Back in the Driving Seat

Well this may prove to be  very boring to some of you, but personally this is one hell of an achievement to me.

Warning Non -Travel Post, but a must read …….

This goes back to May 2016 when I last managed to drive in another country!

We were on a two week holiday (what is that) and we were in our first motorhome Roxy, our Peugeot Boxer stunner, a trip that turned from a nip around Brittany to a lets pop to St Tropez, hell whata few hundred miles between friends, before this we always had a cavaran and our holidays were always in the UK, where I had managed to tow a twin axle caravan.

Leap forward to August 2016 when driving in one of our Smart cars toward Torquay a place that I had driven to so many times, and this happened:-

On a roundabout in Newton Abbot I totally lost all sense of my whereabouts all I can say is that i could see myself on the outside of the car, brought back to reality by Paul shouting did you not see the car coming towards us tooting like made, my answer  NO,

I drove directly across the lanes of the rounabout without any sense that i was meant to share the road with any of the other oncoming cars….

I had absolutly no idea of what danger I had put us in to the point of us being in a very serious colision, we probably would of been pronounced dead but I am glad to say that the other driver was very aware of their suroundings.

As calm as a person as Paul is, he screamed and shouted at me, but i still had no idea that we were in a dangerous situation, i was lost !

This incident lead to many many hours at the doctors who where unable to discover the reason as to why I had had this out of body experience on a journey that I had covered hundreds of times.

I was seen by my own doctor who could not confirm what was wrong and after many appointments and nuroums test, he had given up and as a last ditch attempt sent me to a newly qualified doctor who was training in the surgery, She was a revalation, with no presures on her time, she started at the begining and gave me every test you could imagine, but most importanly she listened to my plight.

Test after test and weeks off work with anti depresents, No diagnosis was forthcoming.

My blood  Test results altered with every test, the doctors even ran out of ideas and finally thought that I may have had some sort of parasite disease in me !

Maninly due to the lack of blood plasma in my system, this is going back to our travels in Mexico and Dom Rep, but once again  these all came back fine, at this point i would have taken some parasite, as at least that would have been treatable !

The final test all lead to Cancer of the blood, this was horific in every sense!

The not knowing  and the long wait was probably the worse and not being able to let family know how I felt, I even told Paul that i was ok to attend the Hospital appointment on my own as nothing new was happening, what a lie i was petrified of the outcome!

I had to go to Barnstaple Hospital for tests, i was petrified, never ever have i needed someone else to share my emotions with me, but i had put myself in this situation all alone, surrounded by people who were genunuly dying and facing life ending illness.

To my suprise and amazement, after I left I felt so humbiled as I was given the all clear but to see those that were less fortunate is something that will stay with me forever.

So moving forward to our BIG trip around Europe (if you have followed us), i need this as much as Paul, but i was secretly to scared to say that i wanted to opt out of ‘real life’, but the relief when Paul ancouced he had enough was, just a weight off my shoulders, i jumped at the chance.

I promised Paul that I would at least drive some of our trip, sadly this was not meant to be and on our following Spainish holiday last year again the promise was broken, not because I could not but because always in the back of my mind was this very very blank episode of not being aware of driving,!

Did I want this to happen in our Paloma 7.5 metre in length and 3.5 ton in weight, I felt totally useless and to be perfectly honest a hopless person.

Paul had to do everything, what would I do if he could not drive, hope that our insurance would help.

Paul tried to understand how I felt, but having only driven a Smart car for the last few years i wasnt ready to jump into a 20 year only motorhome and left hand drive at that and drive off into the sunset, thankfully Paul has always had in the back of his mind that we wanted to build his own campervan…

Move forward to 2019 Spainish Holiday, YAY I have done it I have driven Verity our lovley little VW Transporter that we have converted from a blank panel van to our very own camper.

I have managed to drive the NI 120 which was full of switchbacks and hairpin bends with absolutley no problems at all, is this the beginning of a new friendship with driving.

Michele x.