Hi,

My name is Tom and I was born with Cystic Fibrosis. I fought it for as long as I could but eventually it was going to beat me. I was going to die unless I had a double lung transplant. 

Towards the end, my life was unbearable. For 2 years, I suffered through racking coughing fits that lasted for hours and hours. Eventually, I would simply pass out from exhaustion.  I would be woken to find my wife was cleaning all the blood, puss and vomit off me. I never ever contemplated suicide, but there were times where I wished I would just die.

3 years ago, on the 16th of August, I received a phone call from St Vincent's Hospital telling me they had an amazing set of lungs and that I was going to live.


Unfortunately, this meant that someone else had died in order to save my life.

Through a little detective work, I was able to discover that my donor was Mark Fowler.



Like me, he was a fighter, although our battles were very different. Incredibly, we actually had some mutual friends, and they tell me that we were quite similar. Indeed, some even say we looked a little similar.

Mark was an international Muay Thai kick boxer. When I first saw pictures of Mark I noticed he had tattoos on his shoulders, and doing a little research into this I found that Muay Thai tattoos are designed to give strength, protection and other attributes to the wearer.


I would like to honour Mark and to recognise the ongoing strength and protection he is giving me in a way I think is fitting. A tattoo.

I will never get to meet him. I will never get to say thank you. I will never be able to hug him and tell him how much I love him, but there is a part of him, living on inside me, and together we will fight on.

All left over funds will go to the Cystic Fibrosis foundation to help other sufferers who are waiting for their own sets of lungs. I would like to raise as much money as possible and help as many people as possible.

Thank you for your time and generosity.

Originally I had chosen Kel Tait as the artist for the tattoo, but after having a chat with her, we both agreed that she wasn't the artist for the job.
The new artist is Dean Carlyle. You can check out his work here: http://deancarlyletattoo.com/ or on his Facebook page here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.25023894...