It is now two months since my wife Rachel gave me one of her kidneys and it is working very well.

I'd love to tell you I've now been skydiving and generally living it up in a high-octane way. But unfortunately, save for a much-enjoyed pint of Guinness, I've spent most of the time pretty unwell.

I've fallen victim to one of the main problems facing kidney transplant patients after the operation: infection. In order to stop your body rejecting your new kidney, you are placed on a high dose of immuno-suppressant drugs. But while they allow the kidney to get on with its job without being attacked as an alien intruder, they inevitably make you extremely vulnerable to any bugs going round.

Last week I picked up gastroenteritis, which had me straight back into the Royal Free hospital for another week. With this virus you lose a lot of fluid very quickly due to diarrhoea and vomiting - no good when you need to keep a new kidney properly hydrated. They soon had me rigged up on an IV drip, pumping 4-5l of saline solution into me a day to keep my new kidney busy.

It was pretty dispiriting to be back in the hospital again - especially as after I ceased to be infectious, I was in the same bed I had been to hell and back in only a few weeks earlier.

When I had the operation there were three other kidney transplant patients in my ward and all of them have been back in hospital since with infections. It makes me think that it is pretty much impossible to live in a big city infection-free when you're on a large dose of drugs designed to suppress your immune system - in my case Tacrolimus, Mycophenolate Mofetil and Prednisolone. I'm certainly looking forward to the time when the dosage can be brought down and a bus journey won't leave me with something nasty.

Apart from this setback - and the post-surgical complications I have already described - everything is going according to plan. My creatinine - a measure of kidney function - is now around 120, perfectly normal for someone of my size. Before I began dialysis, it was 1,500.

Although I have only put on about 2.5kg of the 8kg I lost in hospital after the transplant, I feel a lot stronger and a lot better than I did when I was on dialysis back in the summer.

I have been eating 5-6 small meals a day, usually rich in carbs, in order to beef up a bit. Last week's gastroenteritis has not exactly helped but it is nice to enjoy whatever food I want, guilt-free and without having to pop a phosphate-binder first.

So I'm not quite fighting fit yet, but the kidney seems to endure whatever else my crumbling body throws at it. Rachel is completely back to normal and has returned to work. I'm looking forward to catching her up and really enjoying the gift of life she has given me.

• If you would like to join the organ donor register, you can do so at uktransplant.org.uk.