Day 13

I'm lying on my bed with a rather sore stomach at the moment. After some discussion with the Physio today I decided that what I needed to do was to increase my level of painkillers and then just try and do more gentle stretching and more short bursts of exercise instead of prolonged walks. As a result of that, however, my stomach feels rather painful, and that's even after all the extra painkiller injections...

Still, it's a new target for me now - to do a small piece of exercise every hour. I managed that pretty well this afternoon while my Dad and Carole were here. We had a great afternoon and discussed all sorts of plans for the future.

I also heard from the doctor that they have yet to make a definite call on my leaving at the end of this week. Apparently on the day of surgery a small liver biopsy did raise some mild concerns about the state of the organ, which is why they did so many scans and tests over the following days. My liver function blood-tests are getting back to normal levels slowly, but are still fluctuating, so taking in to account their initial concern they are being very cautious.

If they're not happy then they will keep me in and give me a liver biopsy on Friday or Monday. I'm not sure what would happen at that point, but I'm not going to get in to to detail unless the situation actually arises. Fingers crossed it's all fine.

I crossed off one of my important to-do tasks this morning, by writing the letter to my liver donor's family. I don't know any details about my donor, though I am allowed to find out age and sex. To be honest I'm unsure if I want to know anything just yet, as I don't really want to have a feeling that I'm going round with an alien lump of flesh inside me. As it stands it just feels completely like part of me, and maybe I'll keep it that way and find out nothing more. I can put off the decision for now - maybe I'll want to know in a few weeks.

It was a very hard letter to write as I don't know the people, or their relation to the donor. It was quite an emotional thing telling the story of my disease, and my mum's death, and how I've been doing for the last few years. When the transplant coordinator, and later Dad and Carole, had a read through it seemed to bring a tear to their eyes.

I'm going to hold on to it for a bit and re-read it in a few days when I'm out of hospital, but it's something I want to do sooner rather than later.

That's all from me for now - it's time for a short walk around the ward again. Tomorrow I might write a bit about some of the drugs I'm going to have to take for the next months and years.