This quote is from the end of my 'Year in Review' post for 2019:

Needless to say, 2020 and the entire 2020s are looking a whole lot more brighter for us after the events of 2019.

Although that was still accurate for me personally; for the wider world... not so much. 😅

2020 was a strange year for the whole world. I can't think of something (at least in my lifetime) that has affected nearly every person on the planet like the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has. 🦠

The year started off ok. I attended linux.conf.au 2020 at the Gold … Read more →

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 →

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!

The Call

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 →