MY CHRISTMAS MIRACLE

Every 6th of December, I bow my head in thanksgiving and revisit the memories all over again, because that day marks 12 impossible, breathtaking, heaven-kissed years since the day a donor — a generous stranger's liver — breathed life back into me.

- By ANA AMIGO-ANTONIO

We called it our Christmas Miracle.In 2004, I was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer called polycythemia vera. Although my hematologist/ oncologist managed my condition, I was constantly in and out of the hospital.

Fast forward to June 2013. I started feeling something unusual — symptoms different from the normal ones I typically had. I felt terribly weak and extremely sick, so I went to the emergency room. Much to my surprise, I was diagnosed with an even rarer blood condition called Budd-Chiari. What was worse was that it had already gravely affected my liver. My liver was no longer functioning.

Twelve years ago, a donor's gift saved my life. I'm still here — grateful, humbled, and living my miracle.

A few days after the first emergency room visit, I was again rushed in an ambulance and admitted to the ICU. For six straight months, I lived inside the hospital walls, tethered to machines, drifting in and out of the ICU while pain tried to claim every inch of my body and soul. I watched the trees outside my window surrender their summer green glory. By autumn, they dropped their leaves one by one, then stood bare through the dead of winter... waiting, just like me, for the spring that felt like it might never come.