Dad says seeing daughters marry ‘is a gift from my heart donor’

Dilated cardiomyopathy is a disease that causes the heart’s muscle wall to stretch and become thin, external, making it harder to pump blood around the body.

In the early stages of the disease Mr Sturman lived a normal life, but as the symptoms got worse, he suffered multiple cardiac arrests.

“It was incredibly difficult because every day I left Paul I was hoping for that phone call, hoping that someone would say ‘we’ve found Paul a heart’,” said Mrs Sturman.

“But equally I was almost wishing someone to die. It was an incredibly guilty feeling.”

Mr Sturman was on an urgent transplant for list just three days before a suitable donor was found.

He spent about 10 weeks at Royal Papworth Hospital in Cambridge and had to learn to eat and speak again following nerve damage sustained during surgery.