It is National Transplant Week!

And oh my goodness has it started with a bang! We marked the launch by attending a function at the House of Lords. Prior to going in, both Emma and I were interviewed by ITV (which was shown last night but I missed it) speaking about the campaign. We then went in the entrance just next to the Sovereign's Gate, so near enough to listen to several speeches about Transplant and organ donation, one of which was given by me. My lungs were really not in a cooperative mood that night, and I struggled for breath on several occasions. Luckily Emma appears to be able to read my mind and was able to smoothly glide in wherever necessary and allow me to regain my breath. It all went really well and we got a huge round of applause, as well as some tears. I hate making people sad, but it does mean that I have managed to get the message across so I have to take it as a good thing. BBC article went up at the weekend, can be seen here should you want to read it.

Then today was a whole day of media madness. It began with a 5.15 pickup, (I had forgotten such a time existed) to go to GMTV for two interviews. We did the first spot at 6.45 and then a second at 8.10. Both seemed to go ok, I was nervous but just about managed to babble coherently! I have never minded the feeling of nerves, but now my lungs are teenywee, my heart tends to go a bit doolally whenever I am nervous/stressed/angry and cause me to loose my breath. I got away with it at GMTV, but we then went over to ITV news (where I curled up on the sofa and promptly fell asleep).

We walked into the studio with about two minutes to go till going live, and I sat down and lost my breath. Had a slight panic as I couldn't get it back, and they were counting down "40 seconds" etc till we went live, but the correspondant was lovely, and we decided to just go for it and hope that I could get through it which I did, yay! Whilst I am annoyed at myself for panicking for a minute before pulling myself together, I am rather proud of my little lungs, and just glad that I got to do all three, as the amount of coverage and awareness generated from that is fantastic. And of course thanks to Denzel the wheelchair, my 02 cylinders and my travel concentrator, I managed to look like a Mariah Carey style diva, only with less lillies, more oxygen...