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6 months on from surgery my recovery is going well. I have a healthy balanced diet and I have taken up exercising in my home trying to build muscle weight. 

Coronavirus has put a hold on meeting up with friends and family I am in the high-risk category which has meant that I have kept shielding for 12 weeks from when the government put on the national lockdown.

My physical health has been good. My mental health has been all over the place during the lockdown, I have taken up several different hobbies trying to keep busy and my mind active. 

Over this period I have been doing a lot of thinking. After The break up of my relationship and having surgery I wondered if anyone would ever want to be with me romantically again. I am a 23-year-old with a scar on my stomach, who goes to the hospital every 6 weeks sometimes more for various appointments. I now have to take immunosuppression medication for the rest of my life.

Although I am doing well physically its difficult to completely comprehend the change that I am going through, I know that things will never be the same, and because of this, I notice differences in how family and friends treat me. People care for me differently and it makes me feel as if they don't see me as the same Keiran. 

My personality is one of a person who just gets on with things and doesn’t ask for help when doing it. But as I recover and I have tried to get back to my old self  I have noticed some things I can’t push through like before. I get tired quicker my strength isn’t like how it used to be. It's frustrating because I know that I will have to ask for help in simple tasks that I would previously get on with. It leaves me to wonder if I will ever be able to do things the same way I did before the surgery. 

The effort I put in whilst I worked was second to none, I would always give my all in tasks I was given and would find things to do and in most of those things, I would be doing the heavy lifting. 

noticing the changes I wonder If I will even be able to go back to the job that I enjoyed, will I be seen differently by my employers and colleagues because I can’t do the tasks that I once did previously, will I even have a job because I can’t do those same things.

I've always struggled with loving myself and the idea that I now have new things that I have to accept is quite difficult. In my last blog I spoke about it briefly but when it comes to the time that I want to get into another relationship (if ever) is a daunting thought, I get quite attached to people and have struggled opening up about my illness but even more so now. The illness before surgery was something that I could downplay, but now its something that I can not hide. 

My idea of relationships is that you must have trust and communication in relationships for them to be successful, keeping something so big like having had a liver transplant does not seem to be the wise way to start any relationship. But I also feel that with attachment the idea of being rejected after opening up to someone about the illness and surgery would be heartbreaking. 

People will say.“The right person will come and accept you as you are” but how long might that take and will my confidence be knocked by telling others about my condition and them deciding to not pursue anything further.  

These fears of rejection and relationships ultimately come from me not loving myself. “Who can I love when I can’t love myself.” It's impossible to see into the future, and I need to look at all I have achieved I have come very far in my journey of recovery and learning to love myself is part of that journey, I posted a picture of my scar on social media to try somehow try and convince myself I was okay with it, but in all honesty, I felt that I was more so doing it for others and not because I wanted to, I want to show that I was doing okay and recovery was going well, but I hated the picture and shortly took it down. 

I am in an uncomfortable stage in my life where my old self is gone but I am still trying to find who I truly am, my new self is yet to be born.

My Story is ongoing and as I continue to write about my experiences with the illnesses I have gone through, there are so many more topics I would like to write about, each update of my recovery I will continue to document as and when. 

Thank you for reading, 

Love & Guidance

Keiran x 

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