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 →

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 →

Two weeks ago, Des and I welcomed into the world our second child, Zoe.

She gave us an awful scare when she came out: not breathing, and it made the midwife trigger a code blue in the birthing suites. But after she had the attention of everyone in the ward, and had her chest pumped a few times, she came around and turned a normal colour.

The name Zoe means 'life' in Greek, and it's not a coincidence that our children's names essentially mean 'life' and 'resurrection'. However, it is a cool coincidence that our children are A to Z … Read more →

For me, 2017 continued in mostly the same way as 2016 did. Although I stayed out of hospital, my health has still been a day-by-day thing. Probably the biggest moment in that journey this year was the doctors telling me that a liver transplant is now a matter of 'when' not 'if'. I'm still not on the list yet, but it's now just a matter of time.

On a more cheery note, I have otherwise enjoyed this year. Although I haven't blogged much (probably my leanest on record!), below are the highlights of my blog posts in 2017.

March… Read more →