About the Author
Leonnee brings almost 20 years of lived experience navigating chronic illness and transplantation from the patient side. Her journey spans both kidney and heart transplantation, offering a unique perspective across different stages of complex care. As a patient, she understands the realities of diagnosis, treatment, waiting, and recovery.
As a mother and wife, she also speaks to the broader impact of chronic illness on families, relationships, and everyday life. Leonnee’s perspective is shaped not only by her personal experience, but also by the realities of accessing and navigating care in a rural setting.
Leonnee contributes a grounded, human perspective to discussions about healthcare and organ donation—highlighting what matters most beyond clinical outcomes, including communication, continuity of care, and emotional support. Her experience bridges personal insight and system awareness, helping to shape conversations around patient-centred care, family support, and the importance of embedding lived experience into how services are designed and delivered.
About the Book
Recipient is an intimate memoir of transplant, distance, and the strength required to endure both.
Spanning rural Australia and the hospital wards of the city, it brings readers inside the lived experience behind organ transplanation, where logistics are relentless, outcomes are uncertain, and resilience is forged.
At its heart, Recipient is about love, survival, and the lives that continue changed, complicated, and deeply meaningful.
And while transplant sits at the centre of it, this isn’t a book just for the medical or healthcare world. It’s simply an honest, entertaining, and deeply human story.
Why this book exists
This book was written to:
Raise awareness of the need for organ and tissue donors
Share the lived experience behind the statistics and the impact donation has on recipients
Honour donors and their families
Help others navigating chronic illness feel seen and understood
Improve health literacy and confidence within complex systems especially when you live in rural Australia.
And simply offer an insightful, engaging, and at times unexpectedly entertaining perspective on life.
What you’ll take from it
This is not just a medical story.
You will walk away with:
A clearer understanding of organ donation and transplantation
Insight into the realities of Australia’s health system
A lived perspective on chronic illness and caregiving, and
A sense of how to navigate, question, and advocate within that system
While grounded in serious subject matter, Recipient is not without light. Moments of humour are sprinkled throughout the complexity — because even in the hardest circumstances, life continues in all its forms.
A Note on Accuracy
The book reflects personal experiences and perspectives and is not intended as medical advice.
The book has been reviewed with input from clinical professionals to support medical accuracy while maintaining the integrity of lived experience.