24 Wednesday Jun 2009
… I seem to be on the mend.
After I got my pre-chemo bloodwork done yesterday morning I stopped by to see Ricardo (of The Team, and head of nuclear medicine). He told me that my latest PET scan had come back normal, that there was no sign of the two tumours they had seen in March. I’ll find out today when I talk to Dr Ana what they have in mind for further treatment, but it will probably mean completing the last two rounds of chemo, and after that …
22 Monday Jun 2009
Posted in culture, food & drink, friends, health & happiness, hope, restaurants, sevilla
Yesterday was Susan’s last Sunday in Sevilla and she treated me to this fabulously decadent lunch at Manolo León. Some of you may remember that after the erroneous second prognosis last October, when I was told that I maybe had a year to live, we (Nog, Pablo & I) went to Manolo León for a “post-prognosis party” in order to, well, eat like there was no tomorrow and get shit-faced. And so it was nice to go back there under more pleasant circumstances.
Yesterday was also the summer solstice, which ended up feeling a bit like Christmas…
21 Sunday Jun 2009
Two down, one to go (well okay, one & a half …)
So okay, remember last week when I told you the wonderful news about my friend “Bob” very generously sending me a donation that was enough to see me through a whole month, so I could spend that time focusing on healing and getting through the chemo? Well, guess what? I have just been given another month!
14 Sunday Jun 2009
Posted in cancer, change, food & drink, friends, health & happiness, home, hope, life stuff, love, philosophy, photos, tapas
(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.
12 Friday Jun 2009
Posted in cancer, friends, health & happiness, hope
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 …
