The operation was scheduled at the beginning of January, right before my brother's 29th birthday.  Unfortunately this put New Year right around the time when I had to be super careful about catching bugs as you can’t donate if you have an infection, and, well, just generally being super careful about everything to make sure it all went to plan.  So I decided to put my own moratorium on kissing and drinking for New Year.  How boring was that!?

To make matters worse I was spending New Year's at a gig with a band that I made the music video for – they were a great bunch of guys and I had a huge crush on one of them.  So there I was, having not even told him about the transplant, dancing together, getting all the right vibes, not wanting to put a downer on his New Year by explaining, and ended up going home alone.  Depressing huh!

I did eventually email him before I went into hospital, I don't think he really understood.  When I saw him again a few months later he was surprised to see me up and about and "looking so good".  He also had a girlfriend by then.   (Another lesson learned for me about actually talking to boys – about the important stuff!)

What I didn’t know then was that much more exciting and wonderful things were around the corner for me romantically.