Will goes outside

What a week - am completely shattered this evening so this'll be fairly brief. On balance a better day than yesterday. Will even made it outside for his physio session. He walked through the hospital and made it three quarters of the way around the infamous duck pond before taking to the wheelchair. The physio said it was the quickest she'd ever had a lung transplant patient outdoors. I'm sure she says that to all the boys, but, as those of you who know Will well will understand, this made him happy. Achievement is important. She also mentioned a girl who had the same operation as Will who climbed Snowdon six months post-transplant. Will said he'd do it in five, though we did realise the weather would be against us. The pain continues, as does the endless quest for a comfortable position to sit or lie in, but he's lovely and pink and oxygenated-looking. I'm sure I'll post the wound photos at some point, when I'm up to tackling the technology.

Some people have been wondering whether we know anything about Will's donor. We don't at present, and I don't think their family would know anything about Will. At some point I think we'll have the option to write to the family, via the transplant coordinators, which I'm sure we'll do. It's hard to get your head around the fact that someone died, probably unexpectedly, and somewhere a family is having a completely awful time. We do talk about it, and I think Will probably thinks about it a fair bit, but it's hard to know what to feel really. I guess we feel hugely grateful that the family was able to be so generous with very little time to think about it or come to terms with their own loss, with an added feeling of responsibility that we'll try to do our very best by these lungs.