James Reynolds

It's amazing.

You're both in this together in those different ways, aren't you?

It is astonishing to hear your and your daughter's story, Amy.

Thank you so much.

And we'll bring in Natalia from Bulgaria.

Natalia, when you yourself needed a lung transplant, you couldn't get that treatment in your own home country.

You had to go abroad.

Tell us about that.

How do you reflect on the life of the donor whose lungs gave you this new life?

Amy, listening to Natalia there, she said she has two birthdays, the original birthday and the day she feels she came back to life with the transplant.

Is that how you see it for yourself?

Yes, keep the balloons up.

Natalia and Amy there, extremely grateful recipients of lung transplants.

You're listening to the documentary from the BBC World Service.

The first lung transplant operations took place in the 1960s, but the recipients of those early operations did not live for long.

A breakthrough, though, came some 40 years ago, in 1983, with a patient surviving for several years after their transplant.

And since then, the procedure has become far more routine.

One of the main issues now is the lack of enough suitable donor lungs for all the patients who could potentially benefit in the way that Norway's crown princess, Meta Marit, has.

For our next conversation, we brought together two doctors who specialise in lung transplants.

Vicky Gerovasili is a consultant in respiratory and transplant medicine here in the UK.