Dr Sanjana Kochhar, from Liverpool, suffered multiple organ failure while in hospital in October 2022 and underwent a transplant. She was discharged on Christmas Eve that year.
In August, she welcomed her daughter and has since visited a special living memorial bench in Liverpool named in her honour by the British Heart Foundation.
Kochhar said the bench was a reminder of her journey and she hoped it would inspire others to talk about heart disease and organ donation.
‘I knew I was dying’
Kochhar was 29 and studying at university when she began to experience heart palpitations and breathlessness.She was rushed to hospital in a critical condition and suffered multiple organ failure. She was placed on the urgent heart transplant list and received a donor heart just four weeks later.
Speaking out on World Heart Day, Kochhar told BBC North West Tonight that it was “terrifying” to have been so ill, especially because she had clinical knowledge.
“I knew that I was dying and that was hard for me to process and hard to explain to people. I think at the start, when I was probably the sickest, it hadn’t quite clicked that that was what was happening,” she said.
Kochhar said that, as a doctor, processing the fact that someone else would have to die in order for her to survive was really hard to get her head around.She said she was “so grateful” to her donor and the “gift” that she was given. She added it was “amazing” to have been able to contact their family and to meet some of their friends.
Kochhar has a red bench in Liverpool dedicated to her as a “living memorial” by the British Heart Foundation charity. It is one of 65 erected across the country to honour living survivors of cardiovascular disease. She said she had visited the bench in Otterspool Park, overlooking the River Mersey, with her friends and family, including her husband Paul and their two-month-old daughter.
She said seeing the bench was “a reminder of the journey and the challenges I’ve had along the way” and also made her think of other people who may be “going through difficult challenges, heart-related or anything else”.
