Three years ago, Amanda Chalmers was on oxygen 24/7 and had a limited quality of life.

Now the 27-year-old jewellery designer is playing hockey regularly, has done a marathon and has just got back from climbing up four volcanoes in Ecuador.

In so doing, she thinks she has set a record for the highest ascent by a female following a double lung transplant.

Amanda, whose parents Rod and Penny live at Wittersham, where she grew up, has cystic fibrosis.

She underwent a life-saving double lung transplant on September 29, 2012 – and has not looked back.

Now she is urging people to go on the organ donor register and let their families know their wishes.

“Without the surgery, I would not be here now,” said Amanda, who now lives and works in Brighton.

“It has given me my life back. I am playing hockey, which I had not been able to do for some time, and can do things I couldn’t do before.”

Amanda went to the King’s School, Canterbury, and grew up healthily.

But while at university in Brighton, she went travelling in Vietnam and Cambodia and picked up a lung problem.

“My health deteriorated from then,” she said. “I had to give up sports and ended up on oxygen 24/7 – so if I went out, I had to take oxygen with me.

“I struggled to get up stairs and could not walk very far without getting out of breath. I was also diabetic from the medicines I was taking.”

Amanda was put on a transplant list and only had to wait four months before a donor set of lungs became available.

She had the operation at Harefield Hospital and, once she had recovered, started to build up her strength.

“I was off oxygen after a couple of weeks, and from then could do anything,” she said. “I got my life back completely.

“I have started playing hockey again, which I had not done since university.”

Amanda took part in the British Transplant Games and did the Brighton Marathon last year.

“I did it very slowly – but I completed it.”