The thoughts, opinions, happenings, and just plain ramblings of a seemingly boring person.
Today marks one year since I had my liver transplant. It's hard to believe a year has gone by already, but looking back, a lot has happened in the past 12 months.
I commented to Des that it feels like the transplant wasn't that long ago, but other events, like getting on the NBN, seemed … Read more →
There's one word that fills an organ transplant recipient, or potential transplant recipient, with dread: 'rejection'.
TL;DR: I've just experienced an episode of rejection of my transplanted liver, but I seem to be coming out of it ok 🙂.
Before starting on the transplant process last year, I thought that organ rejection was an all-or-nothing thing. I thought that if rejection happens, it was like: 'well, good luck, go back on the list and hopefully you'll have a better time with another organ'.
That's not actually the case. Apparently, rejection is a common thing in the first … Read more →
So, nothing much happened in this past year, ey? 😂
Of course, this year can only be seen through the lens of the massive event in my life that was my liver transplant.
Now that we are also at the end of the decade, you could say that this whole decade has also been largely defined by my illness (diagnosed in 2010) and it's now hopefully-permanent solution (the transplant).
So, 2019 has been a massive rollercoaster of a year. I started a new job right at the beginning of the year, and only a few months into … Read more →
These are my tweets for 2019 (sans replies and retweets). All the URLs are still Twitter's 't.co' ones, as the Twitter API doesn't spit out the original URL text.
Here we are, at the end of the Disney 'sequel trilogy'. The whole thing has been a bit of a weird and unexpected experience. A bit of history first:
I first watched the original trilogy as a child, mainly on VHS tapes. I did not see the movies in a cinema until 1997 at the age of 14, when the Special Editions were released theatrically on the 20th anniversary of the original movie.
The prequel trilogy marked my coming of age. I was 16 when Episode I came out, and 22 when Revenge of the Sith was released.
So for … Read more →
I used the title of this post as the subject line for an email I recently sent to a group of friends. It was to update them on my post-transplant recovery, and it's such an apt description of it that I'm reusing for the same purpose here.
The recovery from my transplant has been exactly that: a road that I'm going down which has had its periods of nice straight driving, but also some unexpected turns, speed-bumps, and obstacles mixed in.
Things have largely settled down, but the recovery hasn't been totally smooth. In August I was admitted to hospital … Read more →
I promised in the post on receiving my liver transplant (please read that post first before continuing on with this one) that I would elaborate on the circumstances of getting the call for the transplant, as well as the hospital stay after the surgery. I'm a man of my word, so here it is!
Receiving the call was a bit of an unexpected experience. I was already in hospital when the news came through. I had been admitted into hospital the week before the transplant for an infection in my liver, and had already spent 4 nights there … Read more →
I think the term "life changing" gets thrown around a bit too freely these days. Up until now in my 36 years on this planet, I only considered a few events in my life as honestly 'life changing': meeting and marrying my wonderful wife, and the births of our children. Sure, other things have definitely been big events and pivot points, but I wouldn't classify them in the realm of 'life changing'.
However, a few weeks ago, I had another life changing event.
On the 17 June 2019, on our daughter Zoe's 1st birthday, I had a liver transplant.
Although … Read more →
TL;DR version: After spending most of this year jaundiced, I'm now on the liver transplant list.
This post has taken a fair bit of mental and emotional energy to write, both of which are in short supply at the moment, so please forgive me if it isn't up to my normal (sub-)standards.
To say that this year has been challenging in terms of my health would be the grossest of all understatements. It's been a while since I last mentioned my liver disease on this blog, because for the most part, it has been pretty uneventful. It's just been the … Read more →
Well, that sure was an... interesting... year! I can't complain that 2018 didn't have its fair share of big events, because it sure did. So big, in fact, that I'm actually writing these 'end of year' blog posts in the middle of January 2019 and pre-dating them back to December.
Of course, the biggest event was the arrival of our second child, Zoe, but others were still notable, including ending an old job and landing a new one.
Blogging was very sparse this year for a number of reasons, but the underlying one was lack of time. Almost every post … Read more →