New Year's Resolutions 2019 and garden make-over

My New Year's Resolutions are similar to last year's ones... Don't want to go into too much details, but here they are:

• Look after lungs/health as much as is humanely possible and avoid rejection. This means religious check-ups, bloods, x-rays, being in touch with my body and acting upon it if anything feels off... avoiding infections at all costs, never forgetting my pills, and also just looking after the other stuff that is affected by CF... diabetes, gynae checks, bone density, dermatologist. 
• Travel as much as finances and my Achilles tendon allows for. The ultimate would be to see another country again!
• Recover from Achilles tendon tears and be able to maintain fitness without playing squash or any other such risky activity. I'd like to start swimming again, maybe as a more serious sport (if I'm any good at it). So by the end of they year I'd like to be fitter than I was at the end of October, when the first tear happened. I refuse to let the years of cortisone cripple my life completely. F@ck you CF.
• Enjoy every moment of quality time with family. 
• Buy less and save more. I have enough clothes, and I think we have everything we need in the house. I want less clutter (our house isn't too bad, but I've been throwing out a lot of old sentimental stuff that I've been keeping for YEARS... I'm trying to be more brutal with what I get rid of. I'm also organising cupboards one by one - anyone else watching Tidying Up with Marie Kondo????). Plants don't count... but I will try to think twice before buying it!
• Make a bigger success of TELL than LLGL ever was. We can do it. 
• Just appreciating every single day... good or bad. At the moment most days feel frustrating due to my injury, but if it wasn't for my donors I'd be dead twice already (if that even makes any sense). Both of my donor's families would give anything to have their loved one back. My "bad day" is nothing compared to having lost you daughter/mother/wife/sibling.

That's it! In a year's time we'll see how well I did! 

This is my 10th week of being injured and pretty much in a cast. One positive thing however has been that I got to see quite a bit of my nephew Adriaan. Not due to my injury per se, but just because he has been on holiday as well and I've been very available! I love the little man so much, and he has really brightened up my December! Here are some pics, including some Christmas pics (I never even blogged about Christmas.... it was chilled... just spent with my family and eating too much).

My other exciting project for December was a bit of a garden make-over! I've always loved gardening, but during the last few years that I've been too short of breath to do much gardening, it has become neglected and quite overgrown. I decided to get a little bit of professional help in, and had a local business assist with some landscaping. They put in new borders for the flower beds, and took out some pavers that were at the bottom of the garden that I didn't like and didn't serve a purpose.  They also took out some of the irises that had gotten out of hand. Here are the before, during and after pics! Ads and my sister also helped with the planting of some new plants for me, as you can see!

I think it's looking so much better now! And we've had some nice rain, which is helping. By the time summer is over it will look pretty great! Very happy with the result :-)

Bye bye 2018, Hello 2019

We're into the last 4 hours of 2018... Apart from the last 2 months, it's been a pretty great year for the most part. My 2018 New Years Resolutions were as follows:

• Take part in the National Transplant Games in PE in July (and hopefully go on to qualify for the 2019 WTG). DONE! And I qualified for squash... but then I tore the Achilles twice and now that dream is down the drain.
• Travel as much as I can, including at least one overseas trip. DONE! Did 2 overseas trips and a few local ones.
• Take my fitness above where it was at it's peak after my previous transplant. The years of rejection has made me value the capabilities of these lungs and what my body can do (given enough lung-power and training), even more. DONE! But at the peak of my fitness I tore the Achilles and now I'm back to being unfit with MONTHS of recovery laying ahead.
• Figure our working/ LLGL/ my life and priorities. DONE. More about the LLGL part a bit later, but yes, everything is sorted out now.

So I managed to achieve everything I wanted to.... technically. I'll figure out some new ones for 2019 soon. 

The highlights were definitely the holidays we took. Ballito, Eastern Cape, Mauritius, New York City, Two brief Cape Town Trips.

Starting to work for my friend Andrew has also been a highlight... the perfect job for me in so many ways. Seeing my nephew Adriaan grow a year older was also amazing. 

Another highlight was the fact that I had NO LUNG PROBLEMS the entire year. I had a bad reaction to two of my medications in May, and the Achilles drama recently, but no lung drama. And today marks 14 months with the new new lungs. So that's undoubtedly a highlight.

Fawn, Bonnie and I got to launch our new organ donation NPO called TELL, and we had a fantastic launch function. I believe we have the potential to achieve fantastic things, and I love working with everyone involved.

The lows... Pretty much right now. I've been sitting with my leg up for the last 2 weeks and I'm pretty damn frustrated. I'm going to end up having spent 3 months in a cast. I'm pretty depressed about not being able to play squash again, and I don't know how well these injuries will even recover to allow me to at least jog a bit again. My google searches have said about 6 months to be able to WALK normally again, and a year to recover "in full"... although it never FULLY recovers. I can however start swimming and some cycling sooner. But basically my tendons are clearly weak and I will need to take that into consideration forever. (I also need to have my bone density checked again early in the new year, because all I need now is to break a bone as well... courtesy of the lovely steroids too. 

The other low was the demise of Love Life; Gift Life, and the terrible conflicts that came with it. I've never experienced anything like it, and I still think about it with sadness, bitterness and disbelief. It's not even over yet, as the NPO is not legally dissolved yet, so undoubtedly even more crap awaits. I CANNOT WAIT for it to be over for good. And to focus all of that energy on TELL.

So that was the year in a nutshell. Spending New Years eve doing nothing, because it's too much effort to go out and I won't enjoy it. Hope you have a great 2019.

2018!!!!

I've been wanting to do this post earlier this week, but I've been out and about enjoying the new lungs!!! HAPPY NEW YEAR!!! May 2018 be everything you want it to be. We had a very nice New Years Eve. Had a braai at Brendan and Marius' house. It was all very civil and we were in bed by 2am :-) We slept over there because it's just less stressful. It was great to be with some of the friends who most supported me in 2017 (unfortunately all my other close friends live far away) - not counting the LLGL girls of course. 

On the 30th of Dec we had quite an epic storm here in Joburg. We had quite a lot of hail and rain. After the storm cleared Chris and I drove up to Northcliff Hill (we stay at the bottom of the Hill) to look at the sunset. There were some spectacular views! Though I'd post a few pics here... I loved that the skies ended 2017 so dramatically.

My only resolution for 2017 was literally "to survive it". Happy to say that it worked out! In fact, I had a check-up yesterday, and lung function was GREAT, what the Dr terms a "significant increase"... my previous check-up also showed a "significant increase" so lungs couldn't be doing any better if they tried!!  X-ray beautiful (these lungs look a bit longer than the previous ones, which is pretty cool to see. Maybe that's why it feels like the breaths go sooooo deep :-) :-) :-) Bloods were better than last time, Dr not too worried about anything. Having a biopsy done on Monday (my "month 2 biopsy" in my Dr's preliminary biopsy schedule). Hopefully it goes well!

If I didn't get new lungs, I would have still been alive, albeit in a much worse condition that I am now. However for 2018 there will be some resolutions again! Here goes...

• Take part in the National Transplant Games in PE in July (and hopefully go on to qualify for the 2019 WTG).
• Travel as much as I can, including at least one overseas trip.
• Take my fitness above where it was at it's peak after my previous transplant. The years of rejection has made me value the capabilities of these lungs and what my body can do (given enough lung-power and training), even more.
• Figure our working/ LLGL/ my life and priorities.