Jazz singer Alex Pangman is back in the swing of life after a double lung transplant.
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After eight hours of surgery, Alex Pangman slowly came out of her foggy, anaesthetized state with one song on her mind: “What a Difference a Day Makes.” What a difference indeed. The 33-year-old jazz singer had just undergone a life-saving double lung transplant at the Toronto General Hospital. Earlier that day, she had received the phone call she and her husband, “Col.” Tom Parker, had been waiting for since she was placed on the transplant list in June 2008. Pangman says that as she raced to the hospital in a cab, her heart was pounding. “The doctor came in to check me out. Once I got the green light for surgery, he took a Sharpie and signed his initials on my chest. By 1 p.m., I was being wheeled into the operating room. It was surreal. I was looking at my dad, my mom and my husband for maybe the last time. I was filled with fear but also hope. In the room, I said something stupid like ‘Hi, folks! I’m a singer, so please be careful when you’re passing tubes down my throat!’”
Pangman, who has been nicknamed “Canada’s sweetheart of swing,” has been singing since her early teens, when she discovered the music of ’20s and ’30s jazz legends like Mildred Bailey and Louis Armstrong. The self-taught musician went on to release four CDs with her band, The Alleycats. Throughout this time, she kept her battle with cystic fibrosis a secret. “The blind blues musician is sort of romantic,” she explains. “I didn’t feel that the image of a jazz singer coughing up blood between songs was that poetic. But I always felt that if some miracle happened and I got new lungs, it would be my responsibility to spread the word about organ donation and how it can change lives.”
See how Pangman marked her operation's one-year anniversary on the next page ...
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