Category Archives: health & happiness

sleepy day

02 Friday May 2014

Posted by in animals & pets, cats, health & happiness, home, work

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sleepy eyes
Morcilla kind of sums up the day. After two nights of tapas tours my feet/ankles let me know in no uncertain terms that they were not happy and not inclined to do another tour for at least a couple of days. So damn. Luckily Peter is available to take out the tours I have already booked so I don’t have to cancel and disappoint people, but this is really getting me down. It’s been over two weeks now and progress is decidedly SLOW. Then I thought I could put the day to good use and catch up on blog posts, especially for Sevilla Tapas. But NO. Bloody internet stopped working, and even using the back-up mobile modem from Vodafone doesn’t help as it runs slow as molasses and keeps cutting out. Grrrr…

How’s your week going?

lean on me

23 Wednesday Apr 2014

Posted by in friends, health & happiness, home

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lean on me.pngMy best friends are my new crutches! Well, only one is new. I bought one last year during a BACK PAIN incident, not thinking I’d ever need a pair again. Looking back at my old blog posts from February 2011 it seems I was out and about a lot more and much sooner after spraining (actually fracturing, as I found out last week) my left ankle. On the other hand, I had one good foot back then, which made getting around easier.

I went out on a tapas tour yesterday afternoon, finishing up at La Azotea where I had planned to meet my friends Claire & Kyran who are in town this week. Talk about bad timing! I had wanted to take them out for sherry & tapas, but they seem to be doing well enough on their own.

Anyhow, it felt really weird going out yesterday – the first time in almost a week – and it took me awhile to get over feeling “vulnerable” out there. But on my way to pick up my clients I passed a woman with one crutch who waved at me and said “looks like I’ve got some competition!”. So we stopped and chatted for a bit. She had a hip problem and was sporting the same style and colour of crutch as mine (like those on the right, but black and silver). And somehow that encounter made me feel better.

So yeah. Pretty painful walking still. Curiously my right foot hurts more than the left ankle, though perhaps that’s from the bruising? The whole top of that foot is still black and blue. And of course I’m now getting all kinds of secondary pain from walking funny. Cramps in feet and calves and – the worst! – my back almost giving out yesterday. You know, as much as my feet and ankles hurt I can deal with that way better than serious BACK PAIN. So today I’ve been slapping on the BioFreeze (thank you Sled!) and am back to being housebound. Basically because tomorrow I’ve got a press conference to attend, and then will meet Claire and Kyran for lunch. There will be less walking involved this time, but who knows, it might actually be easier mañana. As long as my back holds out!

What are you guys up to?

day five

21 Monday Apr 2014

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day five

This morning with Morcilla in bed. I have to say it’s been Very Difficult staying at home and being an invalid, especially because other than painful feet and ankles I don’t actually feel bad. And lack of exercise has also made for sleepless nights (tomorrow I’m getting out my small hand weights). But as you can see, I am on the mend. Swelling has almost disappeared (other than the left ankle) and, although my entire right foot is still black and blue, the pain is just about bearable now. Aside from that first hour in the morning when everything feels like it seized up overnight, I can get around the house quite easily and I was even going to try a short walk on crutches today to meet up with Kyran & Claire, who are back in town. But then it started RAINING so I think I’ll leave going out until my lunchtime tapas tour tomorrow. Not only would I need a third hand to hold an umbrella but it’s probably not a good idea to take my first steps out on slippery pavement.

These past few days would have been a great opportunity to catch up on, well, all the things I need to catch up on. But I just couldn’t concentrate. And as silly as it sounds, it took a whole two days for me to stop feeling annoyed and sorry for myself that THIS HAD HAPPENED and that it had totally messed up my plans. On the other hand, these have mostly been “days off”, so while I didn’t get to do the stuff I wanted to, I also didn’t have to cancel any tapas tours. Peter took out yesterday’s clients, and I think I’ll be okay for tomorrow’s tour, so that was a blessing.

How was your weekend?

all bundled up

17 Thursday Apr 2014

Posted by in friends, health & happiness, holidays

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bundled up
After a very long night with very little sleep I got up this morning and went AAAAAAARRRGHH!!! as I gingerly placed my feet on the floor in an attempt to get out of bed. Holy crap. It hadn’t occurred to me that the PAIN from yesterday’s accident could actually get worse. Which was when I started getting scared. I mean, at least last time I had one leg to stand on! Also, the more I shuffled around on two tortuous feet I could feel that my back was starting to go wonky. And the very last thing I need is excruciating back pain added to all this. So around midday I finally took up my friend Juan’s very generous offer to pick me up and drive me to the hospital.

The X-rays showed that my left ankle had a small fracture (!!!) but upon closer inspection it turned out that it was from the first time I sprained it three years ago (!!!!). Seriously… what?? I was walking around on that sucker (with crutches) after a couple of days, even doing tapas tours. I had no idea it was broken because I didn’t go to hospital that time. So when I was told today that I need to stay in and rest my ankle for two weeks… well, I don’t see that happening. Yes, obviously like right now when putting any weight on it at all makes me want to cry, I’ll be avoiding doing that as much as possible. But I hope to be (gently) out and about again after the weekend. The right foot is also badly sprained (thankfully nothing is broken) and so I ended up getting bandaged up like this and sent home with prescriptions for Ibuprofen and Paracetemol. Coming home we ran into a Semana Santa procession and Juan had to let me off where I could normally get home in 3-4 minutes. About 20 very-very-very painful minutes later I finally got home again and I’ve been slobbing out on the sofa ever since.

I was telling Juan that yesterday on the way home Peter had said “let’s go this way” and I said “no, let’s go this way, it’s shorter”…. if I’d gone Peter’s way this never would’ve happened. And then Juan said that if he wasn’t taking me to the hospital he might have been killed in a car accident that afternoon. Point taken. But especially yesterday I kept wishing that I could REWIND and take the other way home. Though of course I might have have been run over by a beer delivery truck…

Life, eh? How’s your week going?