Brendan McLoughlin, the State's longest-surviving single-lung transplant recipient, was yesterday morning thanking the Irish medical team who made it possible.
It has been 10 years since the charity worker from Stranorlar in Co Donegal travelled to England for the operation.
To mark the anniversary, the 35-year-old visited the department of respiratory medicine at the James Connolly Memorial Hospital in Blanchardstown to present consultant respiratory physician Dr Conor Burke and his team with a piece of Waterford crystal.
Although they did not carry out the transplant, Dr Burke and his colleagues cared for Mr McLoughlin before and after he travelled to Newcastle in England for the operation.
"I wanted to say 'thank you' for all their work and to give something back," Mr McLoughlin said. "They worked above and beyond the call of duty and I was given a new life by the operation."
Mr McLoughlin was born with cystic fibrosis, an incurable genetic condition which meant breathing was a struggle all his life. Two of his siblings also suffer from the disease.
"You didn't have a life, you struggled to catch a breath. I coughed up blood from an early age . . . every year was a bonus."
As a child prone to chest infections because of his condition, he tried to join in normal activities.
"I would try my best, but I couldn't even play ball. Most of the time I was housebound, just watching what was going on outside the window."
There were long stays in hospital until, at the age of 25, he was finally diagnosed with cystic fibrosis and put on the waiting list for a lung transplant.
He spent nine weeks on a life-support system in the intensive care unit in Blanchardstown while waiting for a donor. At the worst point he was taking 45 breaths per minute. A healthy person takes an average of 10.
He was flown to Newcastle twice before a suitable donor was found.
"Then, on August 10th 1992, when I was 35, I got the transplant . . . before the operation I was gasping, struggling for breath. I couldn't lie flat - there had to be six pillows supporting me. Afterwards, everything had completely changed, it was like a new life," he said.
The operation was carried out by Dr John Dark.
"Life is 100 per cent better. Now I have options where I didn't have any before," Mr McLoughlin said.
The facilities are still not available in the State to carry out these transplant operations. Dr Burke and Mr McLoughlin are backing a campaign to open a lung transplant unit here.
"We want the Department of Health to make good their promise that a new unit will be opened in Ireland. It's more than 20 years since the first lung transplant was carried out," said Dr Burke.
Two years ago, Mr McLoughlin also came through a successful kidney transplant, made necessary by the high dosage of specialised immuno-suppression drugs he was taking following the lung transplant.
"He is one in a million," Dr Burke said yesterday. "This man is extraordinary. From the beginning, he was a winner, he just wasn't going to die. Now he is close to being one of the longest survivors of a single-lung transplant in the world."
Mr McLoughlin, who works for the Cystic Fibrosis Association and other charities, published a book about his experiences in 1993 called The Will To Survive.
"Life is like a deck of cards," he said yesterday after kicking a football around the grounds of Blanchardstown Hospital. "You get some good ones and some bad ones. You just have to make the best of the ones you are dealt".