Watch: ‘From a living time-bomb to a living miracle’

When three years ago Christine Grixti received the call informing her she had been matched with a donor, her own weak heart nearly failed with excitement. Her husband, Charles, who had already bid farewell to Christine in a similar episode just a month earlier, called an ambulance as he rushed home from work. On their way to hospital, the couple was still coming to terms with the life-changing call they had just received. Ms Grixti, who had been living with arrhythmogenic right ventricular dysplasia for 20 years, was praying to her late parents and the donor to help her make it alive to hospital. Meanwhile, her husband was asking the ambulance nurse whether it was true that a matching heart was being made available. For years, he had stood by Ms Grixti, backing her every move. However, he had never believed that his wife, who had been told she will not make it past the year, would find a matching heart. The next few hours and weeks were quite challenging, with Ms Grixti requiring two litres of blood following the transplant procedure and being recovered in hospital for unrelated complications. Ms Grixti, now 45, admitted she would relive those moments if she could, including...