Category Archives: health & happiness

take three cats…

21 Monday May 2012

Posted by in animals & pets, cancer, cats, diet & nutrition, health & happiness, home

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… and call me in the morning.

What a crazy 48 hours it’s been. On Saturday evening I was suddenly not feeling well so I decided to go to bed early. A couple of hours later I woke up feeling awful and spent the next eight hours with violent vomiting and diarrhea and worried that I was going to end up back at hospital having more Surprise Surgery. But as there wasn’t any serious pain involved I just rode it out. Felt somewhat better yesterday morning but obviously couldn’t go out for my Sunday afternoon tapas tour, so Peter took that one (and they wrote back later saying they’d had a great time!). I stayed in bed ALL DAY, which is something I don’t remember doing other than when I was on chemo. Although the vomiting, etc had stopped (guess it sort of had to eventually) I was feeling very weak, feverish and achy. Have to say that Azar has been totally loving all this Extra Bed Time with me. And I finally got to use the bedroom tv that I installed last November. I knew it would come in handy some day.

Today has been a bit better. I actually got up for a few hours, but don’t feel well enough to venture outside. Which is a shame because it’s a gorgeous day out there. But I should be back to normal(ish) by tomorrow and am thinking that this might be a good time to start a diet…

How are you guys doing?

keeping hydrated

16 Wednesday May 2012

Posted by in animals & pets, cats, health & happiness, home, sevilla, weather

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Here is the love of my life (aka Azar) having a nice long drink in the middle of a very hot afternoon … it always tugs at my heart when he asks to have a drink and then takes his time, with his tail doing that lazy contented flicking back and forth, bless him. Yeah, he could always drink out of the communal water bowl, which is changed several times a day in these temps to keep it fresh, but he prefers to drink out of his own glass and with someone paying total attention to him. Spoiled? Well, I do my best.

Meanwhile I am drinking at least three litres of water a day and have taken to putting bottles in the fridge so they’re nice and cold. I remember with a shudder when I was on chemo – both times during the summer – and couldn’t drink, or even touch, anything cold. I had to sip on room temperature (hot!) water, which wasn’t thirst-quenching at all. Strange after all this time that I still think of that every single time I pour myself a glass of nice cold water…

How much water are you drinking these days?

aloe vera

13 Sunday May 2012

Posted by in health & happiness, home, plants

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Even when I was much younger and thinner I suffered from inner thigh heat rash. Often so bad that the insides of my upper “skater’s legs” would end up painfully bleeding. I used to try to avoid this by carrying around small travel-sized talcum powder thingys and whip into public toilets to slather powder all over my inner thighs to keep them from going totally raw. After a while I discovered that I could buy curious “slips” that were made to wear inside trousers, which ended up being “trouser slips” and helped prevent chafing.

This past week we went from May (22º) to July (34º) in about 48 hours. Not so much a heat wave as a heat punch-in-the-face. And this morning I woke up with totally raw and painful skin on my inner thighs. Fuck.

I thought about going out to find a pharmacy that might have some sort of soothing skin ointment that might help bring down the inflammation. Then I remembered that years ago I bought a bottle of pure aloe vera gel, but couldn’t remember if I still had it. And then I remembered that I have a whole whack of aloe vera plants up on my terraza! So I whipped up there with a Big Knife, cut off a spike of aloe vera, and commenced slathering the goo all over my unhappy skin. We shall see if it gets better soon but even after a couple of hours it looks and feels much better. Coolio!

no tengo cancer

07 Monday May 2012

Posted by in cancer, change, death & dying, diet & nutrition, friends, health & happiness, hospitals

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Four years ago today I wrote this blog post about doubling over in pain and ending up at the hospital, only to be told I had gas and be sent home again. Well, most of you know the story by now. After two more emergency hospital visits they finally admitted me for testing and then raced me over to the general hospital for a life-saving operation that involved removing an obstruction and about half my colon.

And that wasn’t the end of the story as I ended up having two more operations and being on chemo twice, finishing at the end of July 2009. Since then I have been miraculously cancer-free according to the PET scans I’ve been having twice a year. The next one is due in September. And for the most part I feel good, though I still get abdominal discomfort from time to time. Oh, and there was also that freak emergency op last summer, which thankfully didn’t end up being cancer-related.

And so I wonder why I am still okay while my friends Pat and Jed are not. And I wonder how long I’ll be okay. Four years ago I’d gone to the Feria in Jerez the weekend before all this started and saw this graffiti on a wall near the train station that said “I have cancer”. I don’t know what moved me to take a photo of it, but here it is again, slightly – but importantly – modified. I hope I never have to remove the “no”.

what gets you out of bed in the morning?

24 Tuesday Apr 2012

Posted by in cats, health & happiness, life stuff

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Actually, Azar’s usual post-breakfast cuddle is something that tends to keep me IN bed awhile longer – can you blame me? But while reading twitter in bed this morning (just after taking this photo) someone asked this question and it got me thinking. A very long time ago when I was still trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life I only knew that I wanted my work to be exactly what I’d want to do when I got out of bed in the morning. And finally it is! So that’s something of an accomplishment, and it only took about thirty years and then happened almost by accident.

So other than wanting to get to work… the smell of freshly brewed coffee, the sun shining through my white gauzy curtains, the sound of the street “waking up” and blackbirds singing – and more often than not the complaining of three hungry cats – are all things that get me up.

So how about you? What gets you out of bed in the morning? And don’t say “to pee”.