Lidija Stojanović (35), an architectural engineer from Belgrade, became ill when she was only 11 years old, and the diagnosis was autoimmune hepatitis. From that moment onwards, she was aware of the cruel truth – a liver transplant was her only chance to live.
What followed were the gloomy days in hospital rooms, full of fear and sadness, and a fateful question that was always in the air: “God, will I ever receive a new liver?”
As at the time Serbia did not have a well-developed transplantation programme, she had to seek help in Italy. However, after the intervention and during the preparations for being put on the waiting list, there were complications, she got sepsis, and went into a coma.
The doctors in Italy thought Lidija stood no chance. But this brave girl triumphed over all the bad prognoses, and woke up from the coma on the fifth day.
She wanted to live, she said, smiling.
Six years after her diagnosis, Lidija finally saw that an organ transplantation programme was developed in Belgrade as well, and she was put on a waiting list in 2017.
“Everyone who is on that list or has had a transplant finds the wait by far the most difficult. Because you’re waiting for something that isn’t necessarily coming, and even if it is, you don’t now when. It’s as if you were in a sort of vacuum, and you’re fighting for air, but you just cannot breathe in. That’s when the telephone becomes an integral part of you, and each call from an unknown number is either a source of elation or disappointment. Every time you get a call, you think that’s the one, but it just isn’t coming. Time being time, it goes without asking how you are.”
The most important call took place on Epiphany Day
Lidija’s most important call, which she had long waited for, came a few months later, on Epiphany Day in 2018. Sadly, that night a young life was lost. And the liver of the deceased 20-year-old girl from Bijeljina was assessed by the doctors to be a match for Lidija.
“Early that morning, my mom called me and woke me up, asking me if I’d been called to have a transplant. I was sleepy, so I told her that they hadn’t, and then asked her, wondering, why she’d ask me that. She replied that she’d had a dream of sky full of stars and that, since she had the same wish every year on that day, she was convinced that they’d called me during the night.”
Two hours later she received a call from the A&E Centre.
“That day, two people were called, but there was only one organ. We sat together in a hospital room, cheering each other on and waiting for the doctors’ decision about who would go into surgery, and who would return home and wait for another call. They picked me that day. I don’t know how, but I knew that that call was mine.”
After the transplant, Lidija spent ten days at hospital, and it all turned out alright. Step by step, she returned to her normal life. She has a job, she has recently bought an apartment, she trains, travels, loves, and lives like any other completely healthy person. The only difference is that every morning Lidija takes her medication, but she doesn’t find it hard.
Ever since then – and it has been six years – not a day goes by without Lidija thinking about the girl whose liver she received. She said that she felt like she was part of her, and that she lives on through her, that because of her she tries every day to be a better person. She wanted her donor to be proud of her.
‘Leyla was very much like me’
She also kept thinking about her family, who had the superhuman strength to say “yes” at a point when their whole world came tumbling down.
“I’d been trying for a long time to find out the name of my donor and to thank her family. Finally, seven months ago, I was happy and honoured to find out who the girl whose liver I had received was. Her mom watched one of my guest appearances on TV, and as soon as she heard the date of my transplantation, she contacted me immediately. The girl was called Leyla Emšija, and she was very much like me. I’m immensely happy to finally be able to say thank-you to her mom, to let her know that I am well, and that I live a wonderful life thanks to her,” Lidija said.
‘Leyla’s mother is glad that I got a chance to live’
Leyla’s mom told Lidija that she was glad it was her that got the opportunity to live, and that she hadn’t thought for a moment when she was asked that night in January whether she would donate her only daughter’s organs.
“She instinctively said yes because she knew that Leyla would have wanted that. This is why I am here with my family today, and I will forever try to justify that decision and to tell our story hoping that the world will hear about a girl by the name of Leyla.”
‘I am not ashamed of my scar – it is a testament of my fight for life’
Two years ago, Lidija found the strength to publish photographs on Twitter that showed her scar, left after nine years before she’d gone into a coma due to sepsis at an Italian hospital in Palermo, and barely survived.
‘A single “yes” puts a comma on life rather than a full stop’
Lidija now takes every opportunity to raise awareness of the importance of donating and to tell those waiting for an organ not to lose hope.
“Donating organs is these people’s only salvation, and that’s why I think that it’s very important to talk about it and to encourage people to be donors, because that short ‘yes’ means a comma rather than a full stop for someone’s life. I think it’s important that we change the narrative, and that we don’t see donating organs as death, but rather as an extension of life and a new beginning. Our Association "Together For a New Life" has been fighting for years to increase the number of donors in Serbia, and to reach people through our story and make them understand what a humane act donating organs is. Our campaign, You’re Still My Trace, which we launched a year and a half ago, has borne some fruit, with the number of donors increasing compared to the previous two years. That number still isn’t good, but it gives us the drive to do the right thing and to fight for saving people’s lives,” Lidija said.
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