My last cycle of R7112 went so well (apart from feeling dizzy for 3 days) that last Wednesday I got in an airplane and came to the other side of the world. Yes, it is true, I am in Macau, my hometown.
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Home
My last cycle of R7112 went so well (apart from feeling dizzy for 3 days) that last Wednesday I got in an airplane and came to the other side of the world. Yes, it is true, I am in Macau, my hometown.
Saturday, March 13, 2010
The betrayal of my body
<< rewind
stop
It is March 2000. I am running along the Pearl River delta. I run slow and stop frequently. Zé pulls my arm forcing me to keep running. But I can't keep up with his pace. I convince him to keep going. What is happening to me? First my slim waist mysteriously disappears and now I can't run?
The truth is that for the past eight months, I had been fabricating explanations for the fact that I looked four months pregnant.
Initially I blamed it all on the chi pa pau and chi cheong fan (pork rib sandwiches and rice noodles) that came along with my new stress free (boring), sedentary, 9 to 5 government job. I no longer had to run around with a microphone, run back to the newsroom, run to the editing room, run to the studio... Naturally I was now a fat government worker.
Most 3o something women have a "tire" around their waist. Why couldn't I have one too? It was my turn. That´s what I though when people stopped me in the street to ask if I was pregnant. I also started thinking that someone had started a rumor that I was pregnant. Rumors flourished well in the small Portuguese community of Macau.
To get back to my adolescent body I joined Ana's step and aqua aerobics classes. And I came up with a new theory to explain the changes in my body. It was all abdominal muscle and not fat. When I touched my belly it felt hard. So it was not fat, I was sure of that. It almost felt like Ana's muscles. Not bad since my instructor and friend Ana is a triathlon athlete. But all that exercise was not working. My body was simply not responding to any form of exercise. My belly continued to increase. Frustrated I canceled my membership at Hyat's Health Club.
I also had invented an explanation for feeling tired all the time. I was working at the Macau Handover Ceremony Coordination Office and there was a lot to do in the weeks that preceded the transfer of sovereignty of Macau from Portugal to China... and after the handover when the "rules" changed and I had nothing to do at work I interpreted my permanent state of exhaustion as a mild depression...
... my list of explanations for what today seems obviuos went on and on. But I was healthy and luckly everyone in my family had also been always heatlhy. I had no experience with any sort of illness. And I believed that I would remain that way forever. I really had no way of guessing that in a month, in April 2000, a 6 kg (12 pounds) tumor would be discovered in my belly.
stop
It is March 2000. I am running along the Pearl River delta. I run slow and stop frequently. Zé pulls my arm forcing me to keep running. But I can't keep up with his pace. I convince him to keep going. What is happening to me? First my slim waist mysteriously disappears and now I can't run?
The truth is that for the past eight months, I had been fabricating explanations for the fact that I looked four months pregnant.
Initially I blamed it all on the chi pa pau and chi cheong fan (pork rib sandwiches and rice noodles) that came along with my new stress free (boring), sedentary, 9 to 5 government job. I no longer had to run around with a microphone, run back to the newsroom, run to the editing room, run to the studio... Naturally I was now a fat government worker.
Most 3o something women have a "tire" around their waist. Why couldn't I have one too? It was my turn. That´s what I though when people stopped me in the street to ask if I was pregnant. I also started thinking that someone had started a rumor that I was pregnant. Rumors flourished well in the small Portuguese community of Macau.
To get back to my adolescent body I joined Ana's step and aqua aerobics classes. And I came up with a new theory to explain the changes in my body. It was all abdominal muscle and not fat. When I touched my belly it felt hard. So it was not fat, I was sure of that. It almost felt like Ana's muscles. Not bad since my instructor and friend Ana is a triathlon athlete. But all that exercise was not working. My body was simply not responding to any form of exercise. My belly continued to increase. Frustrated I canceled my membership at Hyat's Health Club.
I also had invented an explanation for feeling tired all the time. I was working at the Macau Handover Ceremony Coordination Office and there was a lot to do in the weeks that preceded the transfer of sovereignty of Macau from Portugal to China... and after the handover when the "rules" changed and I had nothing to do at work I interpreted my permanent state of exhaustion as a mild depression...
... my list of explanations for what today seems obviuos went on and on. But I was healthy and luckly everyone in my family had also been always heatlhy. I had no experience with any sort of illness. And I believed that I would remain that way forever. I really had no way of guessing that in a month, in April 2000, a 6 kg (12 pounds) tumor would be discovered in my belly.
Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Spring and Winter
I have to admit that this protocol I am on has one great advantage:
Every 14 days it feels like Spring to me.
As you might suspect from my long absences from this blog, this trial has a crazy effect on me. For 14 days (10 days on the R7112 pills and 4 to get them out of my system) I feel miserable and exhausted. But then, suddenly it feels like Spring. Rays of happiness and optimism take over me and I feel like whistling and jumping.
Yes, it is snowing right now. But I can't hear the silence of snow. Do you hear me singing with the birds?
This quote of Anne Bradstreet, the first woman to be published in Colonial America, summarizes that I am trying to say: "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."
Every 14 days it feels like Spring to me.
As you might suspect from my long absences from this blog, this trial has a crazy effect on me. For 14 days (10 days on the R7112 pills and 4 to get them out of my system) I feel miserable and exhausted. But then, suddenly it feels like Spring. Rays of happiness and optimism take over me and I feel like whistling and jumping.
Yes, it is snowing right now. But I can't hear the silence of snow. Do you hear me singing with the birds?
This quote of Anne Bradstreet, the first woman to be published in Colonial America, summarizes that I am trying to say: "If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant; if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)