A Breath of Fresh Air (A Transplant Tale) is the inspiring and moving story of Danny Martini, who has cystic fibrosis, the most common fatal genetic disease in the United States. Danny is 48, with end-stage CF, and is quickly running out of borrowed time. His only chance is a life-saving double-lung transplant.
But will the call for a transplant come too late?
Danny and his sisters were raised in a wildly dysfunctional family with a troubled, distant father and a mentally and emotionally ill mother. Danny made friends easily but often lost them just as easily when his parents couldn't pay the rent. When his parents split up, things only went downhill.
Still, Danny survived childhood traumas and near-death experiences. At 18, he got a good job and seemed to be on his way. And then at 19, he tested positive for cystic fibrosis.
Average CF life expectancy then was just thirty-one short years. Danny Martini's world was turned upside down. His optimism was replaced by the seeming certainty of an early death.
Danny lived fast and burned through his life as if each night might be the last. A nihilistic lifestyle of drugs, drinking and hard living and the cumulative impact of CF took a heavy toll. He fell in and out of love. He made great and lifelong friends. But by 2004, cystic fibrosis left him emaciated and exhausted, tethered to an oxygen tank. His breath, and his time, grew short. Only a lung transplant could save his life.
And just when he thought salvation was at hand, there was one more challenge.
A Breath of Fresh Air (A Transplant Tale) is an exciting, maddening, funny, and tense story about the wait for a double-lung transplant written by someone who has been through all of it. Author Dave Murray writes with the conviction and experience he earned as a 20-year survivor of his own transplant.
A breath of fresh air. Take it in. Savor it. And read all about what it took to make that breath of fresh air endure.
