In the first week of April I started to get going again, but one day I woke up and I didn't feel very well. However, it's my way to push on. I went off for a swim and for the first time ever I got out of the pool half way through my kilometre. I went home and got worse and worse - terrible headache, nausea, diarrhoea, racing heart, cold shakes.
Then a big red patch showed up on my leg and I ended up in hospital. They didn't know whether I had cellulitis or a leg infection, or whether I had an infection in my heart, it was racing so much. The leg got worse before it got better and I stayed in hospital for five days.
Back home I was on a work call and the friend on the call said, "You are not all right." I thought I was fine, but I had another quiet couple of weeks before I got going again and became extremely busy.
By December, I was exhausted. I got to the beach and put myself to bed for a month.
My friend Barbara recommended a counsellor, who said, "Some of this is unprocessed grief. Can we have three sessions together?" And I said, "Yes."
Why is this significant? Because I have never understood people going to counsellors. I wouldn't say I'm highly judgemental. But I've never understood it. I'm a keep-going person Why pay someone with a stopwatch charging you by the hour? I'd always had a thing about it.
But it was brilliant to start releasing some of that emotion. After the first visit with the counsellor I was driving and started crying and crying. And after three or four sessions, I felt much better.
So that year was significant for me, because I had never really understood that you can't put grief in a timeline that says "I'll recover in a month or three months or a year". It has its own rhythms. It's been an interesting emotional journey for me.
I think I always did celebrate life, live every day to the full and spend time with people that matter, but I feel that even more now. You just really don't know how long you've got.