Archives: Improvement

I know, I know, I know – it’s been WAY too long since I last updated, but trust me, I’ve been busy.

I will endeavour to find some time over the weekend to give a full and proper account of the, frankly, crazy-busy and pretty momentous events of the last couple of weeks, but I just had to jump on for the last 5 minutes my brain is operating today to shout about Live Life Then Give Life, the award winning charity.

I’ve been somewhat remiss in not talking on here about our recent nomination for a Charity Times Award for Campaigning Team of the Year.  The Charity Times Awards is a prestigious charity-sector awards ceremony that recognises the best in not-for-profit work and those who support chartiable organisations.

Five of our six trustees managed to make it down to the Lancaster Hotel in London last night for the Black Tie dinner at which we were all shocked and delighted to be announced as winners in our catagory.

The judges said in their citation, “This was an outstanding campaign made up of many effective and innovative strands and appraoches, achieveing great sucess.”

We were all amazed to be thought of as the campaigning team of the year, although according to the sponsor there was only ever one winner, which is overwhelming and a great boost for all of us.

We had happily resigned ourselves to making the most of the PR opportunity that being nominated for such a renowned award in only our first year as a charity, so we were all overcome with emotion when we headed up to the stage to collect our awards.

The appalause and good will from the other charities at the ceremony made us realise how well thought of (and how much more well known than we had suspected) Live Life Then Give Life is.

To see Emily, Hal and Jen’s faces as our name was announced (and it’s a picture, let me tell you), check out the video here.

We partied long and hard into the night (although mostly alcohol-free) and came away buzzing.  We have all invested so much personally into this charity since we first got involved with Emily and Emma’s campaign back in 2006 and it’s indescribable what this recognition means to each and every one of us.  We are so aware of all the help we get from our supporters and our advocates, who go out there and tell their stories and help to increase awareness of our desperate need for more donors in this country.

Rest assured, though, we will not be sitting back and feeling chuffed that we’ve done our job now we’ve got an award – if anything, this has motivated each and every one of us to keep ploughing onwards.  In the words of friend, top blogger and independent filmmaking guru, Chris Jones, “Onwards and Upwards”.

This week we have been rudely invaded by the real world.  After 10 months of existing in a perfect little post-transplant bubble, the time has come to look at things that people out in the big wide beyond have to spend time looking at.

With K off to uni in 3 weeks and counting, she is, naturally, going to have to give up work.  The full-time commitment of the course, coupled with the 3-hour daily commute is going to sap every last bit of energy she has, making weekends a time for rest and recovery and not for the usual kind of student money-making that normally earns the bookworms a crust.

So it falls on me to start winning the bread for the house hold.  It’s a very strange position to be in, seeing as I haven’t been in paid employment since I left Northampton Theatres in April 2005, nearly three-and-a-half years ago.

One thing I’ve learned from friend-of-the-blog Emily is that returning straight into a ful-time job post-transplant is a bit of a no-no.  Although I now have more energy than I think I’ve ever had in my life (barring, maybe, my early years), that doesn’t automatically equate to being able to put up with the stamina required for a full-time job and the stresses and strains that go along with that.

Instead, I’m going to be looking for something smaller and more part-time, but then I hit the thorny issue of benefits.

At the moment, I’m still covered by incapacity benefits because I’ve been under doctor’s orders not to work.  The idea of incap is that in order to help you return to work, you are allowed to do a certain number of hours of paid work per week without incurring penalties on your benefits.  The trouble with incap is that once you pass the 16-hours-per-week threshold, you lose everything – there is no middle ground.

And it’s not just the incap that you lose.  Incap comes tied in with an entitlement to various other benefits including Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit, which basically means my rent and council tax are paid for me as my income isn’t high enough to cover them.

So, all-in-all, the loss of benefit will cost us in the region of £800 per month.  That’s an enormous gap to try to cover between working 16 hours per week on benefits and finding the rest of the money once you cross that line.  In effect, it means that you are forced to jump rom 16 hours per-week all the way up to a full-time 30-40 hour week with no middle ground and no safety net, beyond returning to incapacity benefit.

It sounds easy enough to try out full-time work and use the Incap as a fall-back option if you can’t cope, but that’s forgetting the psychological impact of going back to “illness”.  Everyone I know post-transplant has faught an incredible battle to get themselves back on their feat and rebuild new lives in the wake of a truly life-changing blessing.  What all that effort means, however, is that none of us want to return to the perception of “illness” that dogged us for years both before and initially post-transplant.

So the search for so-called “gainful” employment begins.  Where am I going to end up, who knows?  As long as it pays the bills, I have to be happy with it, but I would much rather have an opportunity to do the things I want to do with writing, filmmaking and educating than have to sit in a call-centre 37-hours a week.  Hopefully, the 16 hours I need to start off with will enable me to carry on with my personal projects and find a way to make them pay.

Watch this space!

Today was the wedding celebration for my cousin and his new wife after they got married in a low-key ceremony back in January and decided to wait to celebrate properly in the summer. I love my family to pieces and was so unbelievably happy to be there and celebrating with them, as well as meeting some relatives I’ve never met before and some I haven’t seen for years.

But my biggest problem was that I had people constantly moaning at me that I’ve let my blogging slip since my op. So this one is for everyone at the party who berated my lack of updates. And I would promise to update more often, but we all know it’s not going to hold any water.

Today started, rather incongruously, with a two-hour stint spent at the Rockingham Motor Speedway in Northamptonshire, just North of Corby. Way back at Christmas, bro and I had been bought a day’s introduction to single-seater oval driving, today being the first day we could synchronise our diaries to get it done.

Reading up on the event beforehand, I read this about it, which slightly deflated me. Following a pace car around a track didn’t seem like a whole lot of fun to me and 15 minutes didn’t seem like a huge amount of track time.

We got there plenty early and grabbed a cup of coffee to caffeine us up for the morning’s work, before being taken to the in-field paddock area and briefed about the cars, which were sat tantalisingly in front of the garage in the pit lane. We were a small group of just 4 drivers and 2 spectators, including video- and photographer, K. After our briefing we headed out to get kitted up and then wandered out into the pits to be assigned our cars.

Jumping into Number 13 was petrifying – not because of the number itself (I don’t hold any truck in superstitions), but simply cocooning yourself in something so small. It was quite claustrophobic to begin with, but luckily I had a few minutes to get myself settled after they’d explained the controls before we headed out.

We were split into two groups of two and I was directly behind the first pace car. Coming out of the pits and accelerating to modest-to-high speeds I may or may not have crunched the gearbox a little. It’s easy to do, what with the clutch being so heavy that I pushed myself further back into my seat every time I pressed it. Luckily, the beauty of an oval is that gear changes are non-existent save for when you’re coming in and out of the pits.

Following a professional driver, we lapped at a steady-but-fun pace until the orange lights started flashing around the track to signal an incident and we came back into the pits to collect the other two cars from the second group. It turns out that the front wing had flown off the second pace-car coming through the final turn, only just missing my bro in the process. I was quite glad it was him and not me.

On our next run, the pace gradually got quicker and quicker as the pace car brought us up to somewhere approaching race speeds. Had I not been following him, I’d have sworn it wasn’t possible to go that fast round the 4 turns of the oval, but being in prime position behind him, I got a perfect view of the lines he was taking and realised quickly that if his car did it, then my identical car would, too.

In fact, I was rather chuffed to see that the others couldn’t keep pace with us, dropping back so much that the pace car had to slow down to collect them again.

20 minutes in the car later, I was beginning to feel to exertion take its toll on my shoulders and arms from the forces involved in holding a steering wheel in a turn at over 100mph. Although the speedos were disabled in the car (to keep you focused on where you were going), we were told that the average speed of the runs would be approximately 120mph. It was unbelievably awesome and I love every minute of it. Far from my initial fears, I soon realised that I actually went faster behind the pace car than I would have gone on my own. And I certainly wouldn’t have driven that close to the wall.

Adrenaline rush done with, we jumped in the slightly-less powerful Mazda 6 we’d driven there and headed South to Shoeburyness, where we arrived at A&A’s place for the celebrations. My Mum’s brother were there as well as a cousin of hers, introducing me to my second cousin, whom I’ve never met, and her gorgeous pair of daughters.

My cousin’s brood (not A&A – that one’s still in-coming) all took a shine to K quickly and to me, too, after a while, although we have met them before – but when you’re 8 and 5 it’s hard to remember people, especially when you’re also trying to cope with the overloading of the senses brought about by an influx of people you’re never seen before. Their youngest, however, wasn’t so keen on us and would start crying as soon as she was handed over to anyone other than Mum, Grandma or Granddad. I did managed to have her for about 30 seconds at one point, before she realised that Mum had used the food-distraction method to fob her off on Uncle Oli and she cried foul.

It was such a great afternoon and evening. My family are all wonderfully close, even if we don’t see each other for long periods, we pick up where we left off. It’s always a joy to spend time with them all and catching up with those I hadn’t seen for years made me so happy. It’s wonderful to be able to properly share those family moments again.

Today was one of those days which, when you’re getting used to the idea of having new lungs and a new life, really remind you how special and wonderful a gift it really is. I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing the racing I’ve done today this time last year and the family day would have worn me out completely. Driving home from Southend tonight gave me pause to think about how little I’d have been able to do after nearly 6 hours at someone else’s house, playing and chatting and eating and drinking (nothing alcoholic, I must add, in case you were worried). I’ve never have managed it and a drive home, too, and certainly not when I’d been driving fast cars in the morning.

The gift of life is the greatest gift anyone can give or receive. It is the only gift that bears out the cliché of the gift that keeps on giving. I am blessed in so many ways and so grateful that I have so many opportunities to remember it.

Today has been a pretty impressively brilliant day.

It was another Harefield appointment, my first in six weeks after MC told me that it was a bit pointless coming back until they had clear data on whether my CMV had retreated for good or not.  So he had sent me away with instructions to send in bloods every 2 weeks to keep a check on things and that if I hit the 3 month mark with no adverse effects or without showing anything above a zero on my CMV then he’d take me off the Valganciclovir I’ve been on since May and see if my body will cope without it without submitting to CMV again.

Seeing him today with a month-and-a-half of clear results, he was suitable pleased and happy for me to drop my Valgan and continue with everything else, albeit being very much more aware and careful about the first signs of CMV infection, necessitated by the fact that CMV can very rapidly kick-start rejection of the not-very-good kind, which could do my serious damage.

That said, though, he came out with something I wasn’t expecting to hear at all.  Although I may feel like I’ve had a fair number of blips, he thinks I’m doing incredibly well and – going by his experience of CF patients post-transplant – thinks I now stand a better-than-average chance of 5-year survival.

At the time of my transplant, I was quoted statistics saying that 73% of people make it through the first year, and within that 27% that don’t are included people who may die on the table or suffer serious post-operative complications.  Once you stretch the survival period to 5-years, the odds stand at 50/50, but MC now believes that for me the benchmark can be shifted from 50/50 at 5 years to 50/50 to make 10 years.

Another decade of life is better than I think many of us dared to hope.  I said before my transplant if I’m given just six months of a new life I’d be happy.  Time enough to play with my Godsons, experience the things I’d not been able to do for breathlessness and lack of energy, learn to do things on a whim again.  Having slipped past that stage back in May, albeit in the middle of a CMV/EBV attack, I’ve felt contented with my lot, whatever is thrown at me next.  To know now that there’s a very real possibility of a future worth planning for is too incomparable for words.

I’m aware every day that someone, somewhere has lost someone they loved very dearly.  I just hope I can make enough use of the extra time I’ve been given to show them what a truly wonderful gift they have given not just me, but my family, too.

I figured I’ve taken enough time off fitness and exercise since my admission with CMV, so I’m back on the treadmill and all the other torture devices at the gym in a bid to make sure that all the weight I’m currently putting on goes on in the right ways, not just around my stomach and face as seems to be the case at the moment.

I surprised myself at how little of my aerobic capacity I had actually lost, I did a lot better on the bike and rower than I thought I was going to and then fitted in a really good upper-body resistance workout, which I’ll be aiming to do twice a week and also a twice-weekly lower-body work out on the day after the uppers. That’ll be Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday so I have 2 days rest between weights sessions for specific areas and then the weekend off.

I actually really enjoyed the session today and I hope that I’ll quickly pick up the gym-addiction that I had started to develop before my incarceration.

I also did a second Untouched photo-shoot with a friend from the Theatre today, which went really well – he’s very photogenic and we came away with some good shots and some fun ones, too. I’m really liking the look of the natural light and the challenge of getting the shot I need right there and then. I’m also getting more and more used to the intricate settings of my camera – learning how to use things I’ve always had on automatic before, but which now enable me to better control the image, which is vital when I can’t play with it after the fact.

Also chatted to J, the model, about setting up some Theatre/Film projects in the not-too-distant future: he’s like me, looking to occupy himself and to experiment with things in a small environment, but he’s on the acting side and I’m on the behind-the-camera side, which is quite a useful combination. I also think he may be as driven as I am, which will definitely help us spur ourselves along.

This afternoon I met with two of the old MK Youth Theatre who have set up their own project called In Vitro for their own production company, Thrust Theatre Company, which I’m incredibly impressed with. They’re very on-the-ball when it comes to the money side of things, having worked out a completely balanced budget and ways to raise the money quickly and easily. Budgeting is one of the hardest things to learn and get right when you don’t know a lot about production in theatre, so I’m really pleased that they’ve paid it so much attention and not just gone in blind with the hope they can put on a play somewhere.

The play itself, written by one of them and to be directed by the other, is also very good. It’s very “issue based”, but that’s no bad thing for a young people’s theatre group aiming at a certain market, and they have things to say on the issues which need to be listened to by some of the adult population in this country.

They’ve asked me to be involved, which I’d very much like to be – I’ll be going along to most of the rehearsals and being a sounding-board for their ideas and helping them through the process in any way they need, sort of like a mentor, I guess, which is a little scary as I’m sure I’m not old enough to be a mentor to anyone.

Still, it’s another project, another little bit of variety in my life and it’s something else to be interested in and excited about. Can’t wait.

What an awesome day today has been – one of the best since my transplant.

Today I achieved something I’d never have thought I could achieve and done something I never thought I’d see myself doing even before my transplant.

We had my Godson up for the day with his mum and dad at my ‘rents and another family of really close friends with two kids as well and we all traipsed across Willen lake to the high-rope course on the far side of the sports lake.

This thing is pretty epic – a collection of fairly challenging obstacles suspended around 20 feet above the ground on the first level, with an upper level twice that height.  All harnessed and hard-hatted up, we set off around the first level.

The interesting thing about the course is that it’s not really possible to get down once you’ve started, so by way of a tester they put the most intimidating obstacles first, so if you really, really don’t like it, you can turn back.  I must confess, halfway through traversing the 10′ wide section of climbing wall with the world’s tiniest footholds, I seriously considered it.

I’m glad I didn’t though, as the rest of the course was pure joy.  I only struggled at one point, which was a section which required excellent balance (not something I’m renowned for) and good upper-body strength (something which has yet to grace my new body).  With that out of the way, the rest of the course was *relatively* easy.

I was disappointed that the lower level required so much physical exertion that I didn’t have anything left in the tank to attempt the higher, more challenging level this time around, but it gives me a great incentive to build my strength and stamina back up and conquer it next time.

The final step of the course is a 50’ rope drop from a tower in the centre of the courses.  Hooked onto a decelerating wire, you step off a platform for a few moments of free-fall before the rope goes taught and the drum begins to slow you down, depositing you on your feet/butt at the bottom a couple of seconds later at a manageable speed.

Before my op, healthy or not, I wouldn’t not have dreamed of doing something like that in a million years.  To be honest, I’m still not entirely sure what possessed me to to it today, but I did.  I stood at the top, harnessed up and clipped on and wondered out loud what I was doing there before serenely stepping off the platform and dropping to the floor in a matter of seconds.  On the way down it was the most horrible thing I’ve ever done, but as soon as I hit the floor I wanted to go again.

Doing a course like that really rammed home once again the astonishing difference these new lungs have made to my life.  Even after completing it, I still had enough energy to go back to Mum and Dad’s and play in the garden with everyone, as we got through games of Butthead, Scatch and footie.  It’s an amazing feeling to finally be able to run around and play in the garden with people again.

I always said before my op that Transplant is a bit of a gamble – there’s no way of knowing how long it’s going to last for and what your quality of life is going to be like, but I said I’d be happy if all I got was an extra six months and the opportunity to play football with my Godsons again.  This weekend, as I ran and missed yet another perfectly weighted cross just wide of the far post, it occurred to me that I’ve now hit both of those milestones.  Everything I wanted before my transplant, I’ve got – I couldn’t be more blessed and feel more happy and content with my life than I do right now.

Transplant is amazing. Full stop.

Under pressure from outside sources (no names, Lisa), I have forced myself to my desk to write an update.  I had – honestly – been intending an update for a while, including some back-dated film reviews (it’s been a busy week on the film front) but just haven’t seemed to find the time to do it.

My energy is still coming in fits and starts.  After a busy and productive week last week, this week has been a little more relaxed and less work-focused.  The new issue of CF Talk is taking shape, but is now at a stage where I’m waiting for our writers to draft their articles and send them in, leaving me without a great deal to do other than sit and wait.

Live Life Then Give Life is going from strength to strength since our charity registration came through and there are a number of projects being mooted between us as I speak, sadly none of which I’m at liberty to disclose just now.  If you live in the Manchester area, though, what this space over the next couple of weeks because we may have something exciting to announce.

I have also got myself back on the writing wagon, having taken my Headliners screenplay up to 40 pages and still going, which had really excited me as I whenever a hospital is around and about I seem to lose a great chunk of my creativity and imagination.

In fairness, I suppose it’s not the hospital so much as the condition I’m in.  After all, if a hospital stay is called for it means I’m not doing well and if I’m not feeling well then, as has always been the case, my creativity and artistic expression is the first thing to go.

Next week I’m due to give a speech at the Ipswich Press Ball about CF, which I’m really looking forward to – black tie events always excite me, mostly because the old performer in me loves getting dressed up and being the centre of attention.  Unusually for me, I have actually written my speech this time.  It’s not long, only a couple of minutes, which I would normally busk my way through relying on my natural charm, wisdom and eloquence, but clearly my faith in myself has deserted me.

Actually, quite apart from this being a posher and more official deal to the kind of speech I’ve made in the past, I also had some strong ideas for the speech that I didn’t want to lose in the weeks building up to the speech.  In the process of getting my ideas down on paper I got carried away and ended up writing the whole thing.  After the ball, I’ll pop the text up on here for you all to peruse and tell me where I went wrong.

Other than that, not much has been happening, really.  Although looking back over what I’ve just written I realise I started by saying I’ve not been doing much but have now clearly proved I’ve actually been quite busy.

Next week is hopefully dedicated to CF Talk and preparing articles for submission to the designers, with a short break away in Ipswich at my Godfather’s place for a couple of days of proper chillage before the Ball.

Promise I’ll have more updates on the boring things soon, and won’t leave it so long.  Mind you, how often have I said that…?

Another trip to Harefield yesterday, this time just for a clinic visit. Was all a bit silly, really, since by the time they saw me in clinic they hadn’t had my blood results back, so they didn’t know if they needed to change any of my meds or do anything else, which meant the whole visit was a bit pointless. Apart, I suppose, from the fact that they can at least look at the blood work today to see if anything troubling has come up.

The last couple of days have been pretty busy and I’m feeling it catch up with me today. It’s a very odd feeling, different to my rest-periods from before. I can have a couple of days of being very busy and working flat-out, but then need to take a day off, but it all seems a little unpredictable at the moment. Before my op I had got used to the fact that if I did something, the next day would have to be a rest day. Now, though, sometimes I can get away with doing lots and other times it seems like I need to rest more than usual.

I’m sure this is all part and parcel of the recovery process, coupled with the fact that my body is still working it’s way back to full strength after the virus double-whammy of last month. What still boggles my mind, though, is that even when I’m tired and need a bit of rest, I can still do things. Before the transplant, if I was tired it was an all-encompassing tiredness that wouldn’t let up until I’d slept it off, no matter what time of day or night it was. Now, it’s more of a general slow-down – everything just takes a little longer and I don’t feel as sharp as I was, but I’m by no means bed-ridden.

What’s funny is that I kind of assume that this is the general “normal people” kind of tiredness, but since I’ve never experienced it before, I’ve no idea if it’s a “normal” thing or not – whether I’ll get used to it and stay like this or whether it’s a transplant thing that will change in time.

There are so many things to learn about a new body post-transplant that go way beyond just getting used to having breath in your lungs. I’m getting there, slowly but surely, and learning new things everyday. Even six months on, it’s still a journey of discovery and it’s still as exciting now as it was when I took my first steps back to my room on the ward.

It’s taken me a while to get around to writing about my admission for two weeks almost a month ago, but that’s because I’ve still not really managed to wrap my head around the whole deal.

The two weeks I spent on the ward in Harefield in the middle of May were the hardest two weeks of “inmate” time I’ve spent for a long time and I’m not entirely sure why. Perhaps it was something to do with being on an open ward, something I’ve only experienced once or twice in my life, despite numerous, often lengthy, hospital admissions. Perhaps it was because I was missing out on the holiday with a big group of friends that K and I had been planning for close on 3 months.

Above everything, though, I think I struggled more than I have for a while because something in my brain told me I was passed all this. My new lungs have had an amazing start. A minor hiccup after 2 weeks not withstanding, they’ve gone from strength to strength and my lung function has been steadily rising, my exercise tolerance going with it. I even completed the famed last mile of Tresco with my brother and started entertaining thoughts of doing the whole thing next year.

So I suppose I had kind of taken my eyes off the post-transplant complications ball and started to enjoy life without a second thought for whatever else was going on, assuming everything was tickety-boo. Which is, I suppose, a lesson in itself. While new lungs mean great new things, you can never take their health for granted and even though I’d been booming for the last three months, it doesn’t take much to send the body reeling.

The chest pains I’d been worried about were initially diagnosed as Gastritis, but when I saw the team at Harefield I had managed to spike a good-looking temperature to go with the pain and nausea, leaving them little choice but to admit me. For the first 24-48 hours the cause of my ailments seemed a mystery to the docs, until they got my CMV count back, at which point they were more contented, knowing that they knew how to deal with it now that it had been properly identified.

There’s something disconcerting about being given drugs intravenously which are so toxic the nurses have to wear gloves and the pregnant women aren’t even allowed to touch the packaging. Knowing they can’t go near while you watch it being pumped into your veins is pretty bizarre and something I’ve never got used to, despite a history of high-caliber potions in my time.

When I was moved to the open ward, which happened to coincide with K’s departure on the holiday with our friends (at my insistence, I must add, and under considerable duress) and I dropped into a pretty deep funk. It’s the lowest I’ve been since the darkest days of the early post-transplant period and there didn’t seem to be a whole lot going for me at the time.

I’m slightly ashamed of myself now for letting it all get on top of me so much, since at the end of the day I was still a good deal healthier than I had been not 6 months ago, but for some reason (or, I suppose, a myriad of reasons) I couldn’t raise my spirits at all.

Luckily, at Dad’s suggestion, I managed to secure a weekend release while the guys were all away. The ‘rents agreed to drive me in for my doses of anti-biotics twice a day, but I was free to go home for food, rest and over-night sleep, something I’d been getting very little of on the ward, what with the world’s loudest talker on one side and the telly addict on the other.

Eventually, thank goodness, my consultant, the amazing Doc C returned from his paternity leave in the middle of the next week and on his first round of the day told me I was free to head home as they expected my viral load to be low enough to no longer necessitate the use of the IV drugs, enabling a switch to the more home-friendly orals.

I hadn’t been happier than that afternoon when I got back to the flat just after K returned from the holiday and we could just chill out on the sofa and enjoy each other’s company again after nearly a week apart – pretty much the longest we’ve spent away from each other since we got together.

Getting used to the ups and downs of transplant is clearly taking me longer than I thought it would. My mind appears convinced that things can only go well, so any minor hiccup is a bigger deal than it ought to be because it carries with it something of a heavy shock value. I need to keep reminding myself that it was only 6 months ago that I had new lungs fitted and that I still have a way to go to fully recover, however good I may feel right now.

So I’m trying to take things a little more slowly, although how long that will last we’ll have to wait and see. The main thing for me at the moment is doing what I can to avoid what Doc C affectionately calls the “Superman complex”, whereby people (mostly men) post-transplant start to see themselves as indestructible and slacken off their meds and treatments. It’s hardly the way to say thank you for the greatest gift of all, so I’m determined to stay away from it and keep myself at my best.

It’s Oli, back again after my enforced 2 week absence.

This is only going to be a quick one, though, to shout out loud to everyone that I FINALLY ESCAPED.  I don’t know why, but the last two weeks have been two of the hardest I’ve experienced in quite a while.  I know the immediate post-op period was harder, but other than that, this has been the toughest hospital stay I’ve had in a long while.

I’ll try to write a fuller update and coverage of the last couple of weeks sometime tomorrow, but for now I just wanted to thank you all for your lovely comments, emails and text messages and to let you know that I’m very thankfully out in time to enjoy this weekend properly, feeling much better if a little tired from the lack of sleep in the Big House.

Hope everyone’s well, more updates soon.  And thanks to K for her updates again!