This new year, one mom got two new organs and a new lease on life.

“The minute I woke up from surgery, literally instantly when I woke up — it’s so hard to put into words — I instantly felt that my life was given back to me,” said 33-year-old Sarah Camire, a mom to two young kids in Saco, Maine. “Within hours, my husband was telling me just my face was glowing, that like I looked like I looked before I got sick when my body was functioning on its own.”

Camire was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 2, and after giving birth to her second child, complications left her battling chronic kidney failure.

For years, her condition left her critically ill and fatigued, Camire said, missing both the little moments and big steps of her kids’ early years. Instead of taking her children to school, the mom said, she was off to dialysis first thing in the morning or too fatigued to be awake.

“Living for three years on dialysis, I desperately needed a kidney, just like thousands and thousands of people desperately need kidneys,” said Camire. “I knew it’s what I needed. It’s what I needed to continue to live and to continue to be a mom to my two children and a spouse.”

But Camire, who was treated at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, didn’t just get a kidney. She received a double transplant of a kidney and a pancreas in October, at once both curing the organ failure and her diabetes — allowing the young mom a powerful fresh start.

Camire explained that suddenly she could walk around the grocery store again. She could make her kids lunch. She could take them to see Santa.

“This Christmas was the most magical Christmas, because it was the first Christmas in many, many years,” she started, choking up before continuing, “I’m sorry — in many years that I could focus on my kids and not focus on how terrible I felt.”

The gift, she said, was the “most selfless thing that I’ve ever received in my life, and the gratitude I feel is unmatched.”

Camire isn’t alone in her fresh start this year; in 2024, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center transplanted a record number of pancreases for conditions like hers.

“We started doing simultaneous pancreas and kidney transplants about 30 years ago, and this program has really been growing,” said Martin Dib, Director of Hepatobiliary Surgery and Living Donor Liver Transplant at BIDMC. “In 2024, this year was a record year, because we performed the highest amount of pancreas transplants in the history of the program.”

Beth Israel hit the highest number of pancreas transplants of any program in New England for the past 30 years, Dib said.

Over the past five years, the hospital has done over 40 pancreas transplants, Dib said, with 11 in just the past year alone.

Because of the need to be on immunosuppression for the rest of their lives and major implications of organ transplant, Dib said, a pancreas transplant is not something the hospital offers to all diabetes patients.

But for those who qualify for the surgery, double transplant option can be a “huge benefit.”

“Many of of the patients who need kidney transplant, they don’t know that they can have a kidney and pancreas at the same time,” Dib said, “and what those benefits would be in terms of their quality of life, but also how much it would extend their lives and be able to stop all the deterioration of their organs.”

Doing the pancreas transplant with the kidney transplant, Dib said, preserves the kidney transplant for a longer period of time. The new pancreas cures the diabetes, he explained, stopping the deterioration of a number of organs and complications from the disease.

Camire urged anyone struggling with an illness like hers to take care of themselves and seek help.

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And organ donation, she said, is “incredible and selfless and beautiful.”

“‘Without an organ donor, there is no story, there’s no hope, and there’s no transplant. But because of them, life spring from death, sorrow turns to hope, and terrible loss becomes a gift of life,’” Camire read off a commonly shared quote among the organ donation community. “It literally sums up the experience that I felt, and the gratitude that I feel for such an amazing gift.”

Going forward into the new year, the young mom is developing plans for her future, including “first and foremost, be present with my children and their lives and make up for lost time” and seeking a career in public service.

“My life is is a life again,” Camire said. “It’s not just survival at this point. It’s living.”