Sunday 1st to Monday 9th September

Such big weeds have been growing like mad by the side of my garden.

This was me trying to get them out!

I now have a bad back – again 😖

Today is International PBC Day.

It’s a bit far for me to go to join the walk in Edinburgh so this afternoon I did my own walk. Just over 3 miles 👍 in the warm September sunshine ☀️ With a quick stop for a pretend go on the gym equipment in the local park!

Its Organ Donation Week.

Here’s a throwback pic of me when I was recovering in the Queen Elizabeth Hospital Birmingham.

Goodness me when I think back to those tough times 😖

And now I’m back nagging my family 🤪

Please join the NHS Organ Donor Register today if you haven’t done so already, ask everyone you know to join up too, and then all share your wishes with your family and friends. Make it easier for them at a tough time, as they have the final decision remember.

Thank you to my own two donors 💗💙 and their families.

Sunday 4th to Saturday 31st August

I’ve just been plodding my way through August.

I’m just SO tired all the time, even when I first wake up in the morning 😴

Some days when I get back from work I’ve even been letting myself have half an hour’s nap in an attempt to feel slightly better for the evening.

Every single thing is so much harder to get through and so much more of an effort to do when you’re feeling so tired all the time. It really does my head in. There is so many things that I want to do …

I think I had one of the little viruses that I seem to get from time to time as I didn’t feel too good for a few days. I was determined that I would still get myself to The Big Feastival though to see Lewis Capaldi however bad I felt!

We had a really good weekend there. The weather was just SO hot.

We were right down at the front for Lewis, we were amongst the crowd raving to Grandmaster Flash, I loved that. Jess Glynne was good too. Then there was Elbow. I still love watching Alex James doing the late night dj set with his son Geronimo and the silent disco is such good fun 💃

I had a good time 😃

And then August ended for me with a big blister!

I went for my regular skin check appointment at the Churchill Hospital in Oxford. I have this because of the immunosuppressive medication that I need to take. I am at a higher risk of getting skin cancer.

They first found solar keratoses (which are rough patches of skin caused by damage from years of sun exposure) on my arm a couple of years ago now I think.

‘They aren’t usually a serious problem and can go away on their own, but it’s important to get them checked as there’s a chance they might turn into skin cancer at some point.’

Because mine didn’t seem to have gone away I unexpectedly ended up having cryotherapy – ‘the application of extreme cold to destroy abnormal or diseased tissue’

And as a result my arm soon ended up looking like this!

😱

Apart from a sore arm I did enjoy my hospital appointment for once. And this is because I saw my dad’s younger brother there, who I haven’t seen for a couple of years. It made me feel very sad because my dad is no longer with us (nor my mum and I miss them both so much 😰) But it also made me feel happy while we were remembering all the family and it made my day to see him 🙂

So this is Dennis, age 90, the only surviving member out of the nine brothers and sisters 😍

And that was August over with really.

Saturday 27th July to Saturday 3rd August

Time to go on holiday to Cornwall …

But first, 10 interesting, weird and wonderful Cornwall facts.

The climate is rather nice down here! The Gulf Stream runs up through our waters meaning the sea temperatures are roughly 4-5c warmer than the rest of the country. The maritime climate is also present here meaning it stays relatively mild all winter, if a little wet!

We get plenty of sunshine. Bude was considered the sunniest place in the UK during the summer of 2013, receiving 783 hours of sunlight.

Bude Canal is the most westerly canal in the country. The canal has many unique features that include the only manually operated sea locks in the whole of England! It’s also home to many species of native flora and fauna.

We have some pretty amusing place names down here in the Duchy, with the large majority of Cornish place names being derived from the Kernwek language. Our personal favourites include Brown Willy and Green Bottom!

Cornwall has been the backdrop for many TV and film productions, shows such as Poldark, Taboo, Doc Martin, Jamaica Inn and Wycliffe. All of these shows have used Cornwall’s exquisite landscapes to capture their viewer’s imaginations.

Legend says Cornish wrestling dates all the way back to 1139 when a warrior called Corineus took on a Cornish giant by the name of Gogmagog at the top of a cliff. The sport is still practiced today and involves grabbing hold of your opponent by their jackets, which are worn to provide a better grip, and trying to throw them to the floor so they land flat on their backs.

People are a bit different down here in Cornwall, and you’ll regularly see people with big smiles on their face for no other reason than just being happy about living in Cornwall. Maybe it’s because archaeologists have found that the Cornish and Welsh people of today are the ancestors of an ancient race that date back to the Neolithic period, between 4,000 and 6,000 years ago.

Cornish folk also have a strong sense of Kernow pride, a Morgan Stanley Bank survey showed that 44% of the inhabitants of Cornwall believe themselves to be Cornish rather than British or English!

Cornwall has the longest coastline in Britain and spans a whopping 697km.

Cornwall boasts the largest collection of plant species found in the British Isles and the sea is teaming with life as well, on average a Cornish fisherman can catch over forty species of fish in our waters!

And now, back to the holiday …

Annoyingly I had somehow managed to really hurt my back before we left. I was in such pain 😖 which was completely miserable. I made myself keep on going, just taking regular paracetamol in an attempt to give me some relief but it just wasn’t touching it (I am not allowed to take ibuprofen). After a few days I just had to give in and ring my GP back at home and ask what else I could take to help me. He suggested I try a small dose of codeine (when I was ill before my transplants I had to stop taking this as it used to make me feel very strange indeed!) But it seems that nothing has changed with that, after a day I had to stop taking it again, it wasn’t making me feel too good! Just back to the paracetamol it was.

At least I know for the future now that codeine is still definitely not for me 😏

Anyway, despite the back, I had a nice time down in Cornwall and I’ve made this little video using just a few of the many, many photographs that I took 📸

I hope you like it …

“Great Britain have been placed top of the Official World Transplant Games 2019 table with an incredible 205 gold, 152 silver and 127 bronze medals.

Second place goes to USA with 67 gold, 51 silver and 28 bronze.

In third place we have Islamic Republic of Iran with a medal count of 26 gold, 35 silver and 33 bronze.”

Well done to every single person who has taken part 😃

Among the crowd at the opening ceremony of the World Transplant Games was former professional footballer Andy Cole who had a kidney transplant in 2017. Here he chats to team GB’s football squad about the difficult emotional journey only transplant survivors can fully understand.

It sure is tough sometimes 🤯

And because I love to watch football …

Congratulations to Great Britain Transplant Football Team who won the Transplant World Cup today beating Holland 2-0 in the final ⚽️🏆🇬🇧

The World Transplant Games is taking place this week in Newcastle Gateshead.

This is some of the GB Transplant Team who will be competing – all powered by the Gift of Life.

Every white jacket you see in the photo has had a life saving organ transplant. Without a precious organ donor these wonderful people wouldn’t be representing our country at the Games.

There are about 130 team members missing from this photo. The full team, the largest ever, consists of 320 transplant athletes, including 35 junior and 15 live donors with a third of the entire team representing Great Britain for the first time. They have all survived a heart, lung, kidney, pancreas, liver, small bowel or bone marrow transplant and come from all parts of the UK.

Those featured in blue are team managers, those in red are physio, coaches, medical and the Chairman of Transplant Sport who is also a nephrologist.

Good luck to all members of the GB Team.

Tuesday 25th June to Friday 26th July

What’s been going on?!!!

As you can see from my earlier posts I went to Cornbury Music Festival.

The following weekend was spent looking after Leah. She got VERY bad tonsillitis. She had a high temperature, lots and lots of pain, she couldn’t really even get out of her bed for a few days, very unusual to see her like this and not very nice.

There was even a little trip to Outpatients at the hospital to get her even more tablets 😖

There was a spur of the moment little trip to Bourton-on-the-Water, as it was a lovely warm evening, for some tasty fish and chips by the river.

The next weekend after that was Riverside Festival.

And then I needed to get ready for my upcoming holiday.

I’ve been non-stop busy really. And when I haven’t been doing either something fun, working, trying to sort out difficult and stressful problems or normal day to day stuff, I’ve either been just slumped on the sofa with a hurting body or sleeping!

Just like one of my customers said to me, “I feel like I’ve woken up in someone else’s body this morning and it had been run over before I even got into it …” 🥴

PS Oh, and look at all my strawberries! 😃

I also managed to grow some very delicious strawberries and a pretty flower during this time!