‘When I woke from a coma the first thing I did was pray’

According to Beaumont Hospital, Ireland has one of the highest rates of donations in the world: 20.3 donors pmp (per million population).

The Irish Catholic invites you to learn the story of a Cavan man who had both of his lungs and one kidney transplanted.

David Crosby is the oldest of five children. When he was about one year and a half his parents had a second child, a girl called Regina, who got sick with a breathing problem ten days after birth and died at seven months. The third child, Paul, also got sick after ten days and died at the age of two. However, at that point there were no medical connections for both deaths.

The fourth sibling came when Mr Crosby was seven, Ann Marie. The family was very apprehensive about Ann Marie’s health, but everything went well. Three years after that, the fifth child arrived, Kieran. But again, at the ten days mark he got sick and died aged eleven also from a lung disease.

“Kieran was a very special person in our family…He instilled an awful lot of positivity into me, especially learning how to fight and never giving up. I was 21 at the time.” That positivity would be an important fuel to Mr Crosby later in life.

He was living in America with his then still girlfriend Katie, when he had an accident “Fr Gerry [MacCormack] lit candles for me, we prayed in a Mass and my parents had to come over just in case things didn’t go right, but I survived that.”

They moved back to Kingscourt, got married, had three children and life seemed to be going smoothly. When Mr Crosby turned 40 in 2015 everything was going well, until he got a cough that wouldn’t go away.

There was a bit of a cloud on the lungs that they were a bit concerned about. They said it wasn’t cancerous, but they needed to do further investigation”

“I went into my local GP and he put me on an antibiotic, because he knew the history with my siblings. About a week after the antibiotics, I still had the cough, and it got really bad.” Mr Crosby went back into the GP and he changed the antibiotic to no avail, the cough wouldn’t go away. “He said he was going to send me to Navan for an X-ray to check it.

“We went to Navan and they did the X-ray on the lungs and on the chest. There was a bit of a cloud on the lungs that they were a bit concerned about. They said it wasn’t cancerous, but they needed to do further investigation.”

He was then sent to the Matter Hospital in Dublin, where they tested his lungs function, which measures the capacity of how much air the lungs can hold. “The average is between 80 and 120% of lung capacity. Mine was down at 73 at the time, so it was below normal and with my history” that was not good.

Biopsy

The doctors took a sample of his lung for a biopsy. “They brought me in in September 2015, and they said IPF, Idiopathic Pulmonary Fibrosis, probably the same my two brothers and sister had that passed away.”

They “said if I wasn’t treated, I’d probably [have] a year and a half to two years to live… It was pretty devastating, after losing already all the children we lost.”

After receiving the news and telling his family, he caught himself wondering why. “Why did this disease come back and hit our family again, after taking so much devastation already?” Those were hard days, Mr Crosby said. “A lot of praying,” and he decided he was going to fight the disease. “I just said ‘I’ll do whatever it would take to survive.’”

With all the history the family already had with lung disease, it was like they knew the end of the story, but Mr Crosby was determined not to let the disease win. “I wasn’t going to be a fourth headstone for my parents,” he told The Irish Catholic.

Going into Christmas in 2015, Mr Crosby got sick again and was invited into the Matter Hospital to have his lungs checked. In the three months since his first lungs test their capacity dropped to 62%. After those results, he was told he would need a double-lung transplant as soon as possible.

Preparing for the transplant, Mr Crosby had to do many tests, which he passed all but one: his BMI. “I was on the heavier side than I should have been for [a] transplant.”

The Head of Transplants in Ireland “told me that I wasn’t getting on the transplant list unless I lost two and a half stone. This is kind of hard to take after being told I had IPF, a year and a half to live… I need a transplant and then I was told I was overweight.”

I remember we pulled the kids out of school early, and I got into the ambulance, and it was a very hard feeling thinking that you might never see out there again”

He was put on a strict diet and lost two stone and a half in two months. “So I was on the list, but instead of being ecstatic… I was kind of deflated, because I knew that there was a bigger challenge ahead of me.”

Three days later, “I got a call, they said it was a possible match… They said the ambulance [will] be there in 20 minutes…And I remember we pulled the kids out of school early, and I got into the ambulance, and it was a very hard feeling thinking that you might never see out there again. You might never come back.”

At the hospital, they started doing tests, which took a few hours. While Mr Crosby was getting prepared for the transplant, the donor lungs deteriorated, and the transplant didn’t go ahead. He started wondering, “was my change gone? How long would I be waiting?” But surprisingly, he didn’t have to wait much.

“Thirteen days after, coming into March 2016, I got a second call. Now I was more relaxed…I went up to the Mater and this time everything was go, [it was] the beginning of March.”

But even with the successful transplant, Mr Crosby couldn’t relax, and he “couldn’t sleep, thinking about my brother. That [he] didn’t survive.” After dealing with the weirdness of the new organs and doing some relaxing exercises the healthcare workers told him, he “was able to control my breath. I was able to just be me, and I knew that the lungs were part of me now.

“Unfortunately, somebody had to pass away to give me the lungs… Then, I promised that I would never stop trying to do good with them. Trying to do the right thing with the lungs.” During a visit, a cousin “suggested he’s going to [do the] Dublin Marathon to raise money for the Mater, and I said ‘well, if you’re doing it, I’ll do it’… Because we lived in New York, I said [if] I was going to do a marathon, it might as well be the one in New York.”

Marathons

Asking his physiotherapist about marathons, they were surprised, “as they never really heard of anybody with lung transplant doing marathons.” Because of that, Mr Crosby had to do his own research about the safety of running a marathon after having lungs transplanted.

In the end, 14 people expressed interest in running the marathon with him, including “the local chemist and one of the surgeons in the Mater”. They set training groups and organised a 5-miles, a 10k and half-marathon events, until eventually it was time to go to New York.

For the marathon, the chemist and a fitness doctor went with Mr Crosby and stayed with him the whole time. “It was an amazing feeling, after all we went through.”

Life will throw stuff at you. You can turn the other way, or sit in the corner, or you can face it and hopefully get through it”

“We were ready to go to Tokyo in 2020, and unfortunately, I got a bit of rejection on my lungs. I had to go to St James’s for radiation. My lung function after the transplant had gone up to 94, which was really good. But then, when I had the radiation, my function dropped down to 56, so it was actually lower than what it was before my transplant.”

“Life will throw stuff at you. You can turn the other way, or sit in the corner, or you can face it and hopefully get through it. I think it’s very important to have that fight, that’s what my brother Kieran said. He installed that into me because he was a big fighter.”

Covid

In August 2021 Mr Crosby got Covid and “it was devastating. It was just my worst nightmare,” he said. “I went straight up to the Mater Hospital because they knew everything about me.”

In the hospital, the doctors “kept everything under control”, and even when his temperature went up to over 40°, they managed to bring it back down. With the temperature under control, Mr Crosby thought the problems were over and he would go home soon. However, his battle was not even close to an end.

“My organs started to go into failure and the doctors tried everything, but they couldn’t stop the Covid. They told me they had to put me into a medical induced coma.”

Before putting him into coma, the doctors called Mr Crosby’s family. “I had to say my goodbye to my wife, my kids, my mam, my dad, my sister. It’s a very hard thing to do.”

“I know people call me an ‘inspiration’ and all that. But I’m only as strong as the people around me. I have great support, especially my wife… [When] I was in the hospital getting all the care, she was up and down the roads on her own and all these thoughts. That’s not easy.”

He was in the coma for three weeks, and during that time his family was informed twice that his situation wasn’t looking good and there was a chance he wouldn’t survive.

“I got through it, I did survive.” “I remember when I woke up from the coma, and I asked her [his wife] to pray. I just said, I’m gonna pray.”

“I always had faith. It was always there. I probably had to rely on it more when I was sick…When I was told [I had] a year and a half to live, I talked to whoever’s up there, somebody ‘listen to me, give me a chance to live and I’ll never stop helping others…I will always try and help because there’s so much good out there, and I know I have it inside me and I would give it back in spades if I got a chance to life.’ I probably called on my faith, more the last nine years.”

Mr Crosby believes his faith “is probably stronger. It’s always been there, but I call Him more [now].”

When he woke up from the coma, he “couldn’t move a finger, I couldn’t walk, I couldn’t talk.” Being in coma for three weeks made him “lose an awful lot of muscle weight,” and the doctors said the only way he would be strong enough again was to build muscle back. That would not be a problem for a healthy person, however, Mr Crosby had another challenge added to his recovery.

I was on dialysis for three days a week for this last three years… for three hours and a half each day”

“My kidneys had failed when I was in the coma,” because of that, he was not allowed to eat anything with salt. “It was a renal diet, which is a very hard diet, and it’s very hard to put weight when you’re on a diet like that.”

The challenge was big, but step-by-step Mr Crosby got strong enough to be sent home. It was a great feeling being able to breathe fresh air again, but the battle was still not over.

“I was on dialysis for three days a week for this last three years… for three hours and a half each day… It was very restrictive for our family, because we couldn’t plan anything. Everything revolved around the dialysis.”

“I was put on the kidney transplant list about a year and a half ago. It’s a long wait… There’s another option, which is your family member can offer a kidney to you.” His parents and sister tried but weren’t compatible.

Perfect match

In the end, Mr Crosby’s wife, Katie was a perfect match. They talked to the children and explained there were no risks to her life. The couple were aware the children needed somebody in their lives “they need a parent.” Everybody can survive with only half a kidney, they told the children.

However, the doctors needed to make sure that she was more than sure before going on with the transplant. Throughout the preparation process, between discovering she was a match until the actual transplant surgery, the doctors said to Mrs Crosby numerous times: “there is absolutely no judgement” in case she had any doubts and decided to stop the donation.

I think this did bring us closer together… I have part of Katie inside of me. We couldn’t get any closer than that”

She decided to go ahead and share a part of herself with her husband. Mr Crosby got his kidney transplant on July 1, 2024. “I’m off dialysis now and we’re back to normal.”

“I think this did bring us closer together… I have part of Katie inside of me. We couldn’t get any closer than that.”

The Crosby family’s challenges are now, hopefully, over. That does not mean the faith that accompanied them in the past nine years will decline. “When you bless yourself, you should do it for the right reason,” not only when you need to thank God for something, or when you’re sick, or need something. “It’s important to just take a moment when everything is calm, just thank [Him] for being in a good spot.”