内容摘要："We lived near the River Thames. When the war broke out, nothing really happened for a few months, and then one Saturday we were sitting around the kitchen table and we heard the planes coming up the river. They started bombing us," she remembers.

"We lived near the River Thames. When the war broke out, nothing really happened for a few months, and then one Saturday we were sitting around the kitchen table and we heard the planes coming up the river. They started bombing us," she remembers.

However, part of the problem with liver disease is that there are often no initial symptoms.with end-stage liver disease don’t know anything about it until they are admitted to hospital with symptoms such as jaundice, fluid retention and abnormal bleeding.

That is what happened to Emma Jones, 39, originally from north Wales. I met her 15 months after her successful liver transplant.Like me, Emma was a social drinker, with a successful career and vibrant social life. But during the Covid lockdowns things spiralled for her - at the worst point, she was drinking three bottles of wine a day.Emma was admitted to hospital where she found out she was in end-stage liver disease. She was given less than 36 hours to live.

Miraculously, she pulled through and - after fulfilling the required six months of sobriety - got the transplant she so desperately needed.Emma’s recovery is ongoing and is not without major life changes. She will be on anti-rejection drugs for the rest of her life and is immunosuppressed, meaning it is harder for her body to fight infections and disease.

But she is alive, well, and says she is in the best place she has ever been. I find her positivity and determination infectious.

According to the most recent ONS statistics, from 2018, liver disease is consistently among the top three causes of death each year among women aged 39-45."My brother was a Royal Marines Commando, the other was a Spitfire mechanic, so I wanted to do something, too," she says.

Eileen, from Sewards End, near Saffron Walden, Essex, was sent to a farm at Takeley, near what is now Stansted Airport, where she lived in a hostel with 16 other girls."Growing up with two brothers, I wasn't used to being with a group of girls, but I absolutely loved it," she says.

Eileen had grown up in the East End of London and left school "with not much of an education" at 14."We lived near the River Thames. When the war broke out, nothing really happened for a few months, and then one Saturday we were sitting around the kitchen table and we heard the planes coming up the river. They started bombing us," she remembers.