Monthly Archives: November 2008

So no one actually explained to me that having your shoulder sliced open actually causes a modicum of pain.  Who’da thought?

Most of this week since Wednesday has thus been a write-off, what with the lack of ability to move around and use the arm in question and the slow-down caused by the Tramadol to eliminate the pain.  Still, I have to say it’s been nice to actually have some enforced down-time and not spend most of the days at my desk.

The time off has actually helped me to develop a new idea I’ve had for a screenplay I want to start work on, which is always welcome.  I’ve actually had the idea running around my head for a while, but it’s just been cementing itself a little more in my brain to the point where I feel I can start shaping it into something that can work.

With regards to anything else in life at the moment, I don’t really have a lot to say after three or four days of doing nothing, so this is – I guess – a fairly pointless blog, but is probably more of an attempt to atone for my lack of blogging over the previous couple of weeks.

Oh, and if you’re a Batman fan and you fancy a giggle, check these guys out.  Very funny.

So I’ve managed to get myself into trouble with… well… everyone this week, although I personally blame K for it, since it was her status update on Facebook which drove the minor frenzy on Wednesday.

Following my extremely positive annual review at Harefield a couple of weeks ago, Doc C lined me up to have my port-a-cath removed – that’s the small venous access device that sat under the skin on my shoulder and was used to pump my regular IVs into me when I was on them every few weeks, less painful and much less hassle than having longlines and cannulae.

Anyway, Doc C is really happy that I’ve progressed enough now that it can come out, basically saying that I’m not going to need IVs again, that to all intents and purposes, I’m “better”.

To my surprise, having thought it would take at least a month or two to sort out a port date, they phoned me last Thursday and arranged for me to come in on Wednesday and have it taken out by one of their surgeons – and who says the NHS isn’t fast?

So off I toddled, with Dad driving as I wasn’t too keen on ferrying myself back home after having my shoulder sliced open, own to Harefield on Wednesday morning, fully expecting a quick and painless procedure under a local anaethetic and then to be shipped off home.

Upon arrival and talking to the surgeon, however, i became clear that there was a large possibilty of the line causing problems with bleeding etc during the op, so he wanted to knock me out under general anaesthetic so I wouldn’t have to put up with the rather over-dramatic process of fixing things up once he’d cut me open.

Of course, the time before last that I ad a general, I ended up on intensive care – nothing to do with the anaesthetic, mind you – but this set alarm bells ringing for K, who posted an update on Facebook saying she was worried about me and my op.

Having thought it was only a minor, local thing, I hadn’t actually told anyone about going in to have it done, other than my ‘rents and K’s and the people I was supposed to be meeting with that lunchtime.  So, naturally, everyone who read the update panicked and starting sending all sorts of (lovely) concerned messages to K to find out what was going on.

I thought I’d help matters once I was straight-headed again yesterday by posting my own update apologising for not telling people.  Only then it got read by all the people who’d missed K’s status update and so still didn’t know, who then got the same level of worriedness about something that had been and gone and I got plied with even more (lovely) concerned emails and was once again berated for keeping it to myself.

So, for the record – apologies to everyone that I didn’t tell you it was going to happen and apologies to those people who we worried by not explaining ourselves properly.

Also for the record, everything went fine, there was no extra bleeding and my mini-lifeline that’s been in situ for over 13 years slid out nicely under the surgeon’s deft hands and now, presumably, lies in a pile of ash at the bottom of an incinerator.  Weird thought.

My shoulder is still pretty sore – hadn’t really thought that one through ahead of time, but it’s a bit obvious really – but I’ve got good painkillers to deal with it and I’m now able to walk about and generally use the arm, which is a good deal better than yesterday.

I solemnly swear from now on that any and all procedures that I know about in advance will be adequately diarised on here BEFORE they happen so that we don’t freak anyone else out.

Sorry.

One year ago, precise to the nearest hour (rounded up), I sat as I do now sitting up in the middle of the night while all about me are sleeping.  That night, 366 days ago (leap year, before you correct me), I wrote:

“I can only hope that [this new low] marks the nadir of my fortunes and that things are all-the-way upwards from here.”

as part of this post.  Little could I know that within 24 hours everything would have changed and that what I was writing then would prove to be so eminently prophetic.

I don’t know quite why I am unable to sleep this time – I know, thankfully, that it’s nothing to do with the intense physical struggle I was fighting a year ago, nor is it a concern about how imminent my death may prove to be – but I suspect that it’s the knowledge that a year ago today marked the point at which one person’s life ended and gave me the second chance I had craved.

I’ve never really struggled with the idea that for organ donation to be viable, the donor must be deceased – certainly in my case.  But something about an approaching anniversary makes you re-assess things you take for granted.  I suppose it’s why New Year brings so many resolutions.

More than that, though, I suspect it is the knowledge that over the last 12 months I’ve seen two friends lose their lives in the way I always imagined I’d lose mine and – just this week – a very close friend lost his 14-year-old son.  Standing on their doorstep to offer our support and help in any way we could, their grief was over-whelming.

I have been much blessed in my life, not least in that I have never lost anyone of my immediate family at an age where I was aware of the pain it caused all those close to me.  I’ve never fully appreciated the wrench, the true sickness inside, of losing a member of your family.  Of course I remember my Nana – just barely – and my Granddad, but I have no concept of their deaths when I was 3- and 5-years-old.  I remember more clearly the death of my Grandmother two years later, but only in as much as that Daddy was sad and I wasn’t allowed to go to the funeral.

Never before have I touched – or been touched – by such heavy, all-enveloping grief that weighs on the family like a leaden cloud, which rains down tears of desperation and confusion without any seeming hope of the oft-fated silver lining.  A grief which swallows people up and prevents them from seeing anything around them, or even in front of them.

It occurred to me, sometime after that doorstep encounter, that while my family and I were rushing to hospital a year ago this evening, another family were in the very first stages of just such an overwhelming feeling of loss and despair.  And now, one year on, they must be thinking back to that fateful day and wondering if anything more could have been done.

As I’ve documented on here previously, I know nothing of my donor, nor their family.  I can only imagine the circumstances under which they came to be in a position to save my life and mere conjecture is all I can muster towards how they dealt with it at the time.

As I prepare to celebrate the first of my second birthdays with a party on Thursday night, I am overcome with the thought of the loss someone has had to suffer for me to be here.  All I want is to know that whoever my donor may have been, they are smiling down on me now and are proud of what I have achieved since they gave me a second chance.

I want to know that they believe I am worthy of the gift they have given me, that I have done my best to make the very most of the lungs they bequeathed to me and that if they could, they would be telling the ones they left behind that I am fit to carry on in their stead.

19 November will live forever in my mind as the day my donor died, quite separate from 20th November – the day my new life began.  And I’m grateful to have the two separate days to honour – the one to mourn the passing of the person who saved my life and the second to give thanks for the life I’ve been given and to surround myself with my family and friends who make it all worthwhile and make me feel worthy.

I heard a quote from Nietsche on the radio today,

‘He that has a “why” to live can deal with almost any “how”‘

With the knowledge of the sacrifice that was made in my name and a determination to be the best I can be, “how” I live will never be an unconquerable hurdle, merely a method of honouring the “why”.

So obviously I’m hugely behind again, something I will try to rectify if I get half a chance at some point today – how likely that is I have no idea.

But I thought it important to jump on here to respond to the Organ Donor Task Force report on Presumed Consent (otherwise known as Opt-Out), which was published this morning and has concluded, after over 2 years of research, that it cannot reccommend Opt-Out at the current time.

There are all sorts of arguments for an against presumed consent and I don’t think it is possible to argue that it would undoubtedly increase the number of potential donors in this country were it introduced.  The key part of that sentence, however, is “potential donors” – unfortunately at the current time, the NHS cannot cope with any increases in the donor population without serious investment.  They are already running pretty close to capacity and without increased spending on intensive care beds, transplant coordinators, transplant surgery teams and all the other elements that need to be improved in the transplant network then it won’t actually see any rise in the number of transplants performed.

The good news is that as of last January, when the Organ Donor Task Force report into the transplant system as a whole was published, there is a nation-wide investment of £11million going into improve all of those things I’ve listed above, including a £4.5million public awareness campaign.

The key element of the presumed consent is that the family would have the right to over-ride the decisions made by the medical team if they believed that it was against the interest of their loved one, which could lead to donation being refused simply because the family did not know their loved ones wishes.  Opting in to organ donation is not only seen as a vital part of the “gift” of life by many recipients, it’s also the only way you can know for certain that a person wishes to donate.

The current chasm between the number of people who say they would donate their organs (90% of the UK) and those signed up to the organ donor register (25%) indicates just how powerful apathy can be.  If people prove equally apathetic about discussing and deciding their wishes under a system of presumed consent, it will lead to many more transplants being refused and more people dying on the waiting lists.

Yes, presumed consent can increase the pool of possible donors, but until we’ve sorted the infrastructure out first, there’s no point in causing the inevitable national outrage that would come with presumed consent.  Remember it’s always those who are least happy who shout the loudest.  Instead, let’s focus on getting as many people as we can signed up while the Government focuses on improving the service.  After all, if we can get 70% of the population signed up to the register, there’d be no need for a presumed consent law any more.

At this very moment right now, I was supposed to be standing on a sunny but slightly chilly street in the middle of Bletchley shooting my first short film as a director since 2003.  Instead, I’m sitting at home in a T-shirt (and jeans, you mucky-minded fellows) and writing this.

The course of true love never did run smooth, someone once kind of wrote (gotta hate people who paraphrase the greats, haven’t you?), and the course of navigating my way to and through my first love – film – is proving exceedingly bumpy.

The film that was scheduled for this weekend is a script I’m really proud of that I’m confident I can turn into a brilliant little film.  Sadly, although it’s been in the pipeline for months, it all fell-apart mid-week when the actress playing one of the two leads (in fact, one of the two parts) pulled out due to commitments early next week.

I spent a furious few days scrabbling around trying to find a replacement before, in a phone call with the producer on Thursday night, finally giving up the ghost and conceding that we’re better off to postpone the shoot until we can find the right girl, not just any girl, to fill the role.

It has caused me a lot of pain over the last couple of days to come so close to shooting and then see it slip away, but at least I’d not spent any money on it.  I’m in a difficult kind of limbo right now where I know in myself that I have the talent to direct, but I also know that to all appearances outside my own head I have nothing at all to show for it.  Let’s face it, no one wants to give a job to someone who has nothing to demonstrate that they are capable in any way whatsoever.  No matter how much I bullsh*t or try to talk my way through things, without demonstrable evidence to show people, there’s no reason for anyone to have any confidence in me.

Which is why it was so important to me to get at least this first short under my belt and then move on to other things.  Sadly, that’s not to be, for now.

I’ve spent a good couple of days moping about this now, but yesterday I managed to pick myself up and start looking at the other projects I’ve got going, which had somewhat fallen by the wayside in the build up to the One Under shoot.  This succeeded at least in shifting my brain from mope-mode to active-mode, which is always a good thing.

Then a funny thing happened.  Feeling restless and couped up this morning, I wandered down to the corner Tesco to pick up some bits and pieces (milk for tea being the most important) and as I was walking back up the hill to the flat, I flashed back to the time back in January/February when I first walked down to the shop having recently returned home from hospital and then my parents’ and discovering the true capabilities of my new puffers.

Walking back up the hill today was immeasurably easier and less hard work than that time all those months ago and it served to show me – and remind me – just how far I’ve come in the last 12 months.

Sure, I’ve not managed to make a film in my first 12 months, as had been my hope, but far from being the enormous downer that I’d raised it up to be, I realised that with the new lungs I’ve got and the new chance at life I’m enjoying, I need to focus on the bigger picture just as much.  To never lose site of the fact that this time last year I wasn’t even well enough to be considering making a film, let alone being disappointed that it all fell through at the last minute.

Filmmaking is undoubtedly important to me and it’s 100% what I want to do with myself.  There will be more opportunities to come, at first of my own making and then, hopefully, at the behest of others who recognise what I’m capable of.  Until then, it’s just a case of sitting back and thanking God for the gift I’ve been given and the life I can lead now.

The choices are all mine right now, and that includes my attitude.  So away with the moping and welcome the joy of expectation.

Ok, so I know I’m WAY behind on this at the moment, but I will endeavour to update a few of the days from last week sometime tomorrow or maybe today when I get back from my final shift at the Theatre – yes, I’m leaving.

It’s been a great week and I’ve got through a lot of cool stuff, but right now I’m in a mini-actress crisis for the short I’m shooting over the weekend.  I’ve now had two actresses attach themselves then bow out, through no fault of their own, but it’s left me a little high-and-dry with a shoot scheduled for this Saturday and Sunday.

Did some camera tests on Monday, which was great and I’ll try to blog about later.

The most significant thing is, ironically, something I can’t talk about at the moment, but I have the potential opportunity to produce one of the most exciting projects – no, scratch that, THE most exciting project – that has ever wandered through my vision.

I honestly can’t say anything about it now as I’m in really early negotiations and it could easily (too easily for my liking) all fall apart and not happen, so all I’ll say is that it’s a major documentary on an event of next year.

I promise I’ll be back to fill you in on the last week or so soon.