Tag Archives: sevilla

not my week…

23 Wednesday Apr 2025

Posted by in health, hospitals, sevilla

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, ,

After the fear-filled fiasco of yesterday’s aborted MRI, today I headed out for my biannual mammogram. I am in The System as a woman of a certain age so every two years I get a notice for the next appointment. Except today I ended up at the wrong place at the right time. After a chat with the helpful staff at the hospital I was given a number for the new mammogram clinic location. Uffff. Okay, while it did affect my morning and general plans for the day at least there was no prep and, well, no all-day fear. I mean, mammograms hurt like fuckity, but they’re over and done with just before it reaches intolerable. 

Waiting to get the bus back home I called the new number and they acknowledged that I did indeed have an appointment with them today and also said “but we’ve moved!”. No shit. Anyhow, what the hell, I made a new appointment with them for May 16th and saw that my trusty 32 Bus will get me there in 45 hellish minutes (honestly that bus is always so packed, but at least I know I can always get one of the seats reserved for handicapped folks). That’s all really. Just another day. Now I am going to drink wine and cook… still perfecting my “whisky” sauce.

omg mri ffs

22 Tuesday Apr 2025

Posted by in health, hospitals, sevilla

≈ 3 Comments

Tags

, ,

Today I finally went to get the MRIs (plural) on my shoulder and back. I’d had to postpone my appointment twice due to NON STOP COUGHING and was finally well enough to go and – hopefully – be able to lie still during the scan. You know me, I’ve been through countless PET and CT scans over the past 17 yeats and, while a bit uncomfortable, they were fine. In fact, But somehow I woke up dreading today’s MRIs. Everything awful I’d heard about people getting all claustrophobic and panicky inside them suddenly started flooding my imagination and by the time it was time to go to the clinic let’s just say I wasn’t feeling my calmest.

Decided to taxi there, though I kept an eye out for sneaky supplements, and 10 euros later I was at my destination. So far so good. Well, other than the hour long wait… apparently the person before me had had “complications”. Yep, was feeling more anxious by the moment. And then it was my turn. The 12 year old nurse asked me if I was claustrophobic and I said OH YEAH, BIG TIME and the smile left her face. I told her I was familiar with other scans, and had MRIs done on my knees, but this would be new for me.

Anyhoodle, into the room I went, fully prepared wearing nothing metal at all (was even wearing a slip on house bra with my back up bra in my bag for when I left). Ok then, they put me up on the platform, got me in position, told me it would only be 15 minutes but if I felt uncomfortable at any moment I had my panic button in my hand. All set, in I went…

Guys. I lasted maybe ten seconds. I MEAN it was like being shoved into a mechanical coffin, nothing at all like a CT or PET… it was so closed in and tight, I couldn’t have moved if I’d wanted to, and I think was the deal breaker. I COULDN’T HAVE MOVED IF I’D WANTED TO. I can’t even begin to tell you what that triggered inside me other than within seconds I was yelling “get me out of here!!!”.

Gotta say the staff were great, said it happens all the time, even to people who have had no problems with previous MRIs… one day suddenly they can’t. And so they suggested I make a new appointment for their “open MRI” but they couldn’t guarantee it would be better for me because, instead of 15 minutes, it would take close to an hour. Of not moving. Inside a machine. Also, often results from the open machine aren’t as precise.

I don’t know what to do. I made the appointment for the open machine for May 4th but meanwhile will talk with my GP (we already have a phone appt set up for next week). This is all about chronic shoulder and arm pain that has been going on for years, right shoulder and arm. Sometimes I feel almost normal, other times I want to cry it hurts so much, and there is now an almost constant tingling sensation in my right arm and hand. GP thinks it’s a nerve. Sucks, but if it means going back into that metal coffin… I honestly don’t think I can do it.

So I will wait and see what other info and options I get. This is not the worst of my present health issues, but ironically it’s the one that got seen to first. Meanwhile, been waiting to see the orthopaedic surgeon SINCE FUCKING OCTOBER. But next week I am going to get a Holter strapped onto me. And tomorrow is Mammogram Day. The fun never stops around here.

jueves santo 2025

17 Thursday Apr 2025

Posted by in culture, sevilla, spain, tapas, tapas bars

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Today I went out mantilla hunting… love seeing the women dressed in black on Maundy Thursday and Good Friday, so elegant with their black lace mantillas draped over a tall tortoise shell comb. I especially love the older women (some of the younger ones are in tight black mini-dresses with cut-away fronts like… wtf??). The idea is that the women are in mourning because Christ has died, and it’s a lovely tradition when done properly.

As I had to get deep into the Cathedral zone and my old neighbourhood Barrio Santa Cruz to catch the mantilla ladies out in force we ended up stopping in at Casa Román on the off chance they had a free table… and yes they did, a perfect spot by the open door. Half an hour later the place was pretty much mobbed, so we got the timing right. Then on the way home I saw a couple of things that made me, well, sad. So when I got back I started writing about it… look for a new post on Substack tomorrow!

feeling okay now…

16 Wednesday Apr 2025

Posted by in friends, health & happiness, hope, sevilla, tapas bars

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

,

​I started off the day more or less okay, though with less sleep than I’d hoped for, and also waking up with a black cloud of “let’s beat up Shawn” hanging over me for not being all I’d hoped to be over the past few days. Without going into details, just a lot of the usual letting myself down stuff and deciding I’m a shit person for always letting myself down… ufff… it was hard to get up.

But I got up! Because Morcilla was looking a bit perkier and I had to prepare her special breakfast of Hill’s ID Prescription Diet, and also dole out a bit for Luna (or I’d never hear the end of it). So a spoonful of this apparently delicious paté for Luna on top of her bics and a fresh bowl of it for Morcilla. Both cats happy.

Then I got on the ol’ laptop, coffee in hand, and started on the usual online stuff. At some point I thought to tell my downstairs neighbour that Morcilla was feeling better and… well fuck me. I got back a pleasant response re: Morcilla but then it was like getting stuck in a time warp of weird.

My neighbour is 80-something as far as I know. She has no family to speak of, so she’s mostly on her own. After I first moved in – summer 2017 – we met up for lunch at a local bar and everything seemed fine. But then things went weird and suddenly I was being accused of being a BAD PERSON and all kinds of other WTF nastiness… all of this happening when I happened to pass her in the entrance. She would literally scream this in my face. And so I backed away…

Over the years there have been goodish and bad times with the neighbour. By goodish I mean she would sometimes stop screaming at me whenever we happened to cross paths. It seems my major crime is that I am not being a Good Neighbour, in that I don’t invite her up for coffee and a chat, that we aren’t always in contact, that (her words) SHE FEELS MORE ALONE WITH ME AS A NEIGHBOUR THAN IF I WASN’T THERE AT ALL.

I mean, fuck. We are in touch on WhatsApp, I am there for her if she actually needs anything, she knows she can call. For example, when she was recently very sick with “a cold” she asked if I had a Covid test at home and could I show her how to use it. So of course I popped down with the test, got it done, it was negative. No problem. But today I was apparently someone who would be better if they didn’t exist. Her words.

Now I know these are the words of a cranky old woman who lives a alone and is in a lot of daily chronic pain and so of course I shouldn’t take this personally. Except I do because they mirror the words I use against myself ALL THE TIME. Without realising it (I think?) she is reinforcing every awful thing I ever think about myself and I end up with that hard knot of anxiety in my belly because of course I’m awful otherwise why else would people keep saying so?

Then I went out with flatmate Peter to have a cold beer and a couple of tapas… just to get out of the house today before the Semana Santa crowds took over. Stopped in at Taberna Zurbarán and – oops! – like many bars during Semana Santa they had removed all chairs and bar stools because of the crowds. 

But when they saw me with my crutches at the end of the bar one of the guys magicked a bar stool for me, saying “don’t tell anybody!” and then other bar staff – totally run off their feet – stopped in their tracks when they saw me and it was all “Hey Shawn, so great to see you!” and then the owner of the bar came over with a tapa on the house (that gorgeous tortilla up there), just because. And then suddenly I felt like, hey I can’t be such a horrible person, otherwise all of these lovely people wouldn’t be so lovely to me. And just like that… my day changed.

People get this notion of me being something I’m not, or rather, they take one part of what they perceive to be me and then blow it all out of proportion to suit their opinion. As if I am only just one thing. But one thing I have learned over the years is that if anyone tells me I “intimidate” them (and this happens a lot!) I basically head for the hills because I already know they’re not seeing me as me and nothing good can come from that bullshit.

BUT… today some lovely people at one of my favourite tapas bars made me feel welcome and special, simply because we know that we just like and appreciate each other. Nothing other than that. Because nothing else matters.