Why a world trip?
My life story in a nutshell
Like many others in the world, I’ve taken the adventurous decision to go on a world trip. I had the choice to settle down by building a house, having a career & start a family….That doesn’t sound so bad right? What changed my mind was the thought of what I’ll regret more later in life: a full-time job to finance my house and join the rat race? Or spend the money on my quest for happiness and adventure? Well, my choice was made.. I’ll explain why by telling you my life story.
To begin why I wanted to go on a world trip I’ll take you back to my younger years. I was born in 1993 in a beloved family. My father worked and mum was always home. In the weekends we took fun trips, mostly outside. The sense for adventure was already there from an early age. I’ve always been fascinated by the adventurous things my father did, such as motorcycling and scuba diving. Most toddlers want to copy their parents and do everything by themselves, I was one of them. For example:
‘ As a 4 year old toddler I secretly went out of the garden to follow my father on his motorbike. He was heading to work. I climbed the fence and managed to unluck the door. I left with my bike, a tricycle, to follow my dad. Meanwhile I was cycling on a busy 50 km road. A nice man picked me off the road and brought me home (after knocking on 100 houses). Oops, sorry mom and dad!’
I always had a thing and lots of love for my environment: for people, animals and nature. There was no day coming by that I wasn’t outside exploring in search of fish, frogs and other animals. I loved taking them home and taking care of them. There were lots of times my mother found a frog jumping out of my bed while cleaning the sheets or that my father noticed a weird smell and found out that I buried, under just a small layer of sand, a big dead fish. In the winter I liked watching animal planet and the adventurous stories of Steve Irwin in search of wild life. Added together, it’s not surprising that I would like to explore and discover more of our world and its nature and fauna
During my school years I always dreamt to take a trip abroad. If there was an opportunity I grabbed it. And so I did: In 2009 there was a school exchange project to Norway. I stayed for a week in Leksvik at my host-friend Frida and her lovely family. It was amazing to get a taste of a very different way of living, a different school curriculum and culture. I learned that I took for granted how close-by everything is in the Netherlands. In Leksvik we needed to walk for 40 minutes to get to school or a friends house, not the 5 minutes that I was used to at home. But I loved being outside and walking, especially with good company like Frida. This trip was a very special experience for me and I often look back fondly to it. Now that I got a taste of what it’s like to live in another country, I got hungry for more!
When I was eighteen I registered for a nursing study. This fit me well because I like caring for living creatures. In this case: people. And with this study it was possible to do an internship abroad or work international as a graduated nurse (because you’ll need nurses everywhere!). Check! The first years during my study were mainly theoretical, so no possibility for internships yet. At that time I really enjoyed my student life with its late nights, beer pong challenges, singing and dancing. During that period I felt happy, secure and independent. A year later my boyfriend and I got our first house. It was a small student house but we had everything we needed. We could finally decide ourselves what we want to buy, what we want to eat and come home as late as we wanted. We didn’t have big responsibilities yet such as a fulltime job. These were one of the best years of my life – I met really great people who are still very dear to me.
During that period there was a medical investigation to see whether I have the BRCA1 gene or not. This is a cancer gene that runs in the family, with an increased risk of breast cancer (80%) and ovary cancer (60%). In 2012 when I was nineteen I was told that the tests were positive and that I have this gene. This news hit me hard, but I knew what was in store for me: I was going to preventively amputate my breasts and get a reconstruction. I didn’t want to get cancer, I wanted a fair chance to enjoy life! The given 80% risk of getting breast cancer felt like 100% to me. This is because I’m often unlucky. My mother often said; “I should have called you Murphy…if something goes wrong, everything goes wrong” So.. I did not want to take that risk and leave it to fate. I wanted to make my own fate!
After long conversations with the surgeon and medical-psychologist we planned the surgery. In 2013 my breasts were amputated and I got “new” prosthetic breasts. It all seemed to be going well at the beginning. But unfortunately, due to bad luck (here we go…) and bad nursing in the hospital things went the other way. I got an infection and unfortunately I was one of the 1/20 people where the breast prostheses didn’t stay in place. I needed a third surgery to make a new breast out of belly fat (DIEP-flap). This was a very complex surgery that took more than 12 hours. The surgery went well, but due to bad nursing in the hospital it went wrong (again!) the second day I had an internal bleeding and one of my “breasts” was dying. That week I got really sick and depressed… a black page in my life-story.
In the years between 2013-2016 I had ten surgeries in total to reconstruct my breasts. In the meantime my lawsuit against the hospital started due to the many mistakes by the nurses. Because they repeatedly made the same mistakes I was hoping with my lawsuit to prevent this happening to somebody else.
At this moment I have one breast made out of belly fat, the other made out of my back muscle, some injected fat and I have two different size of prosthetics in my breasts. At the end it is not the best result but good enough after all those surgeries. I’m glad I’m still standing on both feet. Life goes on and despite all those surgeries during my study, I got my bachelor degree in nursing!
In 2017 I started working at a parent and childcare center. My specialization was the growth, development and health of children between 0-4 years. This is a job that suited me very well because I like working with children. After a couple months I got a permanent contract and I got the opportunity to build my own house surrounded by nature. This was a self-sufficient project called Oosterwold, where you had to build everything yourself (everything!). That would mean hard work and as a Dutch saying goes: It will cost a lot of blood, sweat and tears. Especially when you work fulltime on the side. These were all exciting things that would cost a lot of energy and stress but I hoped it would provide a secure future for me. Going for this I had to sacrifice the idea of traveling long-term. I occasionally went on vacation, but it was not a roundtrip in Asia or Australia that I dreamt about.
In early 2018, I felt weaker and more sick. I was struggling with fatigue, loss of concentration and other vague complaints. In the following years I often had appointments with doctors to investigate whether there was a medical cause. In June 2018 I got bumps in my breast. During that time the doctors still didn’t find a medical cause for my chronic tiredness, so I got really scared. All those symptoms and now bumps in my breast…!? I was afraid that I had cancer. My breasts were removed but still I had a small chance of getting cancer. And the “Murphy” in me was scared for little numbers. During that period, some appointments and researches went wrong and I had to wait two weeks(!) to get a result. Those two weeks were really stressful and old memories from the surgeries came back. I got negative thoughts like: ‘Why did I have those 10 surgeries? To still get breast cancer!? All that pain for nothing!’ I had little faith that I would receive good news. After two weeks I heard that there was no cancer. Murphy was wrong.
The months went on. I was still feeling really tired and the stress from those bumps were still pumping through my veins. I didn’t have a good feeling about the state of my body; I felt sick. On the moments I was tired, I saw that my body was trembling and I got light headed. Still I ignored it, because there was no cause and I need to move on….
Time went by and I got more insecure about work because of my tiredness, loss of concentration and I began to tremble more, also when injecting children. This gave me more fear (which of course made it worse)… I wanted to do my work properly and didn’t want to make any medical mistakes. I don’t want anyone to suffer from a medical mistake as what I’ve been through – especially not an innocent child! But I can’t give the injections well If my body starts trembling. I felt more insecure and got depressed because of everything. I didn’t feel good about my body, my work, my house project was on delay and I couldn’t proceed with my life wishes. I decided to search for help and the doctor forced me to call in sick at work for a couple of weeks. It turned out that I got burned-out. This was on New Year’s Eve. Not a good way to start a new year.
That year was really tough. I was feeling depressed and my fears increased. I even got scared of little things like doing groceries and driving the car, and you must know I’m not easily scared. I’ve always seen myself as a daredevil. In the picture you can see I went on a ski-holiday…some relaxation to recover from my burnout I thought. Wrong!! I was so stressed and scared that I couldn’t even ski anymore. I felt like a big failure and cried a lot that week.
A burn-out really has impact on your whole life. When recovering you’ll experience good and bad days, mostly bad days but little by little the good days come more often. The difficult part is to find the strength to get up each time after a bad day and stay motivated to work on self-improvement.
With the help I got from my family, psychologist, and my own research I started my recovery. I started doing yoga, taking meditation lessons and taking a lot of rest! I focused on the things that gave me energy and looked for the things I like to do. I made a difficult decision to stop my study (to become a nursing scientist) and work 2 days less. Just to give myself the time I needed to recover. During that time realized that I really like to go outdoors, just being outside to breath fresh air, especially in combination with doing something active. Doing active sports, like cycling was something I started but which cost me a lot of energy at the beginning. The next day I needed to take my rest… and that hit me. Why does this take me so much energy? I’m just 25 years old!? But my recovery was all about gaining a good balance. During the therapy my psychologist diagnosed me with PTSD (=post traumatic stress disorder). That gave an explanation for all the stress, tiredness and loss of faith in my own body and strength.
In June 2019 I went on a holiday to the Caribbean with my mother-in-law. It was a really great trip. I got the relaxation I needed and the warm sun gave me the energy to fill up my battery. I enjoyed every moment; we met great people and saw a lot of beautiful places. We even helped preserving nature by doing volunteer work for the turtles in Curacao (see blog post). I spoke with world travelers that inspired me. My feeling towards traveling was fed again; I want to travel more!
After the holiday I felt more energetic, I gained a better balance in life, began to eat healthier and began to increase my fitness due to my cycling training. What really helped was accepting that this is the energy I have and I needed to be careful with it. I needed to make decisions where I want to put my energy in and what brings me joy.
In that period my boyfriend and I grew apart. We were always each other’s opposites. First, we helped each other in our development, but later on it turned to daily fights (not really a fight, but just a lot of struggles). In July we separated and we still had good contact. Later that summer I got the message that – with the lawsuit against the hospital that was going on for six years now – they acknowledged that they made mistakes during my stay in the hospital. They’re going to pay a damage claim.
And then at the beginning of 2020 I made a big decision! I still had the option to build my own house, keep my job and live the life I was living. But due to my burn-out and depression in 2018 I learned that I haven’t done the things I’d like to do and I only followed and worked towards what society expected of me: having a career, a house and a starting a family. Now that I’ve overcome big struggles and was working on self-development I asked myself: ‘What makes me truly happy? What are the things I like to do? What do I want with the rest of my life? And – like many others who choose to take the leap of faith and travel around the world – it ultimately came down to one thing – regret! In 5, 10, 20, 30 years, what would I regret more? Playing it safe and joining the million of others in the rat race? Or taking a risk and doing what I really wanted to do? Thinking about that I realized that I didn’t have the guts to follow my dream. And now as the person I am today – the strong, positive and independent woman who overcame big struggles in life – I have the strength and courage to do this! Making a world trip on my own! I wanted to get out this daily grind and live! But I had to make sacrifices: like leaving my family, friends and my baby-cat Lobaskes. And I got a new boyfriend in 2021! But it was an offer I wanted to make, I won’t lose them but I won’t see them for a while. Luckily we have video-chats now! In January 2022 it is time to go!
I’m ready! Let’s go!