For the first 3 months at home again I was in a self imposed quarantine, I did not want visitors coughing and spluttering all over me as I was petrified of catching an infection and putting me back into hospital.   I gradually returned to 'normal' life, but even now I am very careful not to mix or get too close to people who are not 100%.   Don't get me wrong, I am not as bad as Michael Jackson or the late Howard Hughes, even though I moonwalk and pore over pictures of Jane Russell (ask your dad).   Before being discharged from the hospital we (transplant patients) are made aware of all possibilities and how to avoid a speedy return to a nice warm bed on Ward 27A.  

Not being able to drive for the first 12 weeks is also a bit of a pain - I think that this rule may not apply now - power steering and all that jazz.   I could not wait to get back into my beloved Mercedes. 

 I had made my mind up that I would enter for the European Transplant Games in Sandefjord - Norway.   The European Games are for heart and/or lung transplant recipients only, which were to be held in June 2000 and followed by the British Transplant Games in Gateshead/Newcastle - my home city in July of that year.   I had always wanted to take up golf but had only ever had an occasional game on an 18 hole course.   I was pretty good at the pitch and putt at Whitley Bay or at least I had been in my youth.  

I had been visited by a fellow heart transplant patient called Rob Hodgkiss when I was recovering on 27A.   Rob told me all about transplant sport and encouraged me to take part in the Games.   When I explained my passion for golf he suggested I also take up a track event as the athletics always take place on the final day of the games and are held in proper stadiums with a relatively large crowd and even if I was to come last I would receive a standing ovation.   I was never a particularly good runner but I put my name down for the 400m at both events anyway as well as the long jump in Norway (to this day I haven't a clue why I chose the long jump - apart from my sand fetish that is).

That was it then, I would play golf and my goal was to be able to run 1 lap of Gateshead International Stadium in the summer of 2000.   Some ambition I can tell you when I was lying in a hospital bed with more tubes sticking out of my chest/neck/stomach/abdomen and other parts of my body that can only be found in a medical dictionary, than can sometimes be seen on the Bakerloo Line at rush hour.

I have (forgotten) remembered the name of the physio - Sue Pirrie - at The Freeman but she was wonderful and will one day have a starring role in Prisoner Cell Block 'H' (just kidding honestly).   When all I wanted to do was wallow in self pity and watch daytime TV, Sue (I am pretty sure that's her name) would breeze into my room with some contraption that came straight out of The Krypton Factor or more likely The Great Egg Race and make me perform amazing stunts with table tennis balls in plastic tubes to see how my recovery was progressing. 

In case you are a little puzzled by this, these were tests to see how my respiration and lungs were coming along and I had to perform 'blow jobs', hence the table tennis balls (got it?).  

As I improved gradually, Sue would turn up with a bike, whip me out of bed and have me cycling in my room before I had a chance to digest my bacon & eggs.   Before I knew it it was down to the hospital gym twice a week along with the other prisoners (Freudian slip, sorry) I meant to say patients.   Each of us would be given our routines and we could measure our improvement as each session came and went.                                                            
                                   

Working out in the hospital gym.

The steps to the gallows can be seen clearly in the background.