A DYING mother-of-five who scaled cliffs beneath Edinburgh Castle to fasten a huge Yes banner to the rocks during the independence referendum campaign has made a desperate appeal on YouTube for an organ transplant.

Lindsay Jarrett, 45, spoke to The National last year to tell how getting involved in the Yes campaign had prolonged her life after she was told she was unlikely to live longer than a year when she was diagnosed in 2008 with an advanced and incurable stage of a genetic disease which had left her liver and lungs irreparably damaged.

Now the former Highland police inspector has made an emotional and frank video to share on the internet because she fears she may only have days to live.

Lindsay said it is probably too late for her now to get a transplant but wants people to be inspired by her story to register as an organ donor.

Despite her grave situation, Lindsay, from Kinlochleven, hasn’t lost her sense of humour because no matter how desperate she is for a transplant, she would think twice if she was offered Prime Minister Theresa May’s lungs.

She said: “When I was in hospital recently a doctor asked me if there was anything else he could do for me and I said if you find some useless b****** who doesn’t need their lungs, harvest them for me. He turned round and said how about Theresa May? I did have to laugh at that, although I said, 'Would that then make me a Tory – because I think I would actually rather not have them!'

"Go out there and sign up to be organ donors!”

On the morning of Saturday September 13 a bold Yes sign appeared on the rockface beneath Edinburgh Castle. Lindsay had scaled the cliff-face in the night and placed it there, climbing while carrying a four-litre tank of oxygen on continuous flow in her rucksack along with the foil Yes sign and ties to hold it in place.The National:

At first no-one knew who was behind this daring act of dedication to the Yes campaign and her deed became even more extraordinary after the identity of the climber was revealed and it turned out to be a disabled athlete with an incurable condition called Alpha-1 Antitrypsin Deficiency, which has led to her needing a double lung transplant.

Lindsay stopped medical treatment and found a new will to live by joining the battle for Scottish independence. She decided to place the YES banner under Edinburgh Castle as a direct message to Gordon Brown because she felt horribly deceived by him. She said he led her to believe that cross-border organ and blood donation would not be available, as it is now, if Scotland were independent.

Lindsay, who changed her surname to Watson after marrying in September, uses her married name instead of Jarrett in her YouTube appeal. She has never been placed on the waiting list for a transplant because doctors believed her to be fitter than she actually was. Hundreds of her Yes campaign followers are praying that she will be put on the list and be given a transplant in time to save her life.

She said: “I am now at a stage where I desperately need a lung transplant. Even if I was to be listed tomorrow the chances of me getting a transplant are very slim but let’s not lose that hope. Reality is that it’s probably not going to happen for me.

“I was always very athletic. I am on oxygen 24 hours a day but it hasn’t stopped me doing all the things I love with my children. I am now in a wheelchair. I don’t want to die, obviously, but I am dying.

“I am now in a position where the doctors believe I need to be transplanted now. I don’t have much time left.

"I could have been doing with being listed [on the transplant list] a couple of years ago but the doctors at the transplant centre in Newcastle obviously thought I was fitter and more able than my lungs actually were.”