Category Archives: health & happiness

celebration

14 Sunday Jun 2009

Posted by in cancer, change, food & drink, friends, health & happiness, home, hope, life stuff, love, philosophy, photos, tapas

≈ 4 Comments

becerrita(click on pic to enlarge)

On this week’s A Day at the Hospital post I told you that something wonderful had happened and that Nog and I went out to celebrate. Later I told you the reason for celebrating, but I never told you what we did. By the time we left the hospital that day it was almost 2 o’clock and, since I knew I had some extra cash, I decided it was high time I treated Nog to a tapa snack as he has been treating me since I got sick and haven’t been able to work.

And so we took the bus over to Becerrita and had a lovely tapa lunch. Calamares, lamb in honey sauce, potato croquettes and pork tenderloin with wild mushrooms. Then a nice walk home while I thought about the email I was going to send “Bob” that evening.

To be honest, every day has been a celebration since I was given the amazingly fabulous gift of a month to heal. It’s really changed my life and I am suddenly appreciating all the “little things” so much more. I guess I’d been feeling kind of hopeless and at the end of my rope, and so being given this chance to do things the way I feel I need to in order to get better ended up starting a whole series of positive changes. Still taking baby steps, but doing a little every day.

Having hope again is a wonderful thing.

one month

12 Friday Jun 2009

Posted by in cancer, friends, health & happiness, hope

≈ 15 Comments

Orange_Calendar_2009

This is such an amazing story, though I’m not quite sure where to begin …

What the heck, let’s start with raincoaster. Awhile ago Facebook killed her account for using a “fake name”, so she started a new one using her real name and went through the rather tedious exercise of getting her friends list back together.  This started me thinking that my FB Azahar Sevilla account would probably suffer the same fate and, although I really don’t like FB, Rain convinced me that it is excellent for promoting events like classes, and so I decided to set up a new account using my real name too. Starting from scratch also meant that I could weed out the … well, the weeds. And it was just the kind of semi-mindless project I felt up to tackling this week.

The amazing bit happens next …

Continue reading →

a day at the hospital

11 Thursday Jun 2009

Posted by in cancer, chemo, friends, health & happiness, hope, hospitals, life stuff

≈ 12 Comments

day at the hospital

It was just supposed to be a routine appointment.

[warning: long, rambling and not very interesting
– just the way it actually happened!]

Last January when I had my post-surgery check-up I mentioned that since the operations (this had been my third in seven months) I’d been experiencing a painful burning sensation along the outside of my right thigh when I was in bed. I couldn’t remember if I’d had it before the ops, and the surgeon thought it was worth me getting it checked out. Though he clearly didn’t think it was too serious as my appointment with neurology was made for six months later. Yesterday, in fact. Of course, last January I didn’t know I’d be back on chemo . . .

Continue reading →

time out…

08 Monday Jun 2009

Posted by in cancer, change, chemo, fitness, food & drink, friends, health & happiness, home, hope, life stuff, yoga

≈ 17 Comments

healing

Remember multi-tasking az?
Well, she is taking some time out.
She needs some time to heal.

I just couldn’t do it all. I’ve spent the past two months going through the horrors of chemo for the second time, trying to organise work projects and find new students to teach, pay my bills, make new contacts … and all it’s doing is wearing me out. I haven’t actually found any work and I know that – things being the way they are in Seville – the chances of anything picking up for me workwise won’t realistically happen until September. So it’s time to stop hitting my head against that brick wall for now and time to start doing what I know will help me.

I’ve spent the past few days “practicing” my new healing method and you know what? It feels great. I’ve been listening to exactly what my mind and body need and then doing just that. And I know that, for me, this is the best way to heal.  I also know that doing this isn’t going to make me one euro, and I have no idea how I’m going to make ends meet over the summer … but I just can’t worry about that now.

This is what I need to do. Follow my heart.

yoga bear

01 Monday Jun 2009

Posted by in cancer, fitness, health & happiness, yoga

≈ 4 Comments

yoga bear

Remember when I was finally able to start going back to my yoga classes in January? After three major surgeries  since last May, and two months of chemo last summer, I was so looking forward to doing something “normal” again. It was slow going at first as I was still quite stiff and sore, but just being there with all my old yoga buddies (and a few new ones) was so good for me. It’s a lovely ambiance there and my yoga instructor, Ana, is wonderful. Now that I’m back on chemo again it’s quite a struggle to get to class some mornings, and I don’t always make it, but when I do it’s always worth the effort.

Yoga Bear is a national (US) non-profit organization dedicated to providing cancer survivors with more opportunities for wellness and healing through the practice of yoga. The organization connects cancer survivors with yoga classes in their community free of charge. I think it’s a wonderful idea and wish something like this existed in Spain.

Until the end of the day on June 6, 2009, you can blog for a cause and spread the word about the benefits of yoga in improving recovery for cancer survivors. If you blog about your experience with yoga, and link back to YogaBear following these instructions, YogaBear.org could win $6K to support its efforts to provide yoga classes to cancer survivors!

This blog post is part of Zemanta’s “Blogging For a Cause” campaign to raise awareness and funds for worthy causes that bloggers care about.