I can't believe it's almost a year since I last wrote on my Blog.  Wow - what a year it's been!! We moved house on the 23rd August 2011, and absolutely LOVE our new home, we've been sooo much happier than we were in the old house!  In September Paul's condition deteriorated very quickly and he was told he needed dialysis as soon as possible.  We then had to attend hospital every month to see consultant.  They started to test me very quickly to see if I could donate one of my kidneys, but a couple of weeks before Christmas they discovered my kidneys don't work 100% and while I have 2 kidneys I'm fine, but if I lost one, I could end up on dialysis as well.  Then Paul went into hospital 3 days before Christmas and had his CAPD catheter inserted into his stomach and he came home on Christmas Eve.  A month later he started his CAPD dialysis.  The following day it all went wrong and he had to go back into hospital 4 weeks later and have tube re-located as it had moved during the night and got lodged up on one of his kidneys and the fluid would not drain out!!!  Anyway - to cut a long story short - every 2 weeks something went wrong with his treatment and he wasn't feeling very well at all, and they decided they needed to do a fistula in his arm so he could go over to haemodialysis instead.  The week he was due to have this done, we got a call from Addenbrooks.  Upshot of that was that on the 10th July, he had a transplant.  He is so much betterand is now having to go to clinic every week to Cambridge at the moment, but it was such a relief when it happened.  This picture of him was taken 3 days after the operation, bless him.

I've been doing a lot of crafting recently and every week I'm going to try to come on here and show you what I've been doing.

Sadly we lost out little Pickles back in April, so now Honey is a one cat family, but she's enjoying all the cuddles and not having to fight for her food.  We've buried Pickles in our back garden and have brought a plaque to put where she is - also our vet sent us a card with a packet of forget-me-not seeds in which I'm going to plant where she is.  We've been doing a lot of gardening since we moved but because I was in Cambridge for about 10 days, all my hanging basket plants died - would you believe - we had a drought after weeks of constant rain - it had to wait until I wasn't at home to dry out!!!!  I'm not going to bother to do it again this year, but will make more effort next year and make sure I look after it all properly - typical!!!!

Today we went to Anglesey Abbey near Cambridge and met our friends Liz & Tim (who I stayed with when Paul was having transplant) and had a lovely day walking around the grounds.  Paul was shattered by the end of the day, but he got on brilliantly.  He's hardly done any walking since the op, so I'm very proud of him.

See you again soon.

Sheila