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.