Our Travels

We slept in. We got ready, checked out of the hotel and dragged our bags through the street to the boat. We decided to go to the train station to check the train times, leave our bags in the baggage storage and make our way to a Salvador Dali exhibition and see the museum of costumes before catching a later train to Milan for our flight in the evening. As we stood on the boat enjoying the sights of Venice I reached for my phone to take some last photos, when I did I noticed I had messages. One of them was from my dear friend who has been like a sister to me since we met four years ago. In the text she tells me that her test results came back and that she had breast cancer and she will have a mastectomy this week-end. I looked up to find my husband for support and it's as if Venice had gone black, had lost it's glamour in that one moment. All I wanted was to get home to hug my son and then go see my friend and hold her hand and just be there for her through this terrible journe...

In two days time, one of my closest friends will start undergoing chemo-therapy, to be rid of any remaining cancer cells in her system after undergoing a mastectomy last month! I never thought I'd say that, ever, but here we are, just another group of people affected by this terrible disease called cancer. I guess you think you know what it's like but you don't until it hits people you're close to. When I got the bad news, we were floating along the canals in Venice, one of the most spectacular cities in the world but at that moment it felt like someone had sucked the life and magic out of Venice in one breathe and we were left in darkness with terrible sadness and shock.  Hana is one of the strongest women I've met and know. And this dreadful cancer as another friend put it, has met it's match. She is fighting this thing and living life like nothing awful has happened. With a healing scar on her chest she is going through each day like any other day. Takin...