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