Hello – yet another new author.  I’m the dad bit of Oli’s “‘rents”.

Oli will shortly be posting another bolg to say how rubbish Christmas was and how he spoiled it for everyone.  I just wanted to get in first.

By way of news, Oli is not writing because he’s back in Harefield for tonight/a little while.  Nothing drastic, just problems getting the dosage of immunosuppressants right.  At the moment they’re way too high, which is leaving Oli desperately nauseous.

So he’s going to tell you that Christmas Day was ruined by him feeling sick all day, and Boxing Day wrecked by his going to Harefield in the morning, being very sick on the way and never coming home.

 Of course, Oli is right: (Oli is always right).  Christmas Day was completely disrupted by Oli constantlyjust popping upstairs for a rest or a nap.  Probably only Emily or the other transplant survivor readers will pick up on the significance of ‘just popping upstairs’.  It wasa shame he needed to, but it brings tears to the eyes to think that he can ‘just pop up’ the 10 steps which 6 weeks ago were an almost insurmountable mountain.

And yes, how rubbish was Christmas!?!  It would have been so much more fun to have been lugging oxygen cylinders round the house, to have waited an hour or more in the morning while Oli did his nebs, and his physio, and generally gathered sufficient strength to come and join us, to have an Oli who could only just make it from the living room to the table for lunch.  Without the transplant, we could have had hours of fun thinking about the fact that this would certainly have been our last ever family Christmas.

 We’ve just been given every Christmas, birthday, Easter and New Year gift we could ever wish for for a lifetime, and although we’re sad that Oli wasn’t quite well enough to enjoy it to the full, nothing, but nothing could have stopped it being the greatest Christmas we’ve ever had.

I’ll leave it to Oli to explain just how bad it was.