Up The Farway Tree

Flying towards £15,000....

So the Team Jac offline sponsorship is starting to come in and we are nearly at the £14,000 mark! I know we will definitely reach £15,000 because I am aware of some of the money still to be added. It is truly amazing that we have managed that from one event. It was worth all the planning, the sore legs and battling the elements on the day. I think it will be a few weeks before we have the absolute final total and I can't wait to see what it is!

I have had another really busy week, namely because I had taken on another three PBL sessions at the university. I have taken all those offered to me because the university is now on holiday for the Summer so I will not get any over the next few months. This is probably a good thing because it will give me a bit more breathing space, but money wise I will miss it! Although I am working as hard as I can just now, I still don't earn more than when i was off sick - due to the loss of most of my benefits. It is a strange system indeed but I would much rather have working lungs than money.... although I quite like the latter. Of course now I am able to get out and about, I am also able to spend it more! The uni work has been good though as I have been squireling it away to fund a wee summer holiday. We both have a week off in June and are looking for somewhere warm but with interesting things to do and see, while still being relaxing. I am not really into beach holidays and post transplant am not really supposed to lie about sunbathing (meant to wear sun block even in this country!) Andrews mum and dad have suggested Nice, which we are looking at.....but any ideas please leave a comment!

Since I have increased my work sessions I will be out two full days during the week, so we have been looking at dog walkers. Seb really can't be left for that long as he gets so bored and is visibly depressed when I get home! He mopes around harassing me to take him out, which is quite stressful when you are just in from work and trying to get dinner ready. Anyway, a local company was recommended to us and we had a meeting with them this week. It is run by two young women who both seemed very nice and to genuinely be interested in dogs. We are going to try them out - starting from next week, so that will be interesting! I am hoping he will walk in a group (it is cheaper!) but they never have more than 4-5 dogs together which doesn't seem too bad. I have no idea how he will react to this - he likes most dogs he meets but was quite overwhelmed at dog training, but there were about 15 dogs at that time. Hopefully he will behave and not show me up!

Thanks for the comments on my fancy dress photos - it appears most of you think I should go blonde ;-) I think hi lights are about as radical as I will get though! My hair is a nightmare just now because it has been falling out at a rate of noughts. I used to get this pre -transplant when I had a bad infection. Basically when you are very unwell all your hair stops growing at the same time (conserve energy) so around 3 months later it will start falling out at the same time, so it appears if you are losing tons of hair. This has been happening recently and I think it is related to being so unwell after the surgery in January. All the new hair is growing in underneath which is creating a nice wee spiky frizzy effect. Lovely. It is visibly thinner at the moment, although this could also be due to long term steroids. Hopefully it will settle down and be back to normal in a few months time. The steroids are annoying me at the moment because they are also making my skin bruise easily. I have bruised all up the inside of my arms and also lots on my legs. A few people have commented thinking I have had lots of attempts at taking blood. I did ask about getting my steroids reduced but the transplant team want to keep them at this dose for quite a while longer. I guess they keep me alive. That is rather useful.

Lastly, I have been spending a bit of time this week preparing a presentation for teaching next week. It is just teaching at the community resource centre I work in (we also have big teaching at the main hospital) so there will only be a handful of people there - but I always end up putting in way too much effort anyway. My mum has always said 'if a thing's worth doing, it's worth doing properly!' and that has always stuck in my mind. I am more or less finished my slides but need to start working on the case I have to present at Journal Club the following week! It has been a while since I presented anything but I don't really mind - it's just another excuse for me to talk non stop :-)

It is not too busy a weekend thank goodness. Tonight we are going to a charity race night which should be good fun and maybe I will even win something! The last organised race night I went to was shortly before my transplant - I had a horse called 'Puff-a-Long'! Oh how times have changed. Actually I was just looking over my blog posts from last May and I now realise I was probably quite manic. It was around this time I decided that I could carry a 5 litre watering can around the garden (repeatedly) despite the fact my breast bone had just been sawn open 3 weeks earlier. I thought it was entirely reasonable at the time! Luckily I have settled down a bit now but I still get a total buzz from being on the go most of the time - it's just the constant feeling that life is too short and I am going to pack as much in as possible. As long as I am enjoying myself then I think that is ok..