An adventure in Cushing's and stroke

I went to Paris twice this year. The first time it was because I felt that I had to, and the second time I was looking forward to it so much that I was counting down the days.

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Tomorrow will be exactly three years since the stroke. I remember being asked soon after it happened if it had changed me (besides the obvious inability-to-move-my-left-side, I mean) and my answer was always ‘no’. Before it happened, I was always pretty optimistic and happy to be alive. And it honestly felt like the stroke didn’t really affect my outlook on life *that* much.

Maybe it just needed time to sink in. Kind of like marinating meat – the lessons needed time to be fully absorbed. When I look back now on the past three years, I can see a somewhat large change, namely the willingness to take risks and do the spontaneous. I used to be terrified of the unknown, and preferred to let life happen rather than do anything particularly proactive.

That has completely changed, thanks largely to two things: almost dying, and travelling. The past three years have been the best years of my life because of my newfound ability to do things I was previously too scared to do and ask questions I would previously have been too afraid to ask.

I went to Paris the first time because I was backpacking around Europe for three months, and it felt as though I couldn’t be so close to the City of Lights and the City of Love and not go. It would not have been a proper trip through Europe unless Paris was there, somewhere, on the itinerary.

On my first couple of days there, I did the obligatory tourist things like go to the Eiffel Tower, see the Louvre, and go on a walking tour. I was there for three days, and on the third day I contemplated going on a day trip out to Brest. My friends and I play Ticket to Ride Europe (a board game) a lot and we are always amused when someone manages to build a route to Brest (we are a group of 20-somethings with the maturity levels of teenaged boys). I then thought spending eight hours on a train to take a photograph of a sign is probably not the best use of my last day in Paris.

Instead, I went to all the English bookshops I could find, ate macaroons, and had a grand old time. That night, I met the person who would become the reason I went to Paris a second time. He sat down next to me in the courtyard at the hostel we were both staying at and said hello. We ended up talking a lot, about a lot of things: which is the correct side of the road to drive on, ‘real’ science versus ‘social’ science, TV shows, travelling, studying, the recent elections in Denmark (he’s Danish and I’d just been to Copenhagen), music, and probably a host of other things that I don’t remember.

We carried on talking all the way to the Eiffel Tower. We went there even though we’d both been there both during the day and at night because the Eiffel Tower at night is magical and one of the best sights I’ve ever seen (it’s up there with experiencing Victoria Falls on a micro-light and seeing the sunset on a beach at Llandudno, Cape Town).

It turns out that not only is the Eiffel Tower quite amazing at night; it’s also a lovely setting for a first kiss with someone you quite like. There was more kissing than talking, and it is one of the most memorable first kisses I’ve had. I left Paris the next day, not sure if I would ever see him again, but knowing that I wanted to.

When I was in Vienna two weeks later, I sent him an email asking if he meant it when he said he wanted to see me again. It would have been really easy to have just left it at that one night and one kiss, because it was the sort of thing that happens on the road. But I liked him, and there was one way that I could see him again before I flew home to the other side of the world. And I have learnt in the past three years that asking isn’t *that* scary. If he said yes, then excellent, I would see him again. If he said no, then at least I could know that I tried. In case you skipped the first part of this post: he said yes. I went back to Paris and spent three more days with him. They were amazing and going back to Paris is one of my favourite experiences from travelling.

I’m now back home in Sydney, and I don’t know if or when I will see him again. I would very much like to, but I have also learnt in the past three years that there are so many things you can’t control and life is not a fairy tale. Life is not one neatly structured story with a guaranteed happy ending. It is made of moments, experiences, memories and the people you meet along the way. It unpredictable, unfair, heartbreaking, funny, joyous, and the most valuable thing I have.

The reason I’m writing about this particular moment in a blog that is primarily about my fucked up body (and don’t worry, there will be more medical updates to come. Though I’m hoping those will be of the “my body is boring and my cortisol levels are normal” variety) is because it seems to encapsulate the biggest change in my outlook since the stroke: the willingness to take more chances. I am grateful every day for the lessons I have learnt, the people I have met, but most of all for the fact that I’m still here.