Thrills, pills and a headscarf

A couple of weeks ago I hit a point I had hoped I wouldn't. I've had a lot of treatment since diagnosis and we've always, in the background, known immunotherapy exists. We've chatted about it a few times and always found some other option. It has remained the card up the sleeve and that's how I liked it. Until two weeks ago. That's when the world went for another spin and a spectacular crash for me. I went for my scan result and was informed the chemotherapy isn't working. Sure, the two smaller spots are shrinking but the big bugger (Stephen Shitbag) who's wedged himself at the back of my liver and is trying to buddy up with blood vessels and stuff, he's not having any of this chemo crap. While the rest of my body is busy falling apart from it, he's thriving and has grown two centimetres since the last scan. The shitbag. Well, we can't be having that. Me getting sicker from something that's supposed to be killing him. So chemo is off ...

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 ...

In October 2016, I sat with my friend, in Bulgaria on my 30th birthday, after a somewhat stressful year, and told her 2017 was going to be amazing, I had decided I was really going to live it. What I didn't elaborate on was my plan for this - I was going to live a year of yes. Essentially I was going to say yes to everything unless it didn't fit with my moral code; that way I would truly experience everything the world was going to offer. I had no idea what 2017 had in hold for me and in reflection I did have a year of yes of sorts. I said yes, slice me open - twice; yes, load me full of pills; yes, inject me with bags of chemicals.... all because I want to spend as much time here as I can. Over the last couple of days I've read many reflections from friends around the world saying they hope the next year will be better. Although this year is far from what I had hoped for I have to say there is plenty in 2017 which I have loved. I have re-established old friendships, fo...