A former supercar driver has opened up about her "journey of gratitude" after receiving a double lung transplant in Abu Dhabi that put her life back on track.
Sonye Wilgen, 58, thrived in the high-octane world of motor sport for years, but her independence was gradually stripped away from her as her health declined.
To mark World Transplant Day on Saturday, she told of how she was put on the road to recovery after undergoing surgery at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi in September, 2024.
“My journey has not been one of resilience or strength or anything else,” she told The National. “It’s been one of gratitude.”
Before the transplant, she relied on oxygen around the clock.
Driving became impossible, she was unable to bathe herself and even hugging her husband left her breathless.
“I wasn’t alive,” she said. “I was existing.”
New lease of life
Today, she feels better than she has in more than a decade.
“I haven’t been this well for 11 years,” Ms Wilgen said. “Just little things like being able to walk my dogs, climb a flight of stairs without thinking about it, sneeze, blow my nose, or shower on my own.
"They sound like tiny things, but when you can’t do them, you realise how important they are.”
She is part of many remarkable success stories, who underwent pioneering procedures at Cleveland Clinic.
The hospital has conducted 1,113 organ transplants, including 480 kidney transplants, 468 liver transplants, 104 lung transplants, 44 heart transplants and 17 pancreas transplants, under a programme launched in 2017.
Sixty of those procedures involved combined organ transplants, among the most complex surgeries performed in modern medicine.
The hospital has also carried out transplants on more than 200 international patients and completed 28 robotic transplant surgeries.
Transforming lives
“Organ donation is the ultimate sacrifice. It’s the ultimate gift that a human being can give to another human being,” said Dr Usman Ahmad, division chairman of thoracic surgery for Cleveland Clinic's heart, vascular and thoracic institute.
“We see patients recover, go back to their families, go back to their normal lives, return home and live with their children, complete their education and become functional members of society again.”
Long search for answers
Ms Wilgen’s health problems began in 2011 after she travelled from the UK to South Africa to spend time with her grandmother during the final weeks of her life.
Her grandmother, whom she describes as “the last of the great ladies”, was still driving, washing her own car and living independently in her 90s.
“She was my absolute hero,” Ms Wilgen said.
The day after her grandmother’s funeral, Ms Wilgen collapsed.
Her oxygen levels plummeted, she struggled to breathe and spent more than two months in hospital in South Africa. Doctors later diagnosed her with chronic asthma, but her symptoms continued to worsen.
Over the following years she moved between the UK, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, seeing doctor after doctor in search of answers.
Eventually she was referred to Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi.
Despite years of treatment, her condition continued to deteriorate until doctors told her there were few options left without a transplant.
At first, she resisted the idea.
“I’ve been a vegan for many years,” she said. “The thought of having another person’s organs inside my body was very difficult for me.
“I also felt, in a way, that I was taking advantage of someone else’s trauma.”
Accepting the gift of life
Her husband helped her look at it differently.
“He never pushed me in any direction,” she said. “But he suggested that instead of seeing it as taking advantage of someone’s tragedy, maybe I could see it as appreciating the gift.”
Eventually, she agreed to be assessed for a transplant.
“I realised how incredibly lucky I was to be given this opportunity of a second life,” Ms Wilgen said.
The call telling her a donor had been found came sooner than expected.
At the time, she was still undergoing pre-transplant testing.
Just hours earlier, her father-in-law had died in South Africa and her husband had travelled there to be with family.
“I told him to go,” she said. “I said, ‘You need to be with your family more than you need to be with me. I’ll see you on the other side.’”
But when she woke up after surgery, he was there.
“I opened my eyes and my husband was standing there,” she said.
“I will never forget that as long as I live. I remember opening my eyes, seeing his face and saying thank you.”
Within two days of the transplant, she was walking.
Her recovery was later complicated by a serious gastrointestinal emergency that required further surgery and extended her hospital stay to four months. But her new lungs continued to perform well.
“My lungs have been fabulous,” she said. “The transplant worked.”
One of the hardest adjustments came when doctors told her she no longer needed oxygen.
For years, oxygen tanks had been a constant companion.
“It was my safety net,” she said. “The thought of not having oxygen on my face felt like they were taking my breath away.”
Today, she still checks her oxygen levels in disbelief.
“I was lucky if my oxygen levels were 80 per cent on oxygen,” she said. “Now every time I look at the monitor and see 99 or 100, I still think, wow.”
Ms Wilgen does not know the identity of her donor. She only knows that the donor saved nine lives.
“For me, that is incredible,” she said.
“I hope the family are the proudest human beings on this planet because what that person did is beyond words.”
She has chosen not to contact the donor’s family.
“How do you say thank you for your life?” she said.
“But there is not a fibre in my being that is not absolutely grateful.”
She describes the experience as one of gratitude not only for the donor, but also for the people who helped her through the process.
“Every single human being I interacted with here was incredible,” she said.
“The nurses in this hospital, I don’t know where they get them from, but they’re an endangered species. They are the most incredible human beings.”
Dr Ahmad said World Transplant Day is an opportunity to recognise donors and their families.
“It is very important for us to recognise the sacrifices of our donors, whether they’re living donors who give part of their organ or one of their organs to another human being, or the family members of deceased donors who make the decision to donate the organs of their loved ones after they’ve passed away,” he said.
“This is a very profound and impactful act of humaneness and kindness that can change someone else’s life.”
For people facing the prospect of a transplant themselves, Ms Wilgen has a message.
“I know how frightening it is,” she said. “I was nervous, I was scared and I really didn’t want to do it.
“But my God, am I pleased I did. I know just how frightening it is, but I also know that the rewards are so worth it.”
