Like any other young dad Ross Peters loves kicking a ball around at the park with his young sons and he enjoys taking them to soft play.
This might not sound unusual.
But for the 30-year-old Dundee dad of two, these are activities he would never have been able to do a few years ago.
“I wouldn’t be able to do any of these things if I didn’t have a heart transplant,” he says.
“Five years ago I was sitting on my backside all the time because I couldn’t move. I couldn’t do anything because I was so ill.
“But having the heart transplant just brought my life back to normality.
“Now I can do all the simple things again that you take for granted – like going to work every day and being able to take my sons to the park.
“I just feel so, so lucky.”
When was Ross’s condition diagnosed?
Ross was just 21 when he was diagnosed with the heart condition dilated cardiomyopathy in 2014.
It’s a disease of the heart muscle which affects its ability to pump blood around the body.
“It just happened overnight,” Ross explained.
“I had never been to the doctors about anything before because I was relatively healthy.
“On this particular Friday night I was out with friends, having a few drinks.
“But I had to leave early because I was feeling unwell.
“On the Saturday morning I woke up and I was struggling to breathe.
“My mum knew something wasn’t right so she called an ambulance.
“I was taken to Ninewells Hospital and they started doing some tests.
“I remember my mum was beside my hospital bed with her friend when a cardiologist came in.
“He said they were going to move me to the Jubilee Hospital in Glasgow because my heart was really weak and they needed to act urgently.
“It honestly came totally out of the blue.
“The three of us were gob-smacked as we had expected it to be an illness or a bug or something like that.
“But it was extreme heart failure.
“The next thing I was rushed to the hospital in Glasgow and I spent the next two weeks there while the specialist team did more tests.
“Initially they thought I would need a transplant there and then.
“We were thinking: how has this happened?
“Overnight my world was turned upside down.”
Discovering a heart transplant was needed
At Jubilee Hospital, Ross was put on medication which allowed his heart to return to a more stable condition.
But doctors delivered another blow.
“They said your heart is really weak and you’ll need a heart transplant,” Ross recalls.
“We can’t tell you exactly when you will need a transplant.
“But in the meantime, you will have to keep taking this medication every day.
“So I did that for the next five years.
“But I was really ill and just a shell of myself. I could barely get out of bed because I was so weak.”
In January 2020, when Ross was 26 years old, his condition took a turn for the worse.
He suffered a cardiac arrest.
But, fortunately, he had an implantable cardioverter defibrillator (ICD) – a small electronic device connected to the heart fitted – and this kept him alive.
“I had the cardiac arrest and the ICD in my chest was able to immediately re-start my heart,” he explained.
“But I had to go back to hospital straight away and doctors told me I was going downhill so they had to change my medication.
“I didn’t do a lot for the next six months as I had to shield during Covid.
“Then in the June I started feeling really unwell again.
“This time I went back to hospital and because I was so sick, I was told they would have to keep me in until a heart became available.
“It was then just a waiting game.”
Ross was moved up the waiting list as a priority case because he was so unwell.
‘A weight lifted’ after life-saving operation
After just seven weeks at the Jubilee in Glasgow, Ross was told a heart had become available and he taken to the operating theatre for life-saving surgery.
“I had the operation in August and it all went really well. It felt as if a weight had been lifted.
“I was in hospital for five weeks to recover and I was able to leave in the September.
“In total I was in hospital for around three months.
“I was very lucky to be able to have my heart transplant in such a short space of time because many people have to wait a lot lot longer for a donor.”
Two weeks after Ross had a cardiac arrest in January he and wife Shauni, 31, discovered she was pregnant with their first child.
“In June my wife was six months pregnant and I had to go into hospital for an unknown period of time because we didn’t know when a heart would be available.
“And I was worrying that I was going to miss the birth of my first boy.
Being there at his son’s birth
“At one point there was talk of organising webcams so I could see my son being born because I couldn’t leave hospital.
“But the timing was unbelievable because I got out in the September and in the November my son was born – it was 12 weeks to the day after my transplant.
“It was incredible to be there and see Louis coming into the world.
“My wife and I were like an old married couple afterwards because we were both waddling after our operations – my wife having had a baby and me having had a heart transplant!”
Ross felt much better when his second son Leighton, was born in Ninewells Hospital in March 2022.
Leighton is now one, while Louis, who has started at the High School of Dundee Nursery this month, is three years old.
Ross has discovered that his condition is genetic and so there as a 50/50 chance it could be passed on to his children.
And tests have since showed that while Louis is not affected, Leighton is.
Ross said: “There is a 50 per cent chance that Leighton could have potential complications when he is older.
“But we know about it so he can be monitored and there are preventative things they can do if it comes to it.
“Research is continuing all the time too so there could be new treatments available by the time my son is older.”
Forever grateful for his heart
Ross, who works as an estimator with the family business Noran Electrical in Dundee, said he will forever be thankful for his heart transplant.
“I am so grateful for the heart that was donated. It is the greatest gift you can give.
“I just feel so lucky to be alive to be able to raise my children.
“The chances of all these things happening when they did is unbelievable.”
He added: “I had spent most of my 20s being ill but in October there I turned 30.
“I feel like my 30s is a new chapter for me when I am going to be much healthier. I am really looking forward to the future.”
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