Eat, pray, love and medicate: A chronically-ill backpacker's odyssey

I’m lying prone on the bathroom floor of the hostel and it’s usually at this moment that I begin bartering with God. I’m not a religious person by any means - Catholic school as a raging lesbian will do that to you. But my pain radar goes like this: 0-5, start panic-taking meds; 5-7, cry hysterically and vomit; 7-10+, begin begging the Universe and/or God and/or whoever is listening to make the pain disappear.

Not my finest moment.

And I know what you’re thinking: “Girl, get off that nasty-ass hostel floor before you catch something.” But it’s okay! I carry a beach-sized towel in my suitcase for this inevitable moment, because that’s what everyone packs for their coming-of-age hot girl summer… right? Cute bikini, Birkenstocks, three-metre square beach towel for when your endo flares up and you end up convulsing on the floor of the ladies' room at a cheap hostel. Check!

Now, I’m sure you can tell this is not my first rodeo. It only takes one trip to a hospital in Bangkok to learn that lesson. But here I am, back at square one, bargaining for relief on a dingy bathroom floor on a continent that was supposed to show me blue skies and sparkling waters. Dancing and sangria and every kind of pasta imaginable. It feels like a very specific kind of defeat.

In a way, when you live with a chronic illness, half the fun of a trip is in the planning stage. There’s no impending sense of failure if a flare up relegates you to your hotel room for two whole days when Paris is at your doorstep. I get to pin photos of culinary bazaars and million dollar views, free from that nagging voice in the back of my head saying: 'You only have seven days to explore France and you’re lying in bed?' It’s almost as if my brain decided that the medical field hasn’t gaslit me enough; I have to do it too.

It took a ridiculously long time to stop raking myself over the coals for being sick. I know now that endometriosis is not something I can actively control, no matter how hard I try. I can spend weeks making lists of medications, researching places to get ‘safety foods’, and pack as many hot water bottles and emergency bathroom-floor beach towels as will fit in my suitcase. But if I try to travel like an able-bodied person does - like someone who isn’t making a mental note of how close the nearest A&E is - then I’m setting myself up for failure.

It feels contradictory, but I decided the only solution was to redefine what travelling means to me. The first time I got on a plane by myself I was 17 moving to Italy, and I had a not-so realistic idea of what this glorious experience was going to be like. Truth be told, I did have a great time. I travelled all over Europe with my host families, made incredible friends, and learned some (very sub-par) Italian. But I was also always on edge waiting for the next endo flare up. And the exhaustion of constantly masking meant my host mum had a full photo album in her phone of me falling asleep in random, idyllic locations across Italy. Travelling for me can’t just be about rushing from place to place, trying to see everything and meet everyone. Because if my goal is to experience new cultures and step outside of the bubble that Aotearoa exists inside of, destroying my body and mental health is a one-way ticket to not being able to remember much of my travels at all.

So, I’m writing this article from a hostel bed in Berlin. I haven’t gone outside in a day and every power outlet I can find has been plugged into heat pads. I didn’t have the traditional currywurst for lunch like I’d planned, I had McDonalds fries and a coke that I Uber Eats’d to the hostel (is Uber Eats’d a word?). My very stingy budget for the first few days has been spent on over-the-counter pain relief and all I can smell is Deep Heat. And it's okay. It’s okay that I am better acquainted with the bathroom floor than the sights of Berlin. There is no checklist for the dreamy European summer. Taking care of myself today means that tomorrow when I wander through the Bradenburg gate, instead of monitoring my pain levels and throwing up medication, I’ll be contemplating the history of Berlin's last surviving city gate like the true nerd I aspire to be.

Slow, mindful travel will define my European summer, and I think, perhaps, that this will be my best trip yet.

Subscribe to our weekly newsletter, The D*List Delivered!