Archives: Transplant

It had been my intention to sit down at some point and fill in the blanks of the past months with an epic, multi-post entry to tell my tale up to today (or up to whenever I got around to posting).

Luckily for all of you guys who are still bumbling across the site in the vain hope for a new entry, I’ve decided against it.

There are many reasons why I should and shouldn’t give up a full account of the last 4-5 weeks during which time I’ve managed to post a grand total of 0 times.

Over the months since I started this blog just before Christmas, I’ve shared a lot of the ups and downs, highs and lows, peaks and troughs of everyday life and tried to use this site as a tool to force myself to keep a bit of perspective on the whole thing – life in general and my health.  Sitting here now, after quite possibly the worst month of my life, it seems strange to say it, but I want to focus on moving forward more than raking over the past, even the not-so-distant past.

So, what you get is the shortened, edited, cut-down, weight-watchers version:

At the end of May, after my birthday, I was running pretty low, energy-wise.  In the middle of this low, I managed to pick up a cold.  Fighting the cold was one thing, but as is almost inevitable with CF, the amount of time and energy my immune system was expending  on fighting the cold virus meant I had no defences left to look after things in my lungs.

Before you could say, “seriously guys, I don’t feel very well,” I had collected myself a roaring infection and an inability to extricate myself from my bed.

After a bit of family decision making, I returned to the warm and caring centre of the family fold for my Mum to switch back to nurse/carer role in looking after me 24/7.

Even that wasn’t enough, though and within a week I was on the ward  in Oxford, having spiked an impressive temperature and gathered the mother of all infection markers.

Levels of infection in the body are most easily assessed by measuring the levels of C-reactive Protein (CRP).  Don’t ask me what it is, I just know that it should, in a normal person, be in the 0-4 range and that in PWCF it’s frequently around the 10 level, as we are often fighting low-level infection constantly.  Anything over 10 gets worrying and 20-30+ is cause for proper concern.

When I was admitted to the ward, I was told that the labs doing my bloods had stopped their CRP count when they got to 160.

Now, while I should be monumentally freaked out by all of this, I still can’t help but feel slightly short-changed as my good friend Emily once managed to mark up an impressively gob-smacking score of 400 – but they obviously like her enough to keep counting and not just give up when they get past “bloody high”.  Oh well, Em’s always done things more impressively than me, anyway.

In the midst of all this, there were lots of antibiotics being hurled around, different combos being tried here and there and various other drugs being tossed in my direction.

Most upsettingly for me at the time was being put onto a short course of steroids, which, at the dosage they were giving me, all but removed me from the active transplant list – my one chink of light in a world of enveloping blackness was being blotted out and I had no control over it.

June has been a true nightmare month, in every sense of the word.  From beginning to end I was struggling through every single day and at times it seemed like there was nowhere to go.  It is, without doubt, the closest I have come to meeting my maker and there were times over the last few weeks when I have honestly believed that someone was waiting outside the door with a conveniently held bucket for kicking.

One of the reasons I can’t take myself into much more detail than I already have is that a lot of the last few weeks is already a haze, my mind working it’s magical ways to blot out the middle-ground of strife and tedium and leaving me with but a few key moments lodged in my brain.

Thankfully, most of those key moments are the ones which give me the spur to push onwards and upwards and to keep fighting for my transplant.  There have been times in the last month when I’ve been in a darker place than I’ve ever been, but the knowledge that it’s possible to pull back from that and to recover to some semblance of normality again is reassuring beyond expression.

That’s not to say life is all sunshine and roses now – there’s a lot of things which are still a struggle and my world can still be a lonely place at times.  But I’m still here, I’m still fighting and I’m still able to laugh – at myself and others.

It’s been fitting that over the course of my last battles I’ve not managed to post anything on here, because smiling was the last thing on my mind through most of it.  Now, though, I’ve got something of my mojo back, and I’m revving up for the run-in to my new life.

Bring on the lungs, baby, I’m ready to roll.

This is why I don’t like tiredness. My mini-rant (was it mini?) yesterday has been playing on my mind all day.

I stand by what I say, because it is all incredibly annoying and occasionally morale-sapping, but at the same time I feel a bit petulant for having brought it up in the first place. I suppose it’s the “suffer in silence” side of me coming out again.

Lest anyone get the wrong impression yesterday, I don’t hate my life. I have a huge number of very positive things going on in my life and I’m surrounded by wonderful people. I enjoy every day (some more than others) and like to make the most of what I can do with each one.

Although I may not be able to do the things I did this time last year, and although I may get a little down about being in a different situation which places more demands on my sense of sensible-ness than it has previously, I still manage to do the things that matter most to me and living in this way has given me a wonderful sense of my priorities in life.

I received an email today from someone who had obviously got my address from the message boards and wanted to ask me a couple of questions about life etc. In my reply to her, I realised just how much of a positive thing being on the transplant list can be.

Rapidly declining health, or a low-health plateau such as I’ve hit at the moment, is wonderful for really hammering home what really matters in your life – what you choose to expend your energy on.

To use an analogy, a day’s evergy is like a bottle of water: every day you wake up in the morning and you fill your 2 litre bottle up to the brim with fresh water. Over the course of the day, the various things you do each require different amounts of water. Make breakfast takes, say 100mls. Do some exercise and you’ve spent 500mls. Sit as your desk working for a few hours and it’s a few hundred mls more.

When you get the stage I’m at, suddenly you’ve not only got less water – a single litre, maybe – but it also takes more water to do things. Cooking a meal becomes 250mls, which is 1/4 of your daily allowance taken up already. Walking anywhere, for even the shortest amount of time may be up to 500mls – half your day’s worth gone. And on the worst days you can be doing as little as possible and still find that you’ve got a hole in the bottom of your bottle and you’re leaking energy all over your shoe.

So when I wake up and fill my bottle in the mornings now, I know that my ration is that much less than I’m used to, that I need to make sure that the water I am going to be pouring out of the bottle goes in the most sensible of places.

Sometimes it’s not even the most sensible place – sometimes it’s just the place that matters the most. But you know that if you’ve only got a finite amount of energy for the day, there’s no point wasting it on things of little consequence. It means you spend it on the things that really matter.

Yesterday, thanks to a busy weekend, I had a very small bottle of water. But I knew that the most important thing to me was to see and spend time with my Godson. I only manage a couple of hours before I ran myself dry, but those were two of the best, most enjoyable, most pleasure-focused hours that I’ve spent with my Godson for a long time – because I knew I was using my ration for him. It didn’t matter to me that the rest of the day was a total wash-out and that I would be incapable of doing anything else: I was more than happy to use my ration on him and him alone.

The thing I dislike most about tiredness is that loss of perspective that it delivers – how it takes away your ability to see things in the light you normally see things. It’s not about losing the facade, which I seemed so keenly aware of yesterday, it’s about losing the bright side – losing the very positivity which drives me forward each and every day.

I try to keep my water bottle as full as I can and I try to replenish it as frequently as possible. But some things are worth emptying it out for – and it’s when you realise what those things are that you really strike gold.

You know me – I’m really not a mean and nasty person, and they say you should be careful who you tread on when you’re going up lest you pass them again on your way down.

Since I very much hope I’m still on the way up, and since I very much hope that I’ve got lots more publicity left in me, I’ve ducked my head back below the parapet and removed all references to the exact publication I was referring to yesterday.

I know, I know, I’m weak and feeble and shouldn’t give a flying one about what people think of me, but the way I look at it is this: in the coming months I’m going to be looking to do a lot more awareness raising of Transplant and Organ Donation and I want as many people on-side as possible.  Surely a petty (albeit nicely amusing) rant about the quality of a paper’s stories shouldn’t get in the way of that.

At least now they’re not likely to find it on a random google search of the name and I shouldn’t find myself blacklisted next time the wonderful Paula sends out an immaculate press release she’s authored on my behalf.

I shudder to think of the low esteem some fellows writers and bloggers would feel about me reading this, but I suppose that’s just who I am – I need to be liked by everyone because I’m a very insecure and shallow person.  So there.

On the up side, I’ve had  some great ideas for promotion and publicity as well as a few short films and other projects I might just have on the burners right now.  Who knows what’ll become of them – and I’m not going to detail them here just yet, because we all know what happened last time I did that – but we’ll wait it out and see.

The sun took a long time to come out today.  I’m hoping it does better tomorrow.

It’s been a bit of a gap again since I last posted – I seem to have lost my blogging momentum, although I have a feeling it’s because the evenings are much harder for me now than they were. I used to write my blog posts right before I went to bed at 10 or 11 at night, but now I’m usually struggling quite a bit with breathlessness by then and sitting at the computer is about the last thing I want to do with my bed calling me.

Still, I’m sure I’ll work myself back into a groove somewhere.

I had intended to sit here this morning and launch off into another rant about Allied Respiratory (yup, still rubbish) but I’m not sure I can summon the energy or the bile to do it proper justice. I’m doing so well at the moment in terms of energy levels, happiness and all-round doing-things-ness that it seems silly to waste any of it venting my fury at Allied. And it’s such a glorious sunny day outside that I don’t want to spoil it with grumpiness.

I will say, however, that yesterday I was not quite for circumspect or forgiving when they failed to turn up with my oxygen delivery for the 2nd working day in a row. Having expected it on Friday, only to have it moved to Monday (that’s a weekend with no spare O2) and then pushed back another 24-hours yesterday, I was seething. Particularly as no one from Allied deigned to call me to tell me.

The way they treat their patients/customers/fools is completely reprehensible. When I phoned to ask about my delivery at 3pm and asked if anyone had been likely to call me to tell me not to wait in for it, I got a nice, curt, “No, I don’t expect so, not at this time in the afternoon.” Cheers guys.

Do they honestly think that just because I’m transplant-listed and dependent on 24-hour oxygen I don’t have anything better to do with my time than wait around for cylinders of oxygen to let me leave my house? It’s pathetic.

Anyway, I took it upon myself to draft them a letter expressing my regretful displeasure at the standards of the service they were offering and I eagerly await their response. Not that I’m expecting them to do anything.

But I’m not going to let that dominate things today (well, not unless they fail to deliver this morning and mean that I have to scrabble to find K an alternative lift to her appointment in Northampton which I’d not have enough oxygen to run her to). Instead, I’m going to enjoy looking out at the sunshine and contemplating the next move in my rather unhurried life.

The last week or so has been quite nice, as I’ve had nothing really to do or to focus on, having not come to any conclusion as to what I’m tackling next. I’ve just knuckled down to finishing off the next CF Talk, but most of the copy for that should be done by the end of the week.

I know, though, that if I don’t pick myself a project soon, I’m going to drift off into a little no-man’s-land of indecision and boredom and get into a vicious circle of boredom/tiredness/negativity.

The best thing about the last couple of weeks has been finally working out the ins and outs of my body as it is at the moment and finding the balance between activity and rest – knowing what I can and can’t manage and how to deal with whatever exertion I do undertake without running myself into the ground. It’s been a much longer and trickier learning process that last time I was doing it back in December, but I finally feel like I’ve grasped it now. Famous last words, I know, so keep your fingers crossed.

Now I’m off to sit and watch the clock tick round till Allied turns up with today’s delivery.

…a discharge makes.

It took a while, but I finally managed to get myself kicked off the ward yesterday afternoon.  Probably more significantly, it was at the prompting of the docs and not through me harrying them as much as possible to get them to let me go.  In fact, in contrast to my usual practice of starting my “let me out now” lobbying campaign from the moment I arrive on the ward,  I actually didn’t mention it all to the docs until they raised it with me.

The thing about hospitals is that they provoke mood swings more severe and frequent than turns of a steering wheel in a rally car.  It’s possible to go from happy-go-lucky, ain’t-the-world-gorgeous, by-jove-what-a-wonderful-place to  weight-of-the-world, deepest, darkest blackness in a matter of seconds, and it can take a similar amount of time to recover back to normality.

None of which helps much when you’re trying to make sense of the random and rapid variety of things going on in your head throughout the course of the day.

If I said that’s the main reason I’m happy to be out and to be comfortably ensconced back at home in my study in my PJ’s and dressing gown, I have to admit I’d be lying.  Above all, it’s just nice to be back in control of my own day – not having to rely on the timings of physios, doctors, nurses and ward staff to decide when I can and can’t sleep, how long I’m allowed to rest for and the quality of my rest periods.

Back home, everything is part of my own control.  Except, ironically, my chest. But I suppose you can’t have it all.

I still don’t feel 100% – in fact I’m still wavering around 70% at the moment, but it’s a whole lot easier to be positive about outcomes when you’re not staring at the same 4 walls for 18 hours a day, or being woken up to eat a plate of mush which used to be vegetables.

It’s alarming when you spend as much time looking on the bright side as I do to find yourself in a situation where you can’t see a chink of light, let alone a whole side of brightness.  I’m sure that the very fact of feeling down about the world enhances itself because I get annoyed with myself for letting it get on top of me – a self-perpetuating circle, I suppose.

Now I’m home I just have to concentrate on doing what’s best for me and not over-working myself in my bid to get back to normality.  The last time I came outof a lengthy stay in hospital, I went back to Mum and Dad’s to recouperate, but this time I’m trying to skip that step and stay at the flat with K.

The next few days will tell us whether that’s a good or bad decision – largely depending on whether or not I can discipline myself to remain inactive as long as I need to be.  The danger of being at home as opposed to Mum and Dad’s is that there is far too much temptation to “just do” this and that, and all the this’s and that’s soon add up to being way too much and I find myself over-exerted again.

The main thing is that being back home I feel much more myself – more easy about things and less penned in to someone else’s routine.  Now I’m back I feel like my mind’s my own again and while it’s naturally going to take me a while to wash away all the negative thoughts, they’re certainly going to seep away much quicker in this environment that they were ever likely to on a ward.

I want to say a huge thank you to all of you who’ve left me messages and sent me emails – it makes such a difference to know that there are people out there rooting for me and willing me on.  It’s hard to explain the feeling of knowing that someone’s getting something valuable from a blog like this – it’s part of the reason I set it up but also one of the things I least expected to actually happen with it.

If nothing else, I hope the last few weeks (and hopefully the next few) will help to show that no matter what lows you sink to in health – be it mental or physical – there’s always a way back.  I’m under no illusions that sooner or later the physical is going to become insurmountable, but with a positive mental attitude (oooh, the PMA cliche!) and the support of my family and friends, I aim to make sure that I make it “later” – and preferably long enough to get a fresh set of blowers.

Take care, all of you, and look after yourselves.  Every single one of you is important to someone, and chances are you’re more important to some people than you will ever know.  Never forget that you’re amazing.

Alright, love-in over.

Ups and downs are par for the course in life, and we all learn to live with our own particular roller-coasters and merry-go-rounds.

Right now, I’m in a pretty substantial dip, enclosed as I am in my hospital room with what appears to be very little day-to-day improvement or sign of change.

I’ve been in just under a week now and, while I do feel better than I did when I was admitted, I don’t feel like I’m somewhere the docs might describe as “better”.

What’s become worse over the last few days is my intense focus on my transplant and when it’s going to come.

For the last 20-odd months, I’ve lived with the ever-present likelihood of that crucial phone call at any time of the day or night, but it’s always been something which I’ve lived with in the background and not paid much heed to.

Now things are looking less rosey, and with landmark moments being missed and life being put on hold, the urgency has been brought to the fore and the once-in-a-while thoughts have turned to a daily dwelling.

What upsets me most about things at the moment, though, is how much this borderline obsession is changing me as a person.

Not only do I feel more negative than I have for a while – finding myself struggling to see the fun side of life or consider anything that might be conceived as residing in the “future” – but I’ve also developed what can only be described as a jealousy towards others.

One of my closest “net-friends”, with whom i’ve shared many of the bizarre, amusing, surreal and downright scary moments of the transplant process, has been granted the gift of life which had so long eluded her.

But rather than finding myself eagerly awaiting news of the new joys she’s discovering every day, I can’t bring myself to catch up on things because I am constantly hit by a wave of “what about me” feelings.

I don’t recognise this as a trait in myself – it’s just not me. I’m not a jealous person and i’ve always delighted in the triumphs of my friends, family and all those around me.

So why the change now? What is it about my life at the moment that has brought out parts of myself that I never knew I had?

They say you learn a lot about yourself in adversity and “they” are often right. But how much of my current mood and outlooked is a deep-rooted personality defect that’s been dormant for years and how much is it merely distorted through the prism of life-threatening illness and the hope of salvation?

I honestly don’t believe I’ve changed as a person, nor do I think that my current health-hurdles are insurmountable. Similarly, I don’t expect my run of negative thinking to go on forever, but see it merely as a darker period brought on by hospitalisation – an effect I’m all too aware of from past admissions (both recent and historic).

The trouble with lung damage and infection is that it’s incredibly hard to know when you can reasonably expect to regain your lost lung function after a bout of infection and when you have to accept that you’ve waved goodbye to the portion of lung for good.

Clearly, the lower the function in the first place, the less there is room for movement either way. So when lung function drops, it’s hard to keep the fatalistic wolf from the door – both physically and mentally.

I’m not giving up yet, though. I’ve been through tough times before and although I’ve never considered myself quite as close to kicking it as I have this time, I’m confident that I can get past it.

This is largely thanks to my ever honest and sensitive team at Oxford who know what goes through my head and aren’t afraid to tackle the issues – and fears – as they come up.

I may not be able to bring myself to stay fully abreast of a good friend’s post-transplant progress, but I can still remind myself how often things looked bleak before the big day arrived.

Everything comes to he who waits, and while my new lungs may be the longest-settling pint of Guiness in history, I’m sure I’ll soon be frustrating someone in my position with my tales of new wonder in my life.

On top of the new play, there are more things bubbling along in the Oli-melting pot at the moment, all grabbing my attention here, there and everywhere – that’s how I love it, though.

First off, and most importantly, there’s the Activ8 Youth Theatre show at Milton Keynes Theatre, which is coming up on April 22nd and is coming together really nicely in rehearsals at the moment. We’re currently chatting about marketing strategies and getting all the info on the show out to a wider audience than would normally support a Youth Theatre show, mostly because a) the kids and young people taking part really deserve a full house to show what they’ve achieved and b) it’s all in aid of the CF Trust.

So if you’ve nothing in your diary for April 22nd, click here NOW and book your tickets to come and see the show. It’s going to be a knock-out and the earlier you book, the better seats you’ll get, because they’re all priced at a fiver – that’s cheaper than a night at the cinema!

Beyond April, the LLTGL team have a couple of projects we’re starting to look at, including looking ahead to a repeat of Laughter for Life next March, following the immense success of this year’s show.

We’re also looking at the possibility of organising some kind of a rally – maybe in super-cheap cars – which would take place in early autumn and involve a jaunt around the British Isles in some form or other. And, naturally, would end in a nice big party when you reach the finish.

There’s lots of good ideas bouncing about and I think it’s something we’re going to pursue soon, but it’s just a case of nailing down the format and looking at logistics and things like that.

Keep your eyes peeled for more info as and when.

On top of all of that, I’ve got the new issue of CF Talk to turn around and get off to the designers so we can get it out at leat vaguely in the right timescale. OK, so it’s still going to be as late as ever, but I promise it’s going to be good.

If you’re not already on the mailing list to receive CF Talk and you’d like to (it’s free, from the CF Trust) just email here with your name and full address and we’ll make sure you get a copy.

So just a few bits and bobs going on for the moment – nothing too drastic.

Oh, and I also received an email from Bill Bryson yesterday, letting me know how hugely successfully the organ donor campaign has been going at Durham University, where he is currently chancellor. Not only that, but that he was taking the campaign idea to chancellors of all the other uni’s today to see if we can’t take it nationwide.

I met Bill around this time last year at the CF Trust’s Breathing Life Awards and immediately hi-jacked him for an interview with CF Talk at some point later in the year. Sure enough, he obliged only to happily and our brief 15-20 minute phone chat turned into nearly an hour.

In the middle of the call, while I was supposed to be interviewing him, I mentioned the fact that I was waiting for a transplant (it was actually in the context of a question about holiday destinations) and he turned the interview around and positively grilled me (in the nicest possible way) about transplants, the organ donor register and the problems that we have with donation in this country.

From then on, things seemed to take a life of their own and it only seemed that a light jogging was needed from Bill to his students for them to shoot off and go crazy with the idea – running off T-shirts and organising the campaign with amazing professionalism, it would seem.

Apparently, although I’ve yet to see the “merchandise”, it all centres around the hook, “My friend Oli…”. Being the naturally shy, introverted type that I am, I obviously feel very uncomfortable about all of this, and the prospect of yet more attention being focused not only on Transplant, but on me personally. However, sometimes in life you have to make personal sacrifices for a greater cause, and I feel that this is one of those times.

I mean, come on, a campaign named after me!?! Pretty soon it won’t be lack of portable oxygen keeping me in the house, it’ll be a head too big to go through the door….

Well… wow.

Over the course of the last 7 or 8 weeks since I first officially came on board the Laughter for Life project, I’ve sat down or laid in bed at night and thought about how it was going to go and ru all kinds of best-case/worst-case scenarios through my brain. But none of them came even close to last night.

It was, without doubt, one of the best nights of my life and one of my greatest achievements. I felt both proud and piviledge to be part of such a spectacular and succesful event and I can’t even begin to express my gratitude to all of those who were involved, helped out, donated or just encouraged us to do it.

Shattered now, yes, but boy was it worth it.

We didn’t have access to the space until 6 o’clock, so we turned up en masse at the venue around 5.30 to put our stuff down in our function room and lay out our battle plan. Emma, myself, Paula and Rose all took on various jobs without much discussion and everyone just seemed to fit in around what we were doing.

I don’t want this to be a stupidly prolonged thank you session, but I think it’s safe to say that without the assistance of the “significant others” – Brad, K and Julian – things would have been a lot more bumpy.

I left everyone to handle the front-of-house goings on and found my way to the auditorium and found Suze all ready and raring to go as our Stage Manager for the evening. I had no idea that she was going to be as busy as she was – having assured her it was just going to be a case of jogging each act with a 5 minute call before they were due on stage.

As it happened, she was completely invaluable, doing all the legwork that I couldn’t have done. I think our partnership for the night was rather like the proverbial swan, with me sitting serenly above the water looking calm and controlled and marshalling people here and there, whilst Suze paddled away furiously under the surface making sure everything I was marshalling was where it should be to be marshalled.

The acts all turned up in plenty of time (more of an achievement than you’d have thought, let me assure you) and were absolutely brilliant to a man. Kind, generous and fun to chat to, I managed to have a good giggle before we even got to the show itself.

I had Rob, my documentary cameraman, following me around getting all the madness on tape, so it’s going to be interesting to look back on it in a few month’s time and see just how calm I was (or wasn’t!) looking.

We had just over an hour to get everything set up, including rigging a follow spot, getting the band set up and sound-checked and giving the acts a chance to familiarise themselves with the space and the set-up.

They all wandered on stage from the green room just before we opened the house (let the audience in) and chatted with the band to arrange their walk-on music, which was great for them to be able to choose. The house band – Big Buzzard – were brilliant and added such a sheen of professionalism to the whole event.

They were something of a last-minute addition, having offered up their services at relatively short notice, but I’m so glad we took them up on their offer – they really added that extra dimension to the show.

The show itself was simply stunning. The entire bill was nothing short of hilarious and several times throughout the even I thought I was in danger of embarrassing myself with loss of bladder control. If I’d not be tied to an oxygen cylinder, I’d have been rolling in the aisles.

Bill Bailey strung the whole thing together perfectly – giving everyone perfectly distilled little pieces of his humour whilst linking between the acts.  Geoff Whiting, Glenn Wool and Rob Rouse tore through the first half and had me coughing with laughter the whole way.  After the break, I had managed to compose myself enough to be less of a distraction through Ian Stone and Dara O’Briain’s sets.

During the interval, I popped backstage to the Green Room to grab a fresh O2 cylinder – it being the nearest secure place to leave them through the show – and was planning on heading out front to catch up with all the various friends who’d made the effort to come along.

As it was, I ended up in a really long chat with Rob, Glenn, Dara and Ian about my O2 and then segued into CF and its various effects/characteristics.  They were all genuinely interested and keen to learn, and being the Ambassador I am, I’m never going to pass up an opportunity to educate people on CF!

After the show, I was keen to make sure everything got sorted backstage, but was hurriedly ushered off to make my presence at the after-show drinks reception felt.  Although I think what I actually ended up doing was making sure that Richard Madeley understood all of my gobbledigook on his crib sheet for the auction.

Emma stood up and started things off with a run of thank yous and talked for a bit about where the money we raised was going and what we were all here for.  I then followed up with a brief heartstring-plucker to get everyone in the mood to dig deep in their pockets for the auction itself.

I have to say I’d not done any prep for it apart from thinking about my opening line, and I was pretty impressed with what I came up with.  I knew I’d have to talk about some difficult stuff, but I think I’m so used to it now, it just rattles off without me having to think about it too much.

It seemed to set the tone well though, (“Thanks a f**king lot” was Richard’s response when he took the mic from me) and the auction went really well.  Considering all the lots we had were donated for nothing, everything we cleared was money straight in our boxes and we did a great run for 11 lots – over £1,800.

That figure will be swelled over the coming few days with cash from programme sales and the collecting buckets (somewhere in the region of £1,200), and individual donations (which is currently overr £1,000 and expected to rise) – all of which is to be added to our ticket sales, which is somewhere around £15,000.  All told, we’re looking pretty good to hit £20,000 for the whole night – an astounding and truly humbling amount of money.

If you’d like to donate, please please please do – you do it safe and securely (and anonymously, if you wish) at our Just Giving page here.

I think one of the biggest compliments of the night for me, though, was to hear today that there were people in the audience who had no idea they were at a charity gig at all – they had bought their tickets purely on the strength of the bill we presented (no pun intended) and when they realised it was for charity and learned about the cause, couldn’t wait to dig into their pockets and drop cash in our collecting buckets.

I said last week that this whole experience had taught me how wonderful people can be and to believe in the spirit of human nature and it’s only been reinforced over the last couple of days.

This whole event has been one of the greatest – and most rewarding – experiences of my life and I have to thank Emma and Emily not only for letting me be a part of the project they started, but for allowing me to feel so much a part of the team and the cause.

If you’re not already signed up to the organ donor register, you have time to do it now.  If you’ve just read through the whole of this blog entry, you clearly don’t have enough to do today, so you’ve got enough time to take out 2 minutes of your time to go to www.uktransplant.org.uk and sign up right now – it’s fast, it’s electronic and it could make a difference to up to 9 other people’s lives.

Don’t let your death be in vain, and don’t let the 400 people who died last year while waiting for a transplant have passed for nothing.  If there’s any message that should come from this weekend, it’s Live Life Then Give Life.

Three days and counting and the pace is non-stop.  The great thing about the whole thing now, though, is that we really are just dotting I’s and crosssing T’s on the event itself, plus chasing what media coverage we can over the next few days.

I found myself staring out of the pages of MK News yesterday, in a beautifully placed story on page 5 – sadly, it was with an awful old photo of me from one of the stories they’d run previously when they sent their photographer round.  They also managed to make the simplest and yet most glaring of sub-editing errors by spelling my name wrong in the headline.  I don’t know how on earth you spell it correctly all the way through the piece itself and still manage to get it wrong in the headline, but there you go.

I’ve yet to see a copy of today’s MK Citizen, but I’m hoping I got my ugly mug in there, too.  I had a call from BBC 3 Counties Radio this afternoon to ask me onto their breakfast show with Martyn Coote tomorrow morning, which is great.  I’ve been in there three times before, so they know me and it’s a nice, friendly place to stick my head into.

For those who want to listen, I’ll be on around 9.40am on the MK breakfast show (as opposed to the Luton/Beds/Herts one) which is on 94.7, 98 or 104.5FM or, possibly, at <a href=”http://www.bbc.co.uk/threecounties/local_radio/”>http://www.bbc.co.uk/threecounties/local_radio/</a> – although I’m not sure if this will offer you the option of the MK breakfast show, or just play the other one.

Technically, the show is coming together nicely – we’ve got our follow spot, and our follow spot op.  We’ve got our Stage Manager for the night, as well as a stand-by team of MK techies to help out if need be.  They’re actually paying customers coming to see the show, but I’ve warned them I may need to collar them for a hand during our SUPER-quick get-in on the night.

We’ve sent info packs out to all the acts about the night, with the running order, information on the campaign and general goodies (a pin-badge, no less!).

Most excitingly – and this is the bit that had me doing the closest thing I can to jumping up and down – we’ve secured a 2 tickets to see Avenue Q, the puppet musical in the West End, along with an exclusive, private 30-minute workshop with a cast member to see the puppets up close and learn how they go about bringing them to life on stage.  It’s an unbelievable lot (in my humble opinion!) and I’m so excited about it.

That said, we’ve actually managed to come up with a generally awesome collection of things to auction off at the VIP party – we should not only raise some really good money with the things we’ve got, but also offer people some really exclusive stuff for the cash they’re parting with.

Among other things, we’ve got an original artwork by an artist whose life has been transformed by a double lung transplant, a facial at a top London beauty salon, tickets to no less than 4 West End shows, including super-special extras to go with them, and the ultimate war-fighting day with a company which promises to supercede paintball in both value and realism.

It’s amazing how things are coming together and I’m getting more and more excited by the minute.

It’s going to be an amazing weekend and I can’t wait for it to be here.  Three sleeps till Laughter for Life! And remember, if you can’t be there, but you want to support us, you can donate through our Just Giving page, here.

Blimey, life moves at a hundred miles an hour sometimes, doesn’t it?

A friend asked me the otheer day how I think of things to put in this blog everyday – and I have to admit sometimes it does seem a little pointless to be writing when nothing much has happened.

And then you get days like today, where it’s ALL happened!

It all kicked off at 10am this morning when the phone woke us up.  Until today, I’ve been up and about by 8.30am every day for over 2 weeks – completely naturally, waking of my own accord.  But the first day I sleep in, it all kicks off.

Steve from Tin Racr Design was on the phone, asking if I’d got his proof of the programme through yet, which I had to confess I’d not seen because I wasn’t out of bed.  Hastily rolling out of bed, I plonked myself in front of the computer and checked my mails to discover not just the proof, but also an email from the printers we thought were handling the printing for us saying they could no longer do it.

To say I panicked would be overstating it slightly – I’m not really a panicky person –  but let’s say my calm took a bit of a dent.  Rolling K out of bed, I thrust the phone, a yellow pages and an outline of what we needed into her hands and got her dialling while I jumped on the job of proof-reading the awesome-looking programme.

In the middle of the chaos, other emails kept firing in from various sources, all seemingly demanding instant attention.  I can go days without getting any emails (well, ok, not at the moment) and usually you can sort them into various piles of urgency, but almost every one that came through today seemed to need an immediate response.

Understandably, with all my activity and the prospect of an exhausting rehearsal session at the Theatre tonight still to come, K was getting anxious that I pace myself and make sure I was keeping enough in my tank.

I pride myself on working well under pressure and although I had a couple of moments of dread at points today, I managed not only to address everything I needed to, but also to make sure I had enough time to have a proper lunch and take time to lie down in the afternoon to recharge before work.

As well as signing off on the programme, today has seen me: get hold of a follow-spot for the show, finalise two auction lots, get a sponsor for the programme (the legendary Dunham’s Solicitors in MK), confirm all the technical details with the venue and recruit a stage manager to handle the back-stage organisation for the show (well, nearly recruit, anyway, as it’s dependent on getting hold of someone else first – but we’re nearly there).

Not only that, but I’ve had a three-hour rehearsal at MKT for the Youth Theatre show, including an hour-and-a-half working solely with my three wonderful Hamlet cast members who have taken to the whole thing so much better than I could possibly have hoped.

Shakespeare is not an easy thing to grasp and there’s a lot of nuance and little touches to the text which can take an age to go over and discover in the rehearsal process.  I was so happy tonight to find that the cast have already got a good grasp of the text, but also that they are keen to share ideas and work with me and with each other to find a balance between their characters.

It’s been a long time since I’ve worked specifically as a director in a rehearsal setting and it felt great to be putting something together again – I realised tonight just how much I miss that area of the Theatre and how much more I want to do down that avenue.

On top of which, I also delivered the final part of the piece I’ve written to open the first and second acts of the show and it went down really well with the cast, which is always a good place to start.  I was concerned it might need a bit of redrafting, which would have been a headache considering how limited the rehearsal time now is, but it’s actually looking like it’s going to be OK as-is.

And now I find myself back home in front of my inbox again (with another 12 emails come through since I left the house at 5.30 tonight) and discovering a whole new load of greatness to polish off my day.

We’ve got some really good media interest, which will hopefully convert into coverage, and a few more pieces of the auction have fallen into place – including securing a workshop for people to see behind the scenes on Avenue Q, which I’m so insanely excited about it’s funny.

I’m now tired enough to go to sleep almost immediately, but I’m also pleased that I don’t feel totally exhausted.  I suppose the true measure is going to be how I feel when I roll out of bed and drag myself over to Oxford for clinic in the morning, but I think I’ve got the Big Guy on my side this week and he’s making sure I’ve got the fuel inside to see me through the weekend.

That said, I’m not taking anything for granted: I know I have to look after myself and pace myself or I’m not going to be able to make the most of what’s going to be one of the best night’s of my life.

Four days and counting!