Alderney

Alderney was everything I remember it being - full of long hot days lying in the sun, fish and chips by the harbour, amazing sunsets whilst munching on freshly bbq-ed sausages on the beach, quarry parties and loads and loads of fun....and best of all, dialysis free! Oli came out for the second part of the holiday and it was lovely to see him as always.

I've posted up a few photos on to my Flickr, but here are a few more...

The Breakwater avec le sea mist

Dan

Will, my little brother

Oli

Oli throwing himself off a rock, in true dare devil style. Kasper recoiled in horror.

The quarry party

Will giving me a hug after coming out of the sea...brrrr

Me and Oli, as taken by my Mum

My Mum at the Torchlight Procession

My bro and friends

back to the island...

On Friday I will be climbing aboard the tiny (and rather antiquated) Aurigny plane and flying across the Channel to go to the island of Alderney. 

Alderney is a teeny tiny island in the Channel Islands which holds an equally teeny tiny town, beautiful white sandy beaches and a teeny tiny harbour.. oh yes and a ton of happy and bizarre memories from spending all my child hood summers there. Let's see, there was the time where I dressed up as a beanstalk for a fancy dress competition (don't ask), the time I performed on the legendary Channel Television as Sporty Spice (my high kicks were embarrasingly pathetic), the time that Hannah and I decided to fly over for a weekend in April only to be fogged in for days with no heating or electricity (bad idea), the time where I decided to swim out to a very far away rock aged about 9 and had to be rescued (so embarrassing when you're 9 and hold a full swimming certificate) and the time that I got banned from the camp site, for life, apparently as I made too much noise. Let's hope they have forgiven me ten years on and will let me set foot on their land again. I'm sure I look pretty different than on the Wanted posters ....

Anyway, back to the point of this blog, when I first got unwell I was on a type of dialysis called PD, and not wanting to stop my kidney failure from letting me do anything I arranged for enough medical equipment to be delivered to my house in Alderney (about 50 boxes, I kid you not) for a couple of weeks holiday and then carted the machine over on the plane myself. All was well until a rather enthusiatic crew member chucked my machine off the plane causing it to stop working. Not cool.

Now if I had been in London this wouldn't have been too much of a problem. A quick phone call to the good people at Baxter and a shiny new machine is delivered within a matter of hours. When you are stuck on a tiny island that has  suddenly become covered in a dense fog meaning that no planes can fly in or out it becomes a little more tricky... Luckily I could do manuel bags until the machine was finally delivered a few days later but this was giving me less than half of the dialysising that I needed so I was feeling iller by the hour. 

After four days of immense stress and upset I decided that it wasn't worth going to Alderney until after I had a transplant. This was confirmed when I transferred over to hemodialysis a couple of years later meaning that it would be impossible to go to Alderney as there was no dialysis unit on the island.

SO for the first time in 3 years I am flying back to my favourite little rock to spend two weeks relaxing and catching up with old friends. Dan is flying out with me, and then Oli will be joining me for the last part of the holiday too which is super exciting as we haven't seen each other since Donor Day so it will be fab to spend some proper quality time together. It will be so amazing not to have to worry about dialysis and tubes flying out of bikinis...I can just concentrate on having masses of fun...and not getting banned from the campsite again. Ahem. 

I really can't wait.

Me looking dead cool on holiday aged about 3 or 4. I'm going to have to find those cat ear glasses...

I'll be updating my photography blog with photos of my holiday and Alderney so do check it out. 

kidney love

Remember a while ago when I mentioned my friend Ally who had been on dialysis for years and years?

Well, I received the awesome, fantastical, amazingist news that she had had THE call on Friday night and the kidney transplant went ahead shortly afterwards. The kidney is pumping away brilliantly and when I popped into see her yesterday (laden with trashy magazines and Ribena, naturally) she looked amazing - and happier than I think I'd ever seen her before. 

Aw, kidney love.

This is what happens when you Google 'kidney love' in search of a nice image to go with a post. You get a kidney wearing high heeled shoes and a hat. I'm all for smiling happy kidneys but this is definitely sitting on the edge of creepy in my mind!