Happy 8th Birthday

This is my friend Justine. 8 years ago she had a double lung transplant and today we celebrated with a lovely lunch at Loch Fyne with 40 of her family and friends.

She is such an inspiration and has achieved so much these last few years. Her donor would be so proud of her achievements. The sad thing is she so wants to thank his family and let them know that she gives thanks to him each year. She thanks him for the life she can now live and she lives life to the full for him as well as herself....but they wanted to remain anonymous. They have their reasons.

Soon Justine will be off to the world transplant games which is being held in Australia this year. Last year she came back with bronze, silver and gold medals....I hope she gets more this year, but above all I hope she has another experience of a lifetime.

She regularly appears on BBC Essex radio giving her points of view for all different kinds of things. She is writing a book of her life so far...a must read when it's finally published. She has a world record for being the first...and only I think...transplantee to have sailed across the Atlantic. She gets down and dirty at Bootcamp and has done many muddy races and other events...the list goes on.

Today at her lunch she gave thanks and little gifts to various people for various things. I was totally shocked when she started to talk about our friendship and how I have helped her achieve her ambition of running a half marathon....me! Yes I did do extra training with her, yes I did encourage her, yes I was there to listen when she was having difficulty...but that's what friends do. It made me quite emotional. You never really do realise that little things really do mean so much to people.

I loved her cake...a bit different as it was a pair of lungs! One was plain sponge and one chocolate...nice tasty lungs I must say.

Now I'm sitting down ready to watch the World Cup final with the other billion viewers across the world....come on Germany!