A Montreal woman who is recovering from a double lung transplant is hoping to raise awareness about the disease that nearly killed her and the need to sign organ donor cards.

Three years ago, after Linda Paradis began to experience pain while taking deep breaths, she knew something was wrong.

Doctors tested her for several conditions for close to a year before finally diagnosing her with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis -- a condition that doctors still don’t understand well.

IPF causes scar tissue, or fibrosis, to build up in the lungs, shrinking their oxygen-intake abilities. Doctors don’t know what causes it, which is why it’s called idiopathic, says respirologist Dr. Julie Morisset, who specializes in IPF.

“Right now, the hypothesis that we have is that it's related to aging of the cells in the lungs. Because those cells are aging they can die out and all those cells create scarring in the lung and the lung gets really stiff,” she says.

It took a year for doctors to finally diagnose Paradis in part because IPF is so hard to detect. The symptoms of shortness of breath and coughing are common to many lung diseases, so narrowing in on the cause is difficult, says Morriset.

Once the disease begins, it can’t be stopped.The only cure is a lung transplant.

“After you get a diagnosis of IPF, patients are going to live an average three to five years. So it has a prognosis worse than many cancers,” Morriset says.

IPF is the same condition that Ottawa woman Helene Campbell was diagnosed with in 2011. She used the power of social media to help find her a lung donor and her infectious energy and dancing earned her an appearance on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

For Paradis, the disease took a toll quickly. She needed to be attached to an oxygen tank 24 hours a day and felt more and more exhausted every day.

But five months ago, she learned that a lung donor had been found. Today, after a successful transplant, she’s feeling great and is back to playing golf and rollerblading. But says she thinks about her donor and their family every day,

“I’m still very emotional about what I’ve gone through, that I’m still alive, that I’m still here and enjoying life fully,” she says.

While organ donations are anonymous, Transplant Quebec did pass on a note from Paradis to the donor’s family, allowing her to express her gratitude at being given a new lease on life and promising to take care of the lungs their loved one had given her.

This year, Paradis will be sharing her story at the Quebec Lung Association's big fundraising gala, which is focusing on raising awareness about IPF.

Paradis hopes to make the most of her second chance at life to help others and create awareness of a disease that she almost didn’t survive.

With a report from CTV Montreal’s Tania Krywiak