It might well be the most often asked question but three decades later Fiona Coote still can’t really answer who the two heart donors were who gave her the chance at life.
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But she is forever grateful and that honest, heartfelt appreciation has led her on a life and career dedicated to giving back, in a variety of forms over 31 years.
But for these couple of days, Fiona is back in the family fold, enjoying a few days at home in Manilla with mum and dad, Judy and Terry, catching up with old friends like Jacquie Littlejohns, and seeing some long lost but loving family friends around Tamworth.
She might well laugh with embarrassment to be called the queen of Manilla but Fiona Coote is definitely the sweetheart of Tamworth too.
Last night, she was the very generous, genuine guest speaker at a special International Women’s Day evening in Tamworth.
Earlier in the day, she’d been struck by a bug but was soldiering on with writing a speech for the night.
It doesn’t come easy for her, even after being the public eye and the spotlight for so long.
“It would be lovely to have a speechwriter,” she admitted yesterday.
“It’s a torture process for me, but yes, its about women and the women that have played a part in my life.
“And it’s telling my story.”
So she spoke of the strength and qualities of some of those women she has met since her ground- breaking transplants, including cardiologist Professor Anne Keogh, Sister of Mercy St Vincent’s nursing nun the late Sister Bernice, the charge sister in clinical care at St Vincents, Rosina Johnston.
While they have made her life more wonderful, Fiona Coote also has a simple message for the rest of us that is just as worthy.
“As far as I would say, it would be life is for living and on our paths we all have many choices but if we can make choices that encourage and support other women, and then if we need a hand it makes life so much easier,” she said.
Her life has never been easy, despite the spotlight and the celebrity that has surrounded her since she became a household name.
Fiona Coote was just a 14-year-old Rosary College school kid when she fell ill, told the only hope of life was a new heart, and then for days was the centre of all our prayers as we waited for the miracle.
On April 8, 1984, she became Australia’s youngest heart transplant recipient when the legendary Dr Victor Chang operated on the girl from Manilla at St Vincent’s Hospital in Sydney.
She’d been just another kid in class a couple of days before then,but we learnt in a short lesson all about the word cardiomyopathy, the heart disease where the heart doesn’t pump like it should.
Four years later Fiona was to undergo a second transplant under the same medical team.
While the first operation might have been the headline breaker, her second transplant four years later was so much harder for her, she says, for some different reasons.