Christmas in July

I consider myself a normal person, whatever normal is. But sometimes I wonder what other people are like. My landlady has recently had an operation for breast cancer, so whilst she was recovering I helped her out, by carrying things for her, helping around the flat, generally doing things that I think any normal person would. I also stop and chat with her when I come home in the evenings or during the day, which she seems to find unusual. She does like to talk! Sometimes in English, sometimes in German and sometimes a mixture of both, which can be fun to work out what’s going – especially when it’s in German, I tend to understand but always reply in English.

My Around the World Trip

I’ve decided to go travelling, take a year out see a bit of the wolrld and then come back, refreshed and find a job. After much deliberation over where I wanted to go and learning for some companies you have to go east to west or west to east I phoned a travel man and discussed my plans with him. Unlike my family, who I think are worried that I’m mad doing a year long trip on my own, he was very enthusiastic (OK, he is a travel agent and is paid to encourage mad people). I told him where I wanted to go and for roughly how long in each place. Seeing as he’s done a lot of the places I’m planning he was able to offer suggestions of how long would be best and which way to go.

Good News – 3 years on

When I was diagnosed in 2006 with Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma, I just did what my doctors told me, I didn’t have many options and they knew what they were doing. It was serious and I was lucky they had caught it when they did. Apart from the one scary Lymphoma (female, the only female German doctor I dealt with) specialist who told me ‘it was a fight for my life’ – I knew that, just didn’t need being told in such a brusque manner – I was happy to just go with the flow. I was advised that if they caught the tumour and could get rid of it, the risk of it returning is minimal. So I underwent a 6 month course of steroids (urgh, steroids are horrible, yes, for me worse than everything else and I demanded to come off them as soon as possible, and the doctor kindly reduced my dose, instead of seeing me go mad), radiotherapy, chemotherapy and immunotherapy. Baldness may not be a good look, but it’s certainly better than what would have happened without the chemo. Oh and TV shows, when people lose their hair, it’s not just the hair on their scalp – think eyebrows and eyelashes – I know actresses don’t look good without mascara smeared eyelashes but it is what happens with chemo!

Belfast, Northern Ireland – Part Three

Stormont: is home to the Northern Ireland Assembly and was opened in November 1932. In World War II it was painted black using bitumen and cow manure to disguise it from enemy planes. The statue to Edward Carson in the grounds dominates the driveway. Carson resisted Irish Home Rule and drafted a constitution for provisional Unionist government for Ulster.