fire due to neuropathy. I had a terrible tremor in my hands due to my new medications. Within four months, I faced a serious, life-threatening form of rejection and a gruelling six months of treatment to stop it. But very slowly, my life returned.

And what a life it has been.

Since my transplant a decade ago, I have skied down mountains and hiked up them. I watched New Year’s Eve fireworks from a boat in Sydney Harbour. I’ve flown in a seaplane, seen elephants in the wild, fossil-hunted on the Jurassic Coast, celebrated 20 years of marriage, travelled extensively, sung badly at countless concerts and become a qualified open-water scuba diver, something that feels almost poetic after years of fighting to breathe.

But the moments I treasure most are the small ones.

Walking the dog. Cooking dinner. Watching my son grow from a toddler into a boy, then a tween, and getting to know him as a person: his kindness, his stubbornness, his joy. He is now 11, and I saw him star in the year 6 play and start secondary school as a drama scholar.

I turned 44 in January, an age I never expected to reach. That’s ten extra birthdays. Three thousand six hundred and fifty bonus days.

Last year, we celebrated the tenth anniversary of my transplant with a masquerade ball to raise money for the NHS Blood and Transplant charity. Many guests said they couldn’t think of a better reason for a party! Friends and family travelled from across the UK, the US, and even Australia, to mark the occasion and to honour my donor and his family, people who turned unimaginable loss into life. We’ve raised almost £8,700 so far, and I hope to reach £10,000 for my 10 bonus years. I’ve also been invited by the charity to join a panel to decide how funds raised will support organ donation, transplant research, and services. It’s a small way of paying gratitude forward.

But it hasn’t all been plain sailing.

I’ve faced chest infections, kidney failure, surgeries, gout, 24/7 neuropathy pain, and depression. I survived a pandemic. I’ve cancelled trips and buried far too many friends lost to CF. I carry their absence with me every single day and always will. I have felt hopeless watching a world that sometimes chooses who to hate rather than who to love.

And yet, when life feels unbearable, I remind myself of this: my chest rises and falls with ease. That simple act is proof that kindness, humanity, and love exist.

A stranger - and his family - saved my life when they said yes to organ donation. I have written to them several times to thank them for agreeing to save a life, my life.

Transplant patients are walking, talking stories of hope. We are proof of the resilience of the human spirit and the extraordinary generosity of others. Sometimes gifted to us by the people we love, sometimes by people we will never meet.

I hope I have made my donor and his family proud. I hope I have honoured both his life and his loss. I hope my journey will help others and encourage them to share their wishes regarding organ donation.

Families are nearly twice as likely to agree to organ donation if they know their loved one’s wishes beforehand, with consent rates reaching approximately 90% compared to only 47% when wishes are unknown. So please, have the conversation. Say it out loud. Write it down. Make it known.

It could save a life like mine… and that is a thing of beauty.