In 2019, Shweta Bafna was suffering from end stage lung disease, along with fibrosing ILD and chronic hypersensitivity pneumonitis, requiring three litres/minute of oxygen. While on the waitlist for a lung transplant, she contracted Covid-19 and her oxygen requirement rose to 5 litres/min, upto 10 L/min during activity. “I couldn’t walk, talk, or do anything because of the breathlessness,” she recounts.

After recovering from COVID-19, she was asked to undergo a bilateral lung transplant, and on May 27, became the city’s first COVID-19 patient to undergo the operation. The 46-year-old mother of two credits her doctors, family and friends for standing by her and helping her recover. “First of all, I would like to thank my god,” she says. “I am really thankful to my family, who I wouldn’t be able to do this without, and to the whole team of doctors, and the donor, who gave me my life back.”