However, after the surgery they never took me anywhere again. I felt like I was the same person, and I could do everything I could before, so why did they shun me? A few scars shouldn’t make any difference, or at least that is what I thought. Many years later I read a newspaper article about one of the boys, so I called him to say hi. But he was so cold to me that I thought the phone lines would freeze before I hung up. All because of some neck scars, what’s up with that?

A few months after my first surgery, cancer also appeared on the other side, so then they went in and cleaned out everything. Now the whole front of my neck was missing, and replaced with big scars. I also had considerable disability in my left arm, and no front neck muscles. This limited activities that have a risk of whiplash, like diving and trampoline. It also changed the shape of my face, leaving it rounded with a bit of a double chin. Now I felt like damaged goods, and I was sure that I would have no more dates in school, ever. And I was correct.

I was already 30 when I met my husband, who was the first and only one who ever looked at me and did not see the defects. Now that he is gone, I am back to being dateless again, climbing that same mountain. Luckily in the meantime I have developed my life style and preferences in a way that I do not require dates to have a full and happy life. In fact, I believe that guys who see only my defects are the losers, and don’t know what they are missing.

School and college were a challenge, but not really mountains. Just normal things to work toward. But after my internship I decided I wanted to go to India by way of South Africa. That was the next huge mountain that I had to triumph over. The first task was to find a job where I could earn and save enough to buy an airline ticket around the world. I would not leave until I knew I could get home. In the Sacramento area where my family lived there were several jobs available, but I would need to have an apartment, car, etc. which would cut into my savings. But a Brooklyn, NY ghetto hospital would pay well, and I could stay for next to nothing in the nurses' quarters and eat free in the dietary department where i worked, allowing me to save almost all of my salary.

So I decided to take that job, and thus this naïve northern California kid chose to make the first of many sacrifices necessary to take on the challenge of world travel. Looking back on that era through the filter of time I have no clue how I did it. How did I even think I could pull it off? I guess I didn’t think about it, I just set the objective in my sights and didn’t waver. Europe, the Middle East, South Africa, India, Japan, they all just ticked off one at a time. I think that is the first time I actually broke down a large project into its component parts, and then focused on only one part at a time until the project was complete.