My intuitive leaps are in chemistry and cooking. It's funny, because I was always told that "Good chemists make good cooks" - but I SUCKED at lab chemistry at college, and could barely cook anything more complicated than bung ingredients in the oven. Over the past couple of years, as I developed more and more food intolerances, I had to learn to cook for myself because it was that or starve, and now it's intuitive. I find myself with an ingredient in my hand and no idea why, except that I suspect adding a smidgeon of it will change the flavour and... it just happens.

Now cooking is one of my favourite things to do - making a meal for someone is the way I show I care for them, and the physical processes help me when I'm stressed. I just go down to the kitchen and bake a cake or bread or something.

The chemistry part is frustrating. Now that my brain is back up to speed, I am saddened by all the years I lost to illness, and all the potential I have that's going to waste. Getting back into research now would be very difficult, and even if I could persuade someone to take me on, dangerous. I already know that I don't have the emotional strength to keep going. My current job is the best of a set of bad options - the closest useful thing I can do bearing in mind my health. And it bothers me.