Crikey – that was all a bit of a roller-coaster, wasn’t it? I’m starting to feel like I slightly over-use that metaphor, but it I’ve now discovered it’s very definition.
Still, finding myself sat back in the bathroom where I was relaxing when my mother burst into the room, towel in hand to pluck me from the bath and whisk me off to Harefield not a month and a day ago brings a certain surreality to the whole thing. Not so much closure as openage: the start of a new life from the page I left the old one.
As Kati said in her last entry, I’ll be finding myself running to and fro to Harefield every morning for the next week or so for bloods and a doctor’s consultation, but it’s a small price to pay for being out of hospital and home for Christmas – not to mention, as Anna pointed out in the previous comments section, sleeping in a bed with a duvet!
It’s been a crazy last 4-and-a-half weeks, and I’m not out of the woods yet, or fully recovered by any means, but I’m home, I’m happy and I’ve got my family and loved ones around me and that’s all a guy can ask for.
I can’t begin to thank each and every one of you for the support you’ve given me through this whole wonderful, trying, exceptional, terrifying, beautiful ordeal. Words cannot express the strength and resolve you have all given me with your prayers, thoughts and words of wisdom and cheer. You have all played just as big a role in my recovery as any medical science has.
I fully intend to make the very most of my new life. I want to be able to say that if my donor’s family knew who I was and what I had done with my new life, they would be proud of me and comforted to know that the death of their loved one wasn’t wasted, but helped to save and transform a life which meant something.
To my donor: I can never thank you face-to-face, but if you’re there and you’re watching, be confident that you have given the greatest gift anyone can give and that I will not waste a second of the second life you’ve given me. God bless you and keep you in eternal life.