The Hjärta is delivered

The Hjärta has landed! Anders Jonasson of the Box Whisky, the Swedish malt whisky company hands over the bottle of Highland Park “Hjärta” to Cim in Östersund. This special bottle of whisky is a gift from Cim and me to Cim’s brother Jonas, to ceebrate the five years since Jonas donated a kidney to Cim. [...]

5 Years since my last dialysis – Thank you Jonas

Today Jerry and I are celebrating the 5th anniversary of my kidney transplant! Today exactly at this time I and my brother were under the hands of two separate transplant surgeons and their teams getting my brothers kidney out and then walking the corridor with his kidney in a bowl, to then transplant his kidney [...]

Celebrating Jonas: 5 Years since Cim’s Transplant

December 8 is a happy anniversary for Cim and me. Five years ago today, Cim received a kidney from her brother Jonas, in St George’s Hospital, Tooting, South London. To say that this event – this extraordinary act of brotherly generosity – transformed our lives is about as understated as you can get. I had [...]

Apple’s Steve Jobs ‘Admits’ to Liver Transplant

You don’t normally expect personal revelations at a company bash, but if you work at computer giants Apple, and your boss is Steve Jobs, maybe you get used to them. But at the recent Apple conference, where big things were expected, nobody was quite ready for Jobs’ announcing his recent successful liver transplant. Here is [...]

What would make you actually register as an donor?

As Jerry wrote earlier, on Wednesday morning’s BBC Breakfast TV they talked about transplants and organ donation in the UK, and how we need more people to register as organ donors. As always – my ears get very big, as we say in Swedish, which means I listen in a way that I rarely do, [...]

Transplant Trust on BBC Breakfast

I felt a pang of guilt as I switched on to BBC Breakfast this morning. No, not because I should have been doing something less boring instead, but because there, on the screen was Vashti Poole from the Transplant Trust. “Still haven’t finished the Transplant Games write-up, have you” she seemed to accuse me as [...]

British Transplant Games: In the Swim

We have a friend: let’s call him Carl (well, it is his name). Carl has just won bronze in the 50m freestyle at the Swimming Gala at the British Transplant Games.  That short but intensive training paid off. Cim got to know Carl when they were both in St. George’s Hospital Tooting. Carl had just [...]

The British Transplant Games

How do you cope with a seething mass of bodies scrambling to get through the doors into the Coventry city leisure centre? Normally, quite well? But what if you realise that 75% or more of that seething mass have had a transplant? If you are anything like me, you feel humbled. Where have we been? [...]

National Transplant Week: The Missing Piece?

I’m already a day late with reporting on what is probably the most important week of the year for the Transplant Trust. Yes, the launch of National Transplant Week was Monday 6 July. But at least we were there to report it. It was a good and enjoyable evening, (fine) with some insightful talks given [...]

An “Ordinary” Job: Making Someone “Supernormal”

The best description I have heard of Cim so far: “Supernormal”. Dr Malcolm Brown of  Astellas Pharmaceuticals came up with that during our presentation on 3 July at the Staines-based pharmaceutical company, near Heathrow. Astellas is the company that makes Prograf, the anti- rejection drug Cim has taken ever since her kidney transplant in December [...]