Getting up to date with April - part 2 (organ donation)

I'm not feeling too well tonight (just exhaustion, a headache and dizziness again), so this probably won't be a very long update. I'm going to get an appt with my GP after the bank holiday if I'm still struggling with dizziness then. I thought that this update could be about organ donation in the news and news on my friends in the transplant community.

Rachy is continuing to make very good progress after her transplant and has now got her trachy out so she can talk again and has left ICU :) You can keep up to date on Rachy's progress on her blog here. Last month Rachy was in her local newspaper which you can see here and had an article on her hospital's website which you can see here.

Following the organ donation story in the news at the start of the month (about people's wishes about which organs they wanted to donate being wrongly recorded), which I blogged about here, Tor went on GMTV to talk about it. You can see the video on her blog here.

Organ donation was in the news again later in the month when the suggestion of donors being paid for organ donation was raised. You can see The Independent's article about it here. I agree that things need to be done to try to increase the numbers on the organ donor register to stop 3 people here in the UK dying every day while waiting for transplants, but don't think this is the way to do it.

I am not a fan of the Daily Mail, but they published a fantastic article a couple of weeks ago about a day in the life of a transplant co-ordinator. You can see it here and it's well worth a read.

My friend Holly was admitted to hospital earlier in the month after feeling unwell and was soon discovered to have pneumonia. Luckily she's back at home and on the mend now though.

K spent a spell in Hosp B recently also with pneumonia. It hit her quite hard and she very unwell for a few days. She's a fighter though and was soon feeling much better. While she was in Hosp B the doctors had a meeting about her to decide what organs she would need to receive in her second transplant. Shortly after K returned home she was relisted for another small bowel and liver transplant. I hope she gets her call soon and that her second transplant goes as smoothly as possible.

Through blogging I recently met a lovely lady called Michelle. She lives in Canada and has had a transplant like mine. If you don't read her blog please pop over and have a look by clicking on her name where it is highlighted just above. We've been emailing each other since and it's great to be able to chat to someone who can relate what I've been through :)