Way back when, in January 1974 British pop group The Hollies produced a hugely popular hit — with the chorus being: “Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe”.
It was a song that reached No 2 on the UK charts.
Twenty one years later, also in January, a quite remarkable human was born and the chorus of that song hits home particularly hard for Anchen van Dyk, who turns 30 in January 2025.
Diagnosed with debilitating cystic fibrosis (CF) at just three months old, every breath she took was literally a struggle for life!
That daily struggle lasted until October 13, 2018 when she finally underwent a double lung transplant at Groote Schuur Hospital before moving to UCT’s Private Academic Hospital for another 20 days.
The operation quite literally gave her a breath of fresh air — no longer was she completely entrapped by her own body’s limitations.
She’s taken baby steps ever since but, after a fair deal of persuasion, recently took part in the National Transplant Games at Coetzenburg, Stellenbosch.
Those games saw her “turning breathe into heave” and she set national age-group records in no fewer than three field events — the javelin, shot put and discus.
“There used to be quite a stigma surrounding CF,” said Cape Town-based Van Dyk. “People would say that you’d only live to be 16 ... today the life expectancy is 42.
“But make no doubt about it, every day is a gift and I must do what I can do.”
As a school-goer she made every effort to take part in sports. “I always loved sport and did action netball and ‘normal’ netball till about Grade 10 but I stopped playing because I felt I was letting the team down and got too tired ... so I threw my focus into cultural activities like eisteddfods and drama and theatres, speech choirs, and so on, and also wrote plays at high school.”
Despite all her adversity she went on to study somatology (the study of the human body, that focuses on the holistic and health-related treatment of skin and body conditions). She went on to add an advanced diploma in Dermal Aesthetics to have a NQF (national qualifications framework) 7 extra in 2020 during Covid.
“It was tough though, lots of my tasks were spent in hospitals, I was in and out all the time and eventually got a portacath [small medical device that’s surgically implanted under the skin to provide long-term access to a patient’s bloodstream] just so that I could walk around ‘normally’.
“During college and for the first two to three years of working I had a machine next to me all the time. Treatment was so draining, lots of antibiotics, physio, nebulisers, saline flushes, because CF also affects your sinuses very badly — in fact anywhere mucus is in the body, CF will affect it.”
At the age of 22 she’d had enough and was tired of going through so many different doctors. She saw a specialist at Groote Schuur, doctor (now professor) Gregory Louis Calligaro.
“One of the first things he said to me was: ‘How on earth are you still alive’ ... and that was taking a real hard line on my disease.
“My lung function was just 27% of capacity. He looked at me and counted off on his fingers saying ‘these are the 10 things we can do for you — if they don’t work, you will qualify for a lung transplant’.
“It was all so very hard to understand.”
Doctor and patient went through those 10 things between July 2017 and July 2018.
“I’m one of those people who push through sickness, knowing that people depend on me and one day I went to work and at lunchtime my mom came to check up on me, she already had a suitcase packed and we went straight to UCT.”
She said she experienced a sense of not actually dying but not really living either, with very little quality of life.
“The doctor sat next to me and asked me: ‘Is it time? Do you trust me?’
“And I said: yes, I trust you because you have done so much for me.”
A few months later she got the call that a pair of lungs had become available to her.
Nine hours on the operating table and she woke up with a new set of healthy lungs.
“It was so, so, sore because they cut you open horizontally from armpit to armpit, break your rib cage, and so on, and of course you have to learn to breathe all over again, because remember I was only using my lungs to the level of my collarbone. I remember thinking I was breathing like a little puppy.”
She still has to take “a ton of pills” daily to ensure her body doesn’t reject her new lungs, but it’s all worth it when one considers she ran her first Park Run two months after surgery and also summited the popular Lion’s Head Peak in Cape Town.
On her move to transplant sport: “I met a friend at gym and her mom had had a kidney transplant and I trained with her daughter, Esmarie. She put some positive pressure on me and I realised that I’m still healthy and must do things.”
Track events weren’t really her thing so she opted for things that she could keep pace with. “I had to learn them from scratch and javelin was particularly difficult.”
But she’s a go-getter and walked away with national age-group records in all three of her events. The bug has bitten now.
“Surprisingly in sport I don’t really have any real goals. I just took part, I never thought I’d qualify for nationals but now I want to go to Worlds [in Dresden, Germany in 2025). I need to requalify before December but it’s the busiest time of the year for me, so let’s see.”
So right now she’s juggling field events with her own business commitments. She runs her own Bespoke Skin Solutions company in Kenridge, Cape Town, and it’s the love of her life.
Humble to the core, she said: “I never want to be known as Anchen with cystic fibrosis. I want to be known as Anchen who got a good education, started her own business during Covid and work hard every day at changing people’s lives for the better.”
An introvert at heart she’s eternally grateful for the support of her mom, step-dad, father and partner as well as a tightly knit circle of friends.
“I wake up every morning and am grateful to be able to work to the best of my ability. I take one day at a time and those things I can’t control I leave up to God.”
When one considers her journey through life to where she is now, it’s hard not believe that Anchen van Dyk is truly something of a sporting angel on earth.
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