Thrills, pills and a headscarf

I think it's fair to say I'm a social butterfly. I'm like the mother of social butterflies. It's not that I don't like some time to myself, but I really get my energy from getting out and spending time around others.  If I didn't look so much like my mum's family, this trait would easily back up my brother's adoption argument. Much like the poor ugly duckling, I think I'm the social butterfly accidentally born into the keep-to-ourselves ladybird family.  Needless to say the amount of time I need to socialise to stay energetic and happy in life is much higher than others close to me. It's also something that terrified me when I found out I had cancer. I remember telling a friend early on that I was terrified of going into treatment because I didn't want to become boring to be around. She assured me she thought it was an unlikely outcome but I remained unconvinced. This was a big barrier for me to have to face and what I've reali...

I like to think I was a fairly present person before this cancer diagnosis. I like to think a lot of things.  What I can say is this diagnosis has made me a far more present person, in so many ways, than ever before. Even with that wonderful chemo brain that makes me unbelievably forgetful, with the fatigue, nausea and tendency to space out (particularly when I'm low on blood sugars) I believe I'm learning the art of being more present. Note I say learning, not have learnt. (If we ever think we've reached perfection then we've failed ourselves - a hangover from my Learning and Development days) Something I realised after being told I may have less time than many is that I wanted my family and friends to know just how much they mean to me. For my nephews and nieces to know that as long as they continue being the wonderful people they are and never hurt anyone I will always think the world of them, that they are amazing and I couldn't ask for anyone better to...

I've always said that travelling gave me an education I could never buy. One that could never be taught in schools or universities; that simply needs to be learnt as each opportunity presents itself. Those opportunities could be great fun or amazingly challenging. All of them important to deal with. I feel so thankful to have had another four weeks to continue my education in life and as slow as I've been on my blogs I want to share some of those learnings. Some useful, some not. Language is great in it's ambiguity: I thought I spoke Spanish to a point. I guess that's still strictly true but we had some fun experiences with it. It was quite empowering to realise I was still able to get by in Spanish, speak to people and get done what I needed to get done even if it wasn't perfect. What I did learn was there are many more differences between the Castellano I have learnt and South American Spanish. In some of many language confusions we established that ...