Pripyat; Ukraine

Partly inspired by Jack Whitehall but mainly driven by my perverse desire to test the limits of my luck/mortality, I visited Chernobyl. Yes - the radioactive nuclear meltdown place where it’s still inhabitable for humans. I like to keep things interesting!

There were 3 distinct and scary parts to this trip. In ascending (and co-incidentally chronological) order:

1. The drive to Stansted as I was putting a significant amount of trust in a, frankly quite dodgy, Fiat 500. 2 weeks previously its engine had cut out in the middle lane of the M1, the first attempt to fix it wasn’t successful, and I’d got it back from the garage after attempt #2 the previous day. Whatever wizardry the mechanic did had worked, and my little car got me there in one piece. 

2. The taxi ride from Kiev airport to my hotel as I was being driven by one of the scariest individuals I’d ever encountered in a car less likely to pass its MoT than mine, and this bloke wasn’t wasting valuable fuel to heat his car and de-mist the windscreen. Also, his route of choice included several U-turns into oncoming traffic - Uber screenshot available to anyone calling bullshit. I had several questions, mainly: “good sir, I must probe your disregard of the Highway Code and ponder if this is because you believe others are in pursuit of your vehicle?” which, in the heat of the moment, came out more like “you’re driving like we’re being chased, you big mad bastard!”. He turned to face me, stared me in the eye (please bear in mind he’s driving and I’m in the back seat) and menacingly whispered “you do not know that they are not”. I’ve got no idea who “they” are, or what his diagnosis is, but I know I’d love a rummage through his psych records.

3. The blasé attitude of Ukrainians to radiation, or rather health and safety in general. I did some research before coming here (I.e. watching Jack Whitehall and David Farrier doing similar) and knew that a dosimeter reading of >0.2 or wasn’t normal. My Geiger counter was bleeping frantically when the radiation level reached 0.3, so my guide re-set the alarm threshold to 5.0. I wasn’t sure how to feel about that, but I knew how I felt when the count went to 415.0: mildly concerned. 

Leading on from point 3, this trip I learned that the Chernobyl disaster extended far beyond the initial explosion; the subsequent management of it was equally as catastrophic. It took 36 hours for any type of local exclusion zone to be put in place, and the accident only became internationally known of because the radioactive fallout was detected in Sweden - 2 days later. Even then, the Soviet government denied responsibility.

Walking through this abandoned area on a bitterly cold snowy day was darkly mesmerising. Pripyat (a purpose built city for the employees of the power plant and their families, just 3km from the explosion) had been re-claimed by nature in just 32 years. I saw different buildings: apartments, hospitals, supermarkets, schools. Each area was destroyed enough to feel surreal and disconnected, but most also had remnants which brought the reality of the abandonment back: dolls left in a nursery, full shopping trolleys in aisles, patient’s medical notes, a gas mask. There was even a fairground which had never been used - it was due to open 3 days after the evacuation. 

It was magical in a way I can’t describe. I can’t recommend visiting enough, especially before the area becomes more touristy and looses its spooky silence. I came home with the same number of digits/appendages as I left with, and no green glow. I’m sure it’s perfectly safe!

Love Emily x

Malta, Athens & Budapest

On Wednesday I arrived in Malta. I stayed at a hotel in  Birżebbuġa which, charitably, can be described as “an up and coming area”. The hotel was lovely and marketed (indeed, named) itself on its proximity to the water, which was technically not untrue. However, in my mind, this conjured up images of being by a beach, or cliff, or harbour. Well, I was next to a harbour, but it was the ‘bloody massive shipping container’ type with not a pretty little sailing boat in sight. 

Vowing to undertake better hotel research in the future, the next day I arrived in Athens and smugly cast aside all doubts of my hotel selection abilities. The place I stayed was at the bottom of Acropolis Hill, and had stunning views of the Parthenon. I enjoyed the sight from the rooftop bar and did shots of ‘Unicum’ (a Hungarian spirit; incidentally the most vile thing I’ve ever consumed) with some Moldovan backpackers. The next day I did all the usual Athens tourist stuff, and made my way to Budapest.

In Budapest I stayed on a boat on the river Danube, which was right next to the Hungarian parliament buildings, and had really good views of Budapest castle. I had a nice little stroll down the riverbank the following day and deciphered the public transport system.

No injuries, no disease, no drama!

Love Emily x 

A souvenir from Asia

I knew my next hospital admission was lurking somewhere in the future, but I didn’t expect it to be this bloody soon.

I arrived home from Gatwick feeling pretty damn ropey, but the obvious culprit seemed to be the 11 hour flight. The next day I woke up feeling like I’d been hit by a car, and unfortunately I have previous experience of that for comparison. My temperature was 38.5 so I took a bit of paracetamol, but an hour later it had climbed to 38.8 and I felt like that car had reversed back over me.

I went through the usual drill: called haematology, they admitted me, and initiated treatment for neutropenic sepsis. Given my recent travels I was moved to an isolation room on an infectious diseases ward; my temperature rose to 39.1, my BP plummeted to 62/40, and an extremely angry looking (but completely painless) rash crept over me. Loads of exciting swabs and blood samples were taken over 7 cannulation attempts and 2 femoral stabs, but I avoided another lumbar puncture (I think because I was very vocal about my headache from last time). So far the only thing grown was enterovirus in my throat which isn’t particularly interesting or significant, but the tests for all the exotic diseases take time to do. Initially the working diagnosis was dengue fever, but now chikungunya virus (no, I’d never heard of it either!) seems a lot more likely given how my rash has evolved.

I’m home now, just feeling like I’ve been beaten up, and marvelling at the souvenir I brought home.

Love Emily x

Diffushi; Maldives

The Maldives. Wow.

There was an initial kerfuffle on arrival: I’d thrice asked the hotel for boat transfers between the island the airport is on, and the one where our hotel was. Whether those emails were received and/or ignored will remain a mystery, but what I do know is Ben, Clare and I spent a decent 6 hours lugging our backpacks around Male, sweating our tits off and relying on the kindness of strangers who compensated for the lack of signs/maps/information kiosks and directed us towards the boat we needed. 

We were not happy campers on arrival, and even less so when we discovered the hotel website photos had been taken by an extremely talented photographer, our triple room contained one bed, and the highly anticipated hotel spa was actually at another hotel. We thought we got fair compensation when we negotiated free drinks (we had already paid for full board) for our whole stay plus a free snorkelling trip, but it then transpired that the hotel didn’t have a licence to serve alcohol and the snorkelling trip was included anyway.

Waking up the next morning after an early night, we were all in better moods. We went snorkelling about 3km from the coast of Dhiffushi and all the hyperbolic cliches are about to get rolled out. Going underwater was like entering a different, magical, world. The only sounds I could hear were my breathing and heart beat which gave me far greater focus on what I could see - which was stunning. The flora and fauna of the reef were vibrantly coloured, and the fish weaving around it were equally vivid and beautiful. I spotted several turtles, and got close enough to one to stroke it. It was amazing, and something which should be added to your bucket list.

I spent the next couple of days lazing on the hotels private beach, reading, writing and doing not much else. On our last evening we went to a local spot where stingrays and baby sharks are known to go to in the evening to feed, and paddled with them in the sea.

All in all, I loved the Maldives and I’ve never been anywhere which comes close to rivalling it’s natural beauty, but 3 nights was enough. I’d no longer feel jealous of anyone who told me about their upcoming two-week honeymoon in the Maldives because, unless you’re a ‘beach holiday’ fanatic, there’s nothing to do except... nothing. Maybe that’s part of the appeal for some, but I was getting a bit bored (and burnt) by the end of it. 

That’s my latest adventure brought to a close. Next stop: Malta.

Love Emily x

Bangkok; Thailand

Yesterday I crossed the Cambodian/Thai border, legally, and had a short(ish) drive to Bangkok. Our original plan was to spend 2 nights in Bangkok and fly to the Maldives at 09:25 1st November, but AirAsia rescheduled our flights to 22:00 that evening so we changed them to 31st October to get an extra night in the Maldives at the expense of one in Bangkok. 

This was the last night of the tour which had taken us from Ho Chi Minh to Bangkok. We had an emotional farewell dinner, followed by drinks at the hotels rooftop bar with stunning views of the city. I’ve never had the pleasure of travelling with such a collectively wonderful group of people before led by the most incredible guide - Bamboo. 

If it weren’t for Bamboo, I’d be stuck in a Vietnamese immigration detention centre dying of anaphylaxis. He made sure I exited Vietnam and got into Cambodia (his home country). Despite having minimal experience of dealing with severe food allergies he made it his business to learn, and at every meal ensured the restaurant staff fully understood what I couldn’t eat, and how my food should be safely prepared. On the one occasion where a restaurant made an error he made sure it was immediately resolved and stayed with me whilst the reaction was being managed, frequently checking up on me via Ben and Clare. No favour was too much for him. It was his job to take us through Vietnam, Cambodia and to Thailand but he didn’t have to make such an extra effort to teach us about the culture, history and food of his country - but he did, happily. The world would be a better place with more Bamboos in it.

I’m now at Bangkok airport with Ben and Clare, ready to fly to the Maldives for the final leg of our adventure.

Love Emily x

Phnom Penh & Siam Reap; Cambodia

After a cracking night in a karaoke bar with $0.50 beers I visited Cambodia’s infamous ‘killing fields’ and the prisons used to detain prisoners of the Pol Pot regime, known locally as the Khmer Rouge (translating as Cambodian Red, i.e. Cambodian communists).

I expected there to be some introductory information boards between the car park and the mass graves, almost like a buffer zone, or at least some warning of what was about to come. Instead we immediately arrived at a sign saying “please do not walk on the mass graves”. 

The things we saw were awful: as it was the end of the rainy season, teeth, bone fragments and victims clothing were rising out of the  waterlogged ground, and our tour guide told us this happened daily. I saw the skeleton of a child and the suture lines of their skull weren’t fully fused together so they must have been less than 2 years old. Worse than the sights, though, were the things which were explained to us. The victims of the Khmer Rouge totalled almost half of the Cambodian population, and that doesn’t account for the ‘free’ people who died of the famine. Initially government workers were targeted, then political critics, then ‘intellectuals’ (which even included anyone who wore glasses). The idea behind this was to remove from society the people who would criticise Pol Pot, and might give less educated people negative ideas about the regime. These people were detained and tortured with the aim of them disclosing the name of other ‘criminals’. They were told the torture would continue until either they gave up names or died, or they could provide names be provided with a new house. The majority of these victims didn’t know of any ‘criminals’ so they named innocent people to get their abuse to stop. Only it didn’t. Their ‘reward’ for complying was to be sent to the killing fields to kill those prisoners who didn’t provide names. It wasn’t just adults who were sent to do this; children were too. We saw photos of many of the children who were ordered to kill - most were between 10-12 and looked horrified and broken by what they were being made to do, but others had a tiny smirk and defiant look which suggested they enjoyed it. 

How were innocent people killed in the fields? I assumed they would have been shot, but our guide explained this would have been too quick and easy a death. Instead they were blindfolded, made to kneel at the edge of a mass grave, and struck at the base of their skull with a hammer. If they survived this, their throat was cut using the bark of a palm tree which has a sharp edge - but not sharp enough to do it quickly. We saw a tree named “the magic tree” where speakers were hung to blast out music to cover the screams, meaning nearby villagers weren’t aware of what was happening. If you were a woman with a child, your fate was worse. The women were lined up with their children, and one by one the children were taken by Khmer Rouge, held up by their ankles, and had their heads clubbed against a tree - in front of their mothers. After the children had been killed the women were raped, and then murdered. 

I left the field feeling pretty somber, and then went to the infamous S-21 prison in Phnom Penh. Once Vietnam became aware of the genocide in Cambodia they (admittedly not entirely altruistically) invaded Cambodia to intervene. Khmer Rouge got wind of this and increased the rate of executions to attempt to destroy evidence of their crimes. They succeeded in ‘emptying’ thousands of prisoners from S-21 (bearing in mind this was one of hundreds of prisons in the country, and the same was being done at each) and only 7 remained by the time the prison was liberated by the Vietnamese. Two were babies, two were brothers aged 8 and 6, and three were adult men. The 8 year old and two of the adults have now returned to S-21 to tell visitors their stories which must have taken an unimaginable amount of mental strength. My mind struggles with getting on a bike or going to Kettering hospital, so I don’t know how they survive returning to the place where their mothers and fathers were killed. 

It was a tough day so we needed a bit of down-time in the evening, which came in the form of a sunset all-you-can-drink boat party on the Mekong river. Clare and I (badly) re-enacted the ‘Jack and Rose’ photo, and I gave Ben a nosebleed: I owed her $5 which I put down her top, she said “I feel like I should give you a lap dance”, I said “go on then”, she straddled me and leant my head back, my sunglasses almost went overboard so I swung my head forwards, and make quite hard contact with her face. Whoops. 

A couple of days later we set off to Siam Reap which has a brilliant night life. We drank at a rooftop bar complete with a pool, and then Clare and I hit the night market whilst Ben had a massage (which she described as “like being stamped on”). There’s a road called “Pub Street” which is a cacophony of neon lights, loud music, and smells of delicious street food. It was brilliant. We didn’t stay out too late though, because the next morning we had a 4am start to reach Angkor Wat (the worlds largest religious site) for sunrise. It was beautiful, and once the sun had risen we explored the temples which were a fascinating fusion of Buddhism and Hinduism. One of the temples had been abandoned for hundreds of years and had been buried under the jungle which has overgrown it. Restoration work is underway but it was still stunning to see trees growing on top of buildings, and wrapping their roots around walls. Most interestingly, though, was the explicit instruction on the back of my entrance ticked forbidding me from “exposing sexual organs”.

We left Angkor Wat just before midday, and the temperature was 34 degrees. Hot, sunburnt and drenched with sweat, I have never been more grateful to get on an air conditioned coach. We stopped at a local ‘training restaurant’; designed to help local village youths learn English and the necessary skills to become chefs or waiting staff. The food was absolutely delicious, but a learning need was identified re. allergens and cross-contamination. I felt very itchy and my lips tingly, but that was probably psychological after seeing peanuts so I didn’t pay it much attention. I developed a rash but no airway symptoms, so I just took some oral antihistamines. On the bus back to the hotel I had a sense that I was going to die. This feeling is easily dismissed as a panic attack, but it’s not. I’ve had a panic attack before but this sensation is entirely different: it’s a symptom (‘a sense of impending doom’), not a feeling. Within minutes my chest was tight, I had abdominal pain, I was jittery and was very tachycardic - adrenaline time! This meant I was down to a grand total of 0 EpiPens so as soon as I’d slept the reaction off Clare and I went on the hunt for replacements. We couldn’t find an auto-injector anywhere but we did manage to get hold of some 1mg vials of adrenaline, plus needles and syringes to draw it up. One vial is the equivalent of two EpiPens, and that plus some diazepam to take the edge of the bloody horrible adrenaline come-down cost me the meagre sum of $9! 

Today I feel lethargic and still a little bit queasy, but ultimately fine and ready for this 9 hour bus ride to the Thai border!

Love Emily x

The Vietnam/Cambodia Border

Today we got a bus over the Vietnamese/Cambodian border. When I entered Vietnam I was distracted by tiredness and an allergic reaction, so whilst I recognised the slowness of the immigration officer at the airport and irritably questioned his competence, the significance of this observation wasn’t obvious, but became very clear when I tried to leave the country. Long story short: I’m technically an illegal immigrant. Work Experience Immigration Guy had stamped my passport with the date of my entry but hadn’t marked my visa as ‘used’, ergo, I had entered without a visa (despite having one). The immigration staff at the border spoke about as much English as I do Vietnamese so it was a tricky one to resolve. I watched my friends walk over the no-mans land between the two countries and wondered what life would be like in a Vietnamese immigration centre. Luckily that thought didn’t become reality because I re-joined the back of the queue and found the equally lax colleague of Work Experience Immigration Guy, he stamped my invalid visa, and I went on my way to Phnom Penh - which I’m about to explore via tuk tuk.

Love Emily x

Ho Chi Minh; Vietnam

Ben, Clare and I have been in Ho Chi Minh City for the past few days and met up with the group which we’ll travel with through to Thailand. This city borders on sensory overload: the lights, sounds, traffic and heat are inescapable but thankfully none of the smells which have almost overwhelmed in previous places I’ve been to. Compared to India the driving is (relatively) safe. There are traffic lights and road lanes which are occasionally observed, and no roaming cattle on the roads. Most foreigners I’ve met are on an adventure and there’s an amazing culture of sharing stories and advice. I’ve never been to a city anywhere in the world with such a great ‘traveller community’ and I love it.

Soon after we landed Clare and I left our hotel to explore. We were given the least interpretable map in existence by reception, which was so useless it may as well have been created by J.K. Rowling. Visibly lost, a man approached us and asked if we wanted a rickshaw tour of the city. Neither of us are inexperienced travellers and we followed all the usual steps (primarily agree a price in advance, 5,000 dong 

per bike, bargain!), were confident we’d got a great deal, and hopped on the bikes. The tour was great: they dropped us off at loads of places, waited for us until we were done, and then took us to the next one. We visited the war museum (harrowing, but well worth a visit), Notre Dame cathedral (an out of place but fairly accurate replica of Paris’ famous building), the Reunification Palace, and the river bank. At the end of the tour we profusely thanked our riders, and they demanded 1,500,000 dong. That’s the original price multiplied by 10, and then trebled. I paid 50,000 dong which is about £6.50 - still significantly more that the agreed rate but an amount I was happy to pay given the great time we’d had. We argued the toss with them about the rest, they pointed at a cash point for Clare to withdraw the money from and grabbed my arm to keep me as a ‘deposit’. Luckily I’m a big white girl and they were little Asian men so it wasn’t at all difficult to get away, which I did. We then legged it, saw one was following us, so dived into a heaving indoor market to take refuge. We stayed there for about half an hour and tried to second guess which exit they’d be expecting us to leave by. We picked the obvious choice, tentatively peeked out to make sure we weren’t still being followed, and then merged back into the anonymous crowds of the city.

The next day we went to the Mekong delta which is a series of small inhabited islands at the mouth of the river Mekong, just before it reaches the South China Sea. We hopped between islands via boat and tried lots of local foods (fruit, honey, cocoa, coconut candy, snake wine), petted a python (2 were kept in captivity so their shedded skin could be used to make soup), and wore traditional conical hats. After we returned to Ho Chi Minh we headed to the street food market for dinner which was amazing, and a far more Western interpretation of ‘street food’ (or vice versa) than I saw in India. 

Today we’ll be getting a bus to the Cambodian border and getting some more ink in our passports.

Love Emily x

Hà Nội, Hà Long, & Ho Chi Minh City; Vietnam

I’m currently in Vietnam with Ben and Clare: I’ve been to Hà Nội and Hà Long, and at the moment I’m in Ho Chi Minh City. 

The flight here was interesting. I have a severe peanut allergy. It’s recently got to the point where being in the vicinity of peanuts causes a reaction. In light of the sad recent case of Natacha Ednan-Laperouse and an 11.5 hour flight coming up with Vietnamese Airlines I boarded the plane with plenty of safe snacks and cards explaining my allergy in Vietnamese.

I looked for an option online to let the airline know about my allergy in advance, but there was none. The moment I stepped on the plane I let a hostess know and requested no peanuts be served on the flight. She seemed confused, so I told another hostess, and finally a third so I could be certain the message had been received by someone. 

It had not.

Within 30 minutes of take off staff were merrily chucking bags of peanuts at passengers, wether they asked for them or not. I asked them to stop, to which their reply was “oh yes, no nuts for you”. No - no peanuts for ANYONE! There was a complete lack of understanding of why this was a potentially fatal safety issue and one steward I tried to explain it to walked away from me laughing and saying “no, no, no” and refused to make an announcement asking other passengers to stop opening packets. 

Ben was becoming upset because she could see a rash start covering my chest, neck and face. She is one of the strongest women I know: I have never seen her tearful before, but she was in this situation because she thought I was going to die and there was nothing she could do to help me. We recognised that the mistake (the serving of peanuts) had already happened and couldn’t be undone, but wanted to make sure our plans B, C and D were foolproof. The staff had no idea of the potential need for an emergency landing. Their ‘medical box’ contained plasters and out of date loperamide. They couldn’t tell us where the defibrillator was. Looked at us blankly when we asked if there were non-nutty seats to move to.

I spent the final 11 hours of the flight dosed up on antihistamines and physically uncomfortable with a mild allergic reaction, but the mild nature of it was better luck than judgement. Mentally though, I was entirely unable to sleep because of the paranoia I felt each time I heard the rustle of a packet which may have been peanuts from earlier. A sleepy itch wasn’t just an itch: it felt like the first symptom of anaphylactic shock in my panicked mind. The cabin staff had demonstrated I couldn’t trust them with my safety, so I clutched my adrenaline all the way to Hà Nội and hoped something of what I’d been saying to the cabin crew had sunk in.

Majorly grumpy after walking away from the Peanut Incident and waiting an age for my backpack to arrive on the luggage carousel, Ben and I got a cab to the hotel we’d booked. We arrived after 45 minutes, which was remarkably good time because my research said the journey would take 2-3 hours. We checked in to the hotel, bedded down for a power nap, and then it hit me - we were still in Hà Nội, not Hà Long. Faced with 2 choices: stay in Hà Nội until our flight to Ho Chi Minh the next morning, or squeeze in the briefest of trips to Hà Long and meet Clare there as planned, we opted for the latter, stayed in an amazing 5* hotel in a 15th floor room with a panoramic view of the bay, and had the most brutally effective massage of my life (seriously, it was like BDSM with aromatherapy). Unfortunately it emerged that there had been further confusion when I tried to make plans to meet up with Clare: she had left Hà Long fo Hà Nội that morning. 

There was further narrowly avoided disaster with catching our flight from Hà Nội to Ho Chi Minh. The hotel receptionist was adamant that we could leave at 7:00 to get a 9:40 flight. Dubious, we booked a shuttle for 6:00 instead, and even then cut it incredibly fine. At one point on the journey I resigned myself to having to renounce my claim to have never missed a flight, Clare had checked in at a sensible time and was on the verge of giving up on us and going to the gate, but somehow we made it!!

I’m off out now to explore the Vietnamese capital.

Love Emily x

Off on another jolly

I’m writing this from the Heathrow departure lounge as Ben and I wait for our flight to Hanoi, where we’ll meet up with Clare (who I serendipitously met at Delhi airport who turned out to live <1 mile away, and has since become an amazing friend and travel buddy). The trip has barely started and already it’s been eventful, largely because Ben forgot her passport. She had travelled down south to stay with friends in Reading, and anxiously text me on Friday evening to let me know that her passport remained at her flat. Luckily her flatmate is one of the doctors at work, and was working on Saturday, so I spend a chunk of the day trying to track her down. Someone eventually responded to her pager and told me where to find her, so I went to theatre and she explained, whilst operating (on a patient who was luckily under general anaesthetic), where to find our friends travel documents. 

My body didn’t want me to be lonely on my travels so it gave me another kidney stone for company. It started off as a bog-standard UTI which didn’t clear up after 2 rounds of oral antibiotics and evolved into pyelonephritis, which then turned into a stone. My GP referred me in to hospital, and they advised admission, but I’d rather be in pain in my own bed with the same analgesia as I’d get in hospital, plus cats, so I declined. I don’t think it’s come out yet (if last time was anything to go by then I’m sure I’d have noticed!) but nor is it causing me significant grief at the moment. It’s just hanging out in there; biding it’s time. I look forward to it.

Love Emily x

Geneva; Switzerland

I woke up at 10am in Bucharest, still knackered from last nights late night, and the night shift the day before. Unfortunately this was also check-out time at the hostel, and my flight departed at 12:15. Realising that my plans for early-morning exploring had gone right down the shitter and there was no time to be experimenting with Romanian trams to get to the airport, I hopped in an Uber and arrived at the gate to be confronted with one of life’s most baffling mysteries: why do people clamour to get on a plane first? You already know what seat you’ll be in; it’s not like the good ones will be gone by the time you get there, and unless you’re in a window seat you’ll have to get up to let other people on anyway. Why would you opt to spend more time in an even less comfortable environment than the departure lounge? We all take off at the same time!

The flight to Switzerland flew over Lake Geneva (impressive) and was far less eventful than yesterday’s. My Franglais has improved just enough so I can walk into a shop to buy postcards and stamps and shopkeepers hesitantly respond in French, and don’t just roll their eyes and speak in their perfect English, so that’s something. As I was writing the postcards it occurred to me that a crack habit may well be a cheaper hobby than dicking around in foreign countries and spending a fortune on international stamps.

In other news, I’ve handed my notice in at work. Mentally and physically I just can’t do it any more. It’s no co-incidence I’m getting so many UTIs/kidney infections/kidney stones: it’s because I often don’t have time to use the bathroom during a 12.5 hour shift, or re-fill my 750ml water bottle. Every single day I’ll be asked “do you have kids?” by a couple, and the urge to reply with “no, and I swallow every time so I don't know what's going on” or “yes, but social services took them off me” gets stronger each time. It’s probably best to resign before I say that and get fired. 

Love Emily x

Bucharest; Romania

If ‘Jeremy Kyle on a Plane’ existed, then I’ve just had a front row seat at a live recording.

My day started quite badly: I finished a night shift, went home for 90 minutes sleep before heading to Luton to fly to Bucharest, and realised (after I slept through my alarm for 2 solid hours) that 90 minutes in ~24 hours was obviously not enough sleep. Best case scenario was I could get a train which arrived at the airport at 15:03 for a 15:30 take off... worth a roll of the dice, surely? I expect many things from WizzAir but punctuality is not one of them, the flight was predictably delayed by over an hour, and my gamble paid off.

After I (finally) boarded the plane a bit of a kerfuffle kicked off because some passengers needed re-seating to “balance the aircraft” (I don’t know much about aerophysics, but I’d hope there’s a little more to it than moving some fat people around?), but they’d paid to reserve their seats so they were having none of it. The argument with the steward was in Romanian but the bilingual guy next to me very kindly gave me a running translation. Eventually there was a re-jiggle of a fair few people on the plane, and everything was “balanced”. Problem solved!

Wrong.

The initial people who were asked to move didn’t like their new seats and asked to get off the plane. The steward looked really stressed out by this, and I assumed this was because he’d need to arrange for their luggage to come out of the hold and delay things even more. Whilst that turned out to be part of his problem, the far larger issue was the re-re-balancing of the plane, and then checking EVERY SINGLE PERSON’S BAGS to make sure the deserters hadn’t left anything potentially dodgy on board. By the time this was sorted we’d been sat on tarmac for over an hour, long missed the take-off slot, and the pilot advised us of a further hour delay.

I thought the drama was over when we eventually landed the wrong side of midnight, but then some fuckwit tried lighting up a fag on the way to the terminal, received a lot of disbelieving glances from other passengers, decided against smoking the fag, chucked it on the (oil covered) ground, and got arrested. 

The flight delays meant I arrived at my hotel well after the check-in desk closed so, barely able to keep my eyes open and willing to accept any (unoccupied) bed, I found a hostel and crashed there. It could well have been shite, but I was so exhausted that I didn’t notice or care.

Love Emily x

Proper Sepsis Job!

It’d been way too long without a hospital admission!

On Sunday I felt a bit crappy and had a temperature of 38.2 so I have haematology a call to be assessed. When I arrived my temp was still 38.2, P 114, BP 74/31, R 26, o2 91% (aka not at all normal). 

I’m 6 days in to this admission and so far:

Pyelonephritis (a kidney infection) has been diagnosed, treated and cured,

...however...

I’m still spiking regular temps despite IV abx for 6 days.

I’m on oxygen because I can’t maintain my sats above 90%

I’ve got 3 lines in, with talk of a fourth,

...because...

I had a lumbar puncture overnight (?meningitis... again) because I deteriorated even further with an agonising headache.

The sexy catheter is back.

FML.

Love Emily x

Vienna; Austria & Sofia; Bulgaria

Yesterday I swung by Vienna, and I’ve spent today in the Bulgarian capital of Sofia. The bits of Vienna I saw were nice enough, but I suspect I didn’t see the best the Austrian capital had to offer because I got royally lost. To me, using a map is a last resort only to be used if admitting defeat and I think that’s the most compelling evidence that Colin’s my dad (because the blood groups sure ain’t!)! I left Vienna train station and went in the direction which most people were going in, confident that I’d stumble upon something interesting. On reflection, the issue with following people from a train station on a Wednesday afternoon is they’re probably on their way to work... and so they were. One by one they disappeared into office blocks leaving me in a very non-touristy part of the city so I continued winging it down side streets and then, conceding defeat, stopped on a street corner to check Google maps. I didn’t realise Vienna had a red light district, but it does, and I’d found myself in it... getting very disdainful looks from men who were clearly not prepared to pay for a pasty and bewildered looking backpacker wearing a flowery raincoat. 

I put the prostitute incident behind me, and in the early hours of this morning arrived in Sofia. Granted, it was dark when I arrived, but my first thought when going through the city was: “whoa, there’s no colour”! The architecture on the outskirts of the city is Soviet style, and emits a brutal and depressing vibe - I feel qualified to make that statement; I grew up near Milton Keynes and lived in Leicester for 4 years, and am thus well aware of the horrors of concrete buildings! The buildings softened the further into the city centre I got but the atmosphere didn’t: the occasional splashes of colour (mainly words on shop fascias) felt muted because of the rigid shapes of the letters they were contained within, and the roads formed a regimented grid system, with nothing as superfluous as a bend. 

In the daylight I went out to explore, but unfortunately it was pissing it down harder than it had been for the previous 2 days. My mission was to find postcards and stamps (another Colin-trait I have), food, and soak up some culture. All that ultimately got soaked up was rainwater through my canvas shoes, there was not a single post office in the 6.7km of the streets of Sofia around which I traipsed, and food was a risk which I couldn’t afford to take because a) I didn’t recognise much and couldn’t be sure it was vegetarian, and b) I had no idea what the Bulgarian word for “peanut” is (“фъстъци”, if you’re curious). I refused to repeat my Vienna fail so I bought myself a banana and sat with my hood up in the park which contains the Palace of Culture and the Temple of Bulgarian Martyrs (which would be a beautiful place to lay with a book on a sunny day) whilst damply working out my strategy, and accepted a fag from a kind woman who must’ve thought I was homeless. 

I worked out my best bet was to get the metro to the airport, albeit 5 hours early, because at least there’d be warmth and a properly franchised coffee shop there. The metro system in Sofia is baffling: it only has two lines which are sensibly named ‘line 1’ and ‘line 2’. One line is red on maps, the other is blue. But which line is red or blue changes depending which map you look at and must be a deliberate move to keep tourists out. I eventually made it to the airport despite the best efforts of the Bulgarian authorities, and arrived at terminal 2 where I was again bamboozled. Airports have different terminals, I get that, but in my experience they’re usually a) grouped by destination (EU/non-EU flights) and b) somewhat in the vicinity of each other. A flight to Birmingham left from terminal 2, but I needed terminal 1 for Luton, and it took a 25 minute shuttle bus ride to reach it. 

On reading this some might think “bits of that sound quite scary and stressful”, but it’s what I love. When you’re absolutely drenched and you know you need to get food, cash and a way to the airport but neither speak not understand any part of the local language then you worry about the upcoming minutes and hours - future months, years and decades are irrelevant. People often think it’s strange that I love travelling on my own, but to me it completely makes sense. I can be absolutely selfish about what I do and when I do it because it’s just me, and that’s a feeling I need to be able to find comfort in if I’m never going to have a child. I love walking through a city with no idea where I’m going and no idea what the people passing me by are saying, because in those moments I’m focused on translations or spotting signs, I don’t have any mental space to let my mind wander in the way that it does when I’m on autopilot in familiar places, and that’s my chosen coping mechanism for now.

Love Emily x

Bratislava; Slovakia

Today I set off to Slovakia, because these 100 countries I want to go to before I die aren’t going to visit themselves. I was post night shift (finished at 07:30), rushed home, had a cursory bodily fluid decontamination, and had an hour or two of sleep which was unfortunately regularly interrupted by several Flufflin’s (the verb we’ve given to the entirely innocent but extremely annoying activities of our very simple cat, Fluffles) and PE teachers blowing whistles and yelling at Kyle to get out of the bush. By 13:00 I was up, dressed, packed, and on a train to Luton. 

I always feel very uneasy about defining myself as ‘middle class’ because that definitely doesn’t reflect my working class upbringing, but I guess counting executive airport lounges as a travelling necessity does make it hard to argue. I went straight to it (£22 for minimal children, WiFi, comfy chairs, showers, SnoozePods (which are brilliant), food and snacks, and all the alcohol you like. I’m beginning to appreciate the subtle difference between “all the alcohol you like” vs “all the alcohol you can drink”. I often feel there’s a competitive element which, on reflection, probably isn’t there and is certainly best ignored post-night, with barely any sleep, and on an empty stomach. Still, shoulda woulda coulda; I had a great time (with intermittent trips to the SnoozePod to nap it off). And when my flight appeared on the board it was delayed by an hour! Normally I’d be narky, but this time it was an absolute win because I stuffed myself with more gin and dhaal.

Getting off the plane at Bratislava was a slightly wobbly experience, but no further ankle injuries occurred (thus far). I found my way to my hotel, which is actually a moored boat, and checked in. I’ve got the teeniest little cabin which is adorable for a night, but I’m glad it’s not longer! I had a shower and whilst I was in there the whole room shook and the bathroom door opened. It turns out there are storms in Bratislava which are making the river Dunaj pretty choppy. I knew the boat was moored but I did assume it would beat least slightly stabilised... nah.

In other news, last week I started HRT (hormone replacement therapy) to make this menopause rhubarb a little bit less shit. Within an hour it was very very painful so I took it off and discovered blisters, so it looks like I’m allergic to that fucker and all.

So, in summary, I’ve travelled to a country with significantly worse weather than the current heatwave in the country I’ve come from with a notoriously crap climate, I’m staying on a lurching boat, and have an ongoing chemical burn from an oestrogen patch I had on for an hour (over a week ago). FML.

Love Emily x

Croatia & Montenegro

I’ve got a habit of buying people ‘experiences’ rather than ‘objects’ as gifts, and sneakily they’re always things I want to do too, so I invite myself along as a +1... winner winner. Darryl’s birthday was earlier this month, and his present was a trip to Dubrovnik in Croatia. Dubrovnik was lovely: gorgeous weather, an awesome vegan restaurant tucked away in the beautiful Old Town, and an apartment which came with its own massive testicled friendly ginger cat. We went up a mountain in cable cars which gave stunning views of Old Town and the coast, and also had a museum about the Croatian war of independence which used highly emotive and biased information; bordering on propaganda.

As part of my mission to visit 100 countries before I die we got on a bus and hopped over to Montenegro to hear their side of the story! On crossing the border the weather dramatically changed. There was thunder, lightning and rain so hard that we queried wether the bay we were driving around had actually been a bay earlier in the morning. 

We arrived in Kotor, an extremely pretty town wedged between the sea and mountains, just as the weather started to change for the better. The combination of residual puddles, Kotor’s smooth medieval paving and my flimsy flips flops meant I went flying and did some painful damage to my right ankle. Montenegro isn’t an EU country so my E111 doesn’t carry much weight, and I didn’t want to use my travel insurance to go to a hospital here because we only had 90 minutes in Kotor before our bus left, via Budva (the other direction from the Croatian border). I got on the bus and limped around Budva for a bit, got some bandages and strapped my leg up as best I could whilst still wearing the offending flip flops. 

7 hours later we arrived back in Dubrovnik and reasoned that yes, it’s probably broken, but if I got that confirmed with an x-ray then I’d be plastered up which would mean missing my flight tomorrow morning (you’re not able to take a flight >2 hours long within 48 hours of having a cast fitted) and not getting back to the U.K. until Wednesday. In light of this I strapped it up using an alcohol soaked cloth my host provided (it smells too much like ouzo for me to be tempted to take the bedtime shot she also gave me), used the best analgesia available (paracetamol, ibuprofen, tramadol and alcohol which probably shouldn’t be mixed but work FAR better when they are!), elevated it (by the pool), and I’ll swing by Nottingham’s minor injuries unit if it’s still swollen and painful tomorrow afternoon. 

Up until this point I’d like to think I’ve been reasonable in dealing with all the crap life sends my way. It’s easy to ask “why me?”, but far more accurate to think “well, it probably had to happen to someone, so why not me?” - and that had been my philosophy for as long as I can remember. I firmly believe you stand a far greater chance of being in the right place at the right time the more places you go to, but I guess if you pessimistically flip that; you’re also a lot more likely to be in the WRONG place at the WRONG time. Given that the last 12 months have pelted me with: 3 anaphylactic reactions (each to a previously unknown allergen, one escalating to anaphylactic shock), being hit by a car and breaking my arm in 2 places, pyelonephritis, 2 kidney stones, a busted lip after slipping in a colossal pile of pigeon crap and the diagnoses of premature menopause and infertility I thought I was due a break. 

If there is an omnipotent power... it hates me.

Infertility.

This is my first post for 3 months. Usually my blog is quiet when life is going well, but unfortunately not this time. It’s been quiet lately because I’ve not had the words to explain what’s going on.

‘It’ started in April. Well, really I don’t know when ‘it’ started, but I suspect January because that’s when I started getting symptoms I couldn’t ignore. Night sweats so bad I needed to sleep on a towel. Hot flushes. No periods since September. Some other sexual stuff which you probably don’t want to hear about. Weight gain despite marathon training (which, if you didn’t already know, has been postponed to 2019). Memory loss to the extent that I could drive to Tesco for a single specific item, arrive with no idea why I was there, do 3 laps of the shop hoping I’d remember, and concede defeat and phone Darryl to ask what we needed. Olive oil, as it happens.

I put off seeing a GP for months as I could plausibly explain each of those symptoms through a combination of hardcore marathon training/stress/a relationship becoming established after we’d settled into living together. Collectively, though, I knew they were a problem and so did my GP. Her first line of inquiry was the one I expected: blood tests to look for lymphoma or leukaemia which, in view of my haematology issues, seemed sensible. She also added on some hormonal tests “just to get a full picture”. 

I was blindsided on 9th April when I had a call from my GP, asking me to see her the next day. I checked results, and they didn’t look good. I had a night shift that night and partially coped with the help of Ben and Easter eggs, but at 2:45 crumbled and went home. I got a few minutes of sleep at a time before I woke myself up questioning if it was 8:00 yet, and was I able to book an appointment? I got one for 9:50, but no more sleep.

The appointment was worse than I’d feared. I had unmeasurably low oestrogen, FSH (the hormone needed to turn ‘eggs’ into a follicle which can be fertilised to become a baby) and LH (the hormone needed to trigger ovulation). Borderline TSH (thyroid stimulation hormone), and high cortisol. The upshot: my pituitary gland isn’t working properly, causing premature ovarian failure and infertility, the most likely cause of this being a pituitary gland tumour. I was sent home clutching prescriptions for diazepam and zopiclone, and a referral letter to endocrinology under the 2 week suspected cancer pathway.

I went home, knocked myself out on zopiclone, and made no attempt to process what I’d been told, instead concentrating on coming up with a way to tell my parents. I decided it wasn’t news to break over FaceTime and Darryl needed space to process it too, so I went to Northamptonshire armed with information sheets, printouts of my results, and diagrams of where the pituitary gland is. 

After a few days I came back up north and survived for a few weeks with the help of benzos, zopiclone, and alcohol. Not healthy, but absolutely necessary at the time. By early May I was driving myself crazy being occupied by my own thoughts (mainly “how can I be an infertile midwife?”, “I feel incredibly guilty about surviving as long as I have done, and surviving a brain tumour would push me over the edge”, and “I can’t cope with any more”) and decided I’d be better off going back to work. I sent an email to my colleagues explaining my diagnosis and they’ve all been sensitive and supportive, but I feel an almost physical pain whenever I’m making small talk with a patient and they ask if I’ve got kids. But that’s it... I feel it, I survive it, and it goes.

Later in the month I had an MRI and an endocrinology appointment: my pituitary gland is mildly enlarged but ultimately normal and tumour-free. There is no explanation for why it’s failing. IVF will be my only option to have a biological child, and given my crap ovarian reserve I was strongly advised to have this by the time I was 30. I turned 28 in the middle of this, and Darryl and I have been together lass than 18 months.

I’m having counselling, but I don’t think I’m close to coming to terms with it yet. In the first month I did laps around baby shops to try to make myself feel something. Work is hard. It’s a mentally draining job anyway: you may be delivering the 3rd baby of your shift, and your mind may be wandering back to the dead baby you delivered the shift before, but part of the skill of being a midwife is making the couple you’re with feel like their baby is the most precious you’ve ever met, and their moment is the only one that matters - try doing that whilst feeling resentful you’ll probably never have your own. 

It’s incredibly difficult being around people who try to be positive about it, but unfortunately they’re most of the people I know, and it’s even more difficult NOT being around them. I’m usually quite an upbeat person, but for now I just want to grieve. Whilst people may be correct in saying “there’s always IVF” (as long as I do it before I’m 30, and accept the 68% failure rate), “why not adopt?” (it’s an option worth considering, but won’t in any way be a comparable parenting experience to raising a birth child), “my friend had XYZ and now she’s got triplets”, or “think of all the travelling you can do without kids!” (yes, but I’d also like someone to pass my travelling stories on to, so they can tell their kids what grandma got up to when she was younger)... for now, I just need to be sad. There’s going to be plenty of time for positivity, but now isn’t it.

“She wasn't bitter. She was sad, though. But it was a hopeful kind of sad. The kind of sad that just takes time.”

―Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower