One year on, A Strange New World... (Hepatitis C / Liver Transplant (Hep C) HCV Blog)

On this run up to the New Year and with Christmas just behind us, as with many people, it has prompted me to sit back and take stock of the year and to cast my mind back over the highs' and lows' of 2010 and where I have got to....

In some ways this has been a truly remarkable year. Not many people I suppose can say they did so much and yet did so little at the same time. And I doubt there are many people who would've traded places with me either.

But as the log fire starts to die, worn out kids are now in bed and the Christmas tree has started to wilt and fade I feel a sense of melancholy that I'm forced to give air.

I could only remember how last year as we were doing the same thing, that I was constantly wondering if this would be the last time I would get to view this special treat. I use the word 'view' because all though I was present and joining in as best I could, I couldn't say that I was whole heartedly enjoying this Christmas 'scene' because of the turmoil which at this point was raging in my head.

All the questions lashed to their own worry that were being tossed all around my brain like pieces of a wrecked ship being battered against the rocks, constantly pushing to the front of my mind on each wave of fear and wondering if these final pieces that I had been clinging to were now bobbing around in the foam; their fate too close to danger to call.

Maybe this sounds like I'm over-dramatising but I can honestly say that this was how I felt. With hindsight, the waters were much calmer than I was reading them and my 'ship' stayed afloat. Though the HepC had just about finished off my own liver, I got the call from St Jimmy's at about eight p.m. on January 28th and the following morning I had a full Liver Transplant.

What I will say for anyone who may be facing the same treatment that I was hoping for back then, is this; the hardest part of having this kind of operation is your own state of mind beforehand. It seems easy for me now to say that I shouldn't have put myself through that worry and neither should anyone else in the same situation but I did, and others will. The operation is the easy part; it's the 'not knowing' and the 'will it happen in time' that gets' ya every time.

But those of you who followed my blog back then know that relatively speaking, once it happened, I breezed through the Op without too much difficulty and my recovery after seemed fairly speedy. Then you may also have noticed that six months or so after I seemed to drop off the radar a bit and I suppose it's this 'bit' that I'm talking about now. The 'bit' that I seem to have lost and I'm trying to get back to.

I don't know if it's because of all the pain killing opiates and steroids that you get pumped full of after the op (and I aren't complaining here) and all the other types of medication for this and for that, but for the first few months you feel like your on a natural high (though it's anything but natural). Or it could be the 'new' liver that has revitalised the 'new you' or as I suspect, a combination of both; that the first six months, barring any complications and the initial 'soreness' are nothing short of fantastic! It sounds crazy but it's true! I even wrote in 'Brand New Me' (Feb '09) that it was 'the most life enriching experience I'd ever had!'

Strong words indeed and I suppose that although I never ended up on the 'rocks' that I had been fearing a year ago, I do feel now that somehow I have ended up sort 'washed' up on the shore. I am still alive; but I'm not the person I once was. No longer the foolhardy adventurer running along on any breeze I can find, no more the captain of my own ship; all that has been washed away. The experience has left me clinging to the shore looking for a new life, fearful of what has gone behind.

I hope that in this place that I have landed I can find a new way to live. Who knows, maybe the best is yet to come and somewhere here I'll find a new 'jewel' to prize. But for now this is a strange new world that I'm learning to navigate and will be for some time to come; or at least until I learn how to come to my own rescue again.

Take care everyone.... Ian