'Had To Learn To Breathe': How A Double Lung Transplant Gave UAE Expat A Second Life

For more than a decade, UAE expat Sonia believed she had asthma. By the time the real diagnosis arrived, her lungs were failing.

"I have a choice. I die or I have a transplant," she recalled. "And I looked around me and I saw all these incredible reasons to live."

A year after undergoing a double lung transplant at Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, Sonia is paying tribute to the medical team that saved her life, and to the anonymous donor whose organs allowed her to "literally learn to breathe" again.

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Her respiratory journey began in 2008 with what doctors believed was asthma. The condition worsened steadily for years until a pulmonologist at another hospital told her there was only one place she could go, and referred her to Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi.

Dr Yusuf Bayrak, Staff Physician in Thoracic Surgery at the hospital's Heart, Vascular and Thoracic Institute, said the real diagnosis was chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. "When I look at the patient's body and start listening to their problems, I can start imagining what the condition will be," he said.

Dr Said Isse, Consultant in Pulmonology at the hospital's Integrated Hospital Care Institute, said Sonia had already undergone an earlier surgical attempt to ease her breathing, but the relief was short-lived. "These were temporary and helped for a period of time, but she was eventually getting worse and needed lung transplant," he said.

Dr Arshad Ghori, Staff Physician in Anaesthesiology at the Integrated Hospital Care Institute, described the operation as a marathon of precision. "The lung surgery is a prolonged operation, takes around six to eight hours, and we need to fully concentrate right from the beginning till the end of the procedure," he said. Sonia's operation went well.

Dr Ihab Ahmed, Associate Staff Physician in Critical Care, said she was extubated the day after surgery and spent four days in the intensive care unit. "She was very cooperative, calm, and she was happy and anxious as well, because this is the first time she would breathe by her own lung," he said.

Recovery, Sonia said, meant relearning the most basic of functions. "I literally had to learn to breathe. I felt like I'd literally been reborn."

Her deepest gratitude, she said, was reserved for the donor she will never meet. "That's one person I never said thank you to, and it's probably the most important person of the lot, is my donor."

"I often think about who they are, where they come from, who their parents are, or their wife, or their husband. I don't know anything about them. And wow, what a gift. Somebody gave his life, her life, and saved mine."

Cleveland Clinic Abu Dhabi, the UAE's only lung transplant centre, was designated as a Centre of Excellence for Adult Multi-Organ Transplants in December 2025. The hospital has now performed more than 1,000 organ transplants.

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