• about azahar (that’s me!)
  • my cancer story
  • azahar’s kitchen
  • azahar’s sevilla
  • sevilla tapas
  • personal trip planning

casa azahar

~ my life in sevilla

casa azahar

Tag Archives: cancer

getting back on my feet

25 Wednesday Aug 2010

Posted by azahar in cancer, change, friends, work

≈ 24 Comments

Tags

cancer, surviving, work

I’d had such high hopes after last summer about returning to work and getting back on my feet. You may recall that thanks to Manolo and Agustín I was able to spend much of last August in Málaga and Zahara de los Atunes recuperating from the effects of four months on chemo, so by September-October I felt quite ready to get back to work. I thought I’d be able to line up enough English classes to live on while I worked on my other various projects – the big plan was to diversify so that if/when I got sick again there would be at least some work that I could do from home in my pyjamas. Plus I was ready for a change after teaching for almost 20 years, and it also seemed wise to not have all my money making eggs in one basket anymore … boy, was I ever right about that last one. Because it turned out that the teaching market had really bottomed out and I was unable to find enough to live on, especially as I was also helping Nog get teaching work too. And then this summer I lost the apartment next door and the small monthly income from that. So, it’s been a very long and difficult year, but it looks like things are finally coming together…

Continue reading →

there and back again…

22 Thursday Jul 2010

Posted by azahar in cancer, food & drink, friends, health & happiness, hospitals

≈ 11 Comments

Tags

cancer, hospitals

Pilar & Isabel
2/3 of my fabulous nuclear medicine team

Made personal history yesterday by going to The Hospital for an oncology appointment … ALL BY MYSELF. I’d called all my usual hospital buddies and they were either away on holiday or, like Nog,  not able to get away from work because of the very inconvenient appointment time – 1.45. This also meant that I would be at the tail end of the typical morning’s backup and could expect an extra long wait. You can probably imagine how much I was dreading this. But in the end I decided to take the bull with the corns (a wonderful malapropism from an old student of mine) and do something about this instead of feeling scared and helpless. And so…

Continue reading →

wonder twins

13 Tuesday Jul 2010

Posted by azahar in cancer, change, chemo, death & dying, friends, hope, hospitals

≈ 13 Comments

Tags

cancer, friends


Sometimes I think about the things that have happened over the past two years,which never would have happened if I hadn’t got cancer. And amongst all the nightmarish crap there is actually quite a lot of good stuff too. One of the best things has been meeting and getting to know my friends Gaelen and Jed, both of whom I met on the Colon Club forum. There are a lot of very good people on that forum, but somehow I’ve always felt especially connected to these two guys in a way that’s difficult to explain. I’ve also had many parallel experiences with both, and most recently with Jed…

You probably remember the seriously bad scanxiety I had before my last PET scan a couple of weeks ago, feeling almost certain that the other shoe was about to drop and I was going to end up back on chemo this summer. Or worse – that they would find more tumours and chemo would no longer be an option. Well, at that same time Jed was very seriously looking at that latter situation after having had a scary PET scan result a few months earlier. His follow-up PET was scheduled for a few days after mine but he then had to wait another ten days to get his results. Which was yesterday.

Jed’s been in Taiwan with his family this past year, teaching and writing, which means we are in way different time zones. And so when I woke up yesterday morning I knew that he would have already seen his doctor. First thing I did was grab the iPhone and check my emails, and there it was. A quick report from Jed saying those magic words – nothing visible on the scan – and I almost cried from relief and happiness, also knowing how relieved and happy he must be feeling. As he said, “we have both had our doctors convinced we were beyond hope before climbing back from the brink”, and I think it was over on the forum that he first made the remark about us activating our wonder twin powers, which made me laugh. But hey – it worked!

So, well done my wonder twin.
Together we are invincible!

Add to FacebookAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Yahoo BuzzAdd to Newsvine

paying it forward…

04 Sunday Jul 2010

Posted by azahar in cancer, friends, hope, hospitals

≈ 8 Comments

Tags

cancer, friends

Most of you know how rich I have been in gifts these past couple of years since I got sick. Gifts of all sorts – friendship, money, presents, visits, and especially patience & understanding – and of course a lot of this sort of generosity usually can’t be paid back in kind. But you can pay it forward.

I got a chance to do this the other day. After my wild night out on Thursday, Nog & I were coming home around 1.30 in the morning and I was surprised to see an old friend, Pepe, standing outside Bar Campanario. He used to own the place, but for years now it’s been run by my friend Maria Paz, with some help from her sister Elena. And suddenly there was everyone out in the street at this strange hour. I hadn’t seen Pepe in a couple of years and when I asked how he was doing it was a shock to hear that he’d just found out he has cancer…

Continue reading →

permission to be happy

01 Thursday Jul 2010

Posted by azahar in cancer, change, diet & nutrition, friends, health & happiness, home, hope

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

cancer, happiness

Awhile ago on a particularly pleasant day I said to Nog, “I feel so happy that it scares me” … and we both laughed. Since then, and especially since my good news on Monday, I just can’t shake this happy feeling. I think it started when I found out I had to wait another two weeks until the PET scan and I decided to just enjoy the hell out of those two weeks and treat them as a “holiday from cancer”. In other words, I gave myself permission to be happy. And well, okay, I got pretty nervous the weekend before the scan, but now that I know I have at least six months before I have to face that particular dragon again, I am going ahead with extending this cancer holiday season until then. And damn it feels good. No, not suddenly like everything is all sunshine and butterflies, but a huge weight has been lifted and I feel like I can really breathe again. Like I can finally be myself.

Turns out I’m actually quite nice once you get to know me.  🙂

Add to FacebookAdd to DiggAdd to Del.icio.usAdd to StumbleuponAdd to RedditAdd to BlinklistAdd to TwitterAdd to TechnoratiAdd to Yahoo BuzzAdd to Newsvine

← Older posts
Newer posts →

patreon (1)

OR

comments

sledpress's avatarsledpress on my birthday! wtf I’m…
sledpress's avatarsledpress on caturday january 10th 202…
azahar's avatarazahar on my birthday! wtf I’m…
sledpress's avatarsledpress on hope 2027
azahar's avatarazahar on hope 2027
sledpress's avatarsledpress on my birthday! wtf I’m…
azahar's avatarazahar on caturday january 3rd 2026
sledpress's avatarsledpress on hope 2027
sledpress's avatarsledpress on caturday january 3rd 2026
Unknown's avatarl’armanaque de… on alfredo

meta

  • Create account
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

visitations

  • 953,745 peeks

categories

archives

Enter your email address to subscribe to casa az and get email notices of new posts.

Join 2,236 other subscribers

azahar on Instagram

No Instagram images were found.

Blog at WordPress.com.

  • Subscribe Subscribed
    • casa azahar
    • Join 1,969 other subscribers
    • Already have a WordPress.com account? Log in now.
    • casa azahar
    • Subscribe Subscribed
    • Sign up
    • Log in
    • Report this content
    • View site in Reader
    • Manage subscriptions
    • Collapse this bar
 

Loading Comments...