LIVING EVERY MOMENT

Shoving another crisp into my mouth, I frowned.

I seemed to have blood on my hands…

‘Won’t be a minute,’ I said to my flatmate, popping to the loo. Only, as I peered into the mirror, I gasped.

It was suddenly clear where it had come from.

My mouth was filled with blistering, bleeding ulcers.

And over the next few days, they got worse.

It simply hurt to talk and I felt exhausted, too.

‘I’m probably just run-down,’ I said to my boss at the life-insurance company where I worked at the time.

I was travelling around Australia and had just celebrated my 23rd birthday