back on my pins

My goodness, it's been a long time! I can't remember how much I said earlier in the year, but in March I went on the transplant list for a pancreas and kidney, and since I was the only person in the UK with my blood group waiting for both organs, in the first week of June I made it into the operating theatre! ... and to cut a long story short, that's been the story of the last 3 months!

... well mostly. The op took about 19 hours, so a pretty long ordeal and I was a bit zonked for a few days after. It turned out the pancreas wasn't working very well so a couple of days later they opened me up a second time to investigate. All seemed OK so they didn't do much and that was that. ... until a few more days went by and I got really ill. They said it had become life-threatening and rushed me back into theatre to remove the pancreas. In all honesty I was so not-with-it that most of those days are a hazy mix of events and weird immaginations!

But the really good news is that despite a slow start, the kidney seems to have settled in and be working well. I certainly feel significantly better than I have for what must be the last 20 years. ... That's not quite the end of the tale though, because after I was discharged I was home for maybe 5 weeks and then got pretty ill again. I lost all my appetite and my weight plummeted, so the doctors put me right back in hospital for another 2 weeks!

But I've been home again for a month and have regained almost all the weight I lost (nearly 2 stones or 30lb) and with the help of weekly physio I've regained much of my strength ... I still have a wheelchair for anything more than short walking distances but I can walk further every week :) ... and my appetite is now enormous compared to how it has always been!

As for quilting, well I haven't been near a needle (well not a quilting one anyway) or thread, but I am rather thrilled that for my 40th birthday (which fell exactly a week after the surgery!) I got one of those die-cutting machines, like the Baby Go-cutter but a different make as recommended by The Littlest Thistle ... I'm yet to try it out but the time is fast approaching! ... Just before the transplant I had dug out the top for a Rainy Day quilt that I started, oooh must be 2 years ago now! and I had begun to start hand stitching all the rows together, so I'll crack on with that very soon now :)

I'm not quite back up to full speed online yet, but am getting better at reading blogs, and hopefully I'll have updates on not one but two quilt projects that I hope to at least begin before the end of the year! :)