Berlinfusion

Random Observations

Everyone seems to agree that Berlin is unlike anywhere else in Germany - more open, more cosmopolitan, more relaxed, less averse to foreigners. It's also 'trendy, fun and cool'. Apparently.

I certainly haven't noticed 'trendy'... or perhaps I'm too old!

Anyway, here are a few very random observations I have made about Berlin.

Couples are gently affectionate with each other. They hold hands all the time, whatever their age. It's truly heart-warming to see octogenarians walking along holding hands.

Dogs are, almost without exception, incredibly well trained. Although they are supposed to be kept on a lead at all times, they aren't and they are delightful. They trot along at perfect 'heel' with their owners and mostly ignore the distraction that is my bouncing, permanently on-lead dog.

Dogs also travel very well on public transport and I was amazed to see dogs in my local restaurant. They lie down under the tables or chairs and you hardly notice they are there!

Dog shit, however, is another matter entirely. Dogs are permitted to crap everywhere and it is never, ever picked up. If you're lucky then it isn't deposited in the middle of the pavement...

While tastelessly looking for a photo of this, I saw lots of ways of drawing attention to abandoned dog poo; spraying pink, covering with sprinkles and hand-written notices. I may start doing something like this. I wonder if there is a rule about defacing dog shit?

Car parks are nigh on impossible to find. Parking is 'available' along the side of most roads and, in some cases, down a central reservation in the middle of the road. However, when I say 'available', I mean you will be extraordinarily lucky to find a space.

On the rare occasion you do discover a car park you will see plenty of examples of, what we have termed, "German Parking". If there is space for three cars, it seems to be normal to only park two in there. By parking at outrageous angles, drivers ensure that a third of all parking bays are unavailable. Very annoying.

I'm sure I'll think of more randomness to post another day.

 

Positive Progress

Things are looking brighter, at long last. Light is pouring in at the end of the tunnel and I sincerely hope it continues to do so.

While I may have shown symptoms of depression, I don't want to use that term. I was suffering from stress, shock and a myriad of other emotions and reactions to a specific issue. Depression is a very different problem altogether and not one that can be fixed so simply.

What has helped me?  I think I can classify the major contributors to recovery as follows:

Daily Life
Life goes on; especially as a mother. As much as I would have liked to spend my days in bed, this wasn't an option at all. Rhiannon still has to get to school on time, Kita needed to be walked and everyone has to eat. The mechanics of day-to-day life have to continue and so they did. Everyone, including the pets, has been wonderfully considerate and well-behaved.

Apart from the daily mouse-body-offerings... both pets have upped their killing skills and the mouse population is suffering greatly, leaving me to navigate with care and remove the remains.

Friends
Contact with friends has really boosted my mood. There's nothing better than chatting with good mates. And receiving an unexpected phone call really brightens my day. It's so easy to lose contact with people when you live far from home. The time difference in Japan put paid to most real-time conversations and they haven't really picked up again since I've been here, just a single hour's difference. Facebook and email have their uses, but nothing beats a good old-fashioned girly chat on the phone.

Also, it's important to mention that when feeling that far down I really cannot initiate a phone call, however much I would like to. So it's been fabulous to receive these calls.

Often the biggest support comes from unexpected places; people I've only 'met' online or people I haven't seen for years. It's so touching to know someone is thinking of me; it means a great deal and I do appreciate it. Thank you. I will catch up with my emails very soon!

Another massive boost was spending a lovely day out with my friend here - we both lived in Tokyo at the same time. We did a spot of shopping, chatted a lot and went for a Japanese lunch as our tribute to 11th March.

Diet
For a while I've been trying to eat more healthily but had lapsed over the past few weeks. I seem to have a big problem with wheat, so this week I've gone back to eating wheat-free as much as possible. I've also started drinking lots of water. It's not much fun - I really love bread and other baked goodies - but it really does seem to help.

Bach Flower Remedies
Many years ago someone recommended I use these to get through a difficult time. I can't even remember what that was now, but I do remember being utterly amazed that they worked. So I bought a lovely box of them. I add them to my daily water and, yet again, they have done the trick.

I started taking them as soon as I received them. The following day I woke with the most tremendous headache which wouldn't shift. It was a tension headache and hoped it was a sign of the remedies pulling it all out of my system.

It was. I felt so much better the next day although it took a couple of days for the headache to go completely.

Anniversaries
I think I had to get through a couple of difficult anniversaries before properly heading in the right direction.

One was the first anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan on 11th March, which I attempted to write about in my previous post. In my darkened state, I wasn't eloquent at all and found it impossible to articulate how I felt. I'm not going to attempt to rewrite it now though, others have made a much better job of it than me.

Then, on 16th March I faced the eighth anniversary of my Dad's death. Whilst grief does ease over time, the pain still has the power to hit with breathtaking power. I mourn heavily in the early hours of 16th and then get on with my day.

Spring
Spring has finally sprung! A couple of sunny, warm days woke up the plants and my garden has started to look a bit interesting. Mum and I planted hundreds of bulbs last year and the first ones showed their faces this past week.

Over the past couple of days I've done some heavy gardening. My muscles and joints are complaining bitterly; it feels good!

I also bought a little Sakura - cherry blossom - tree. It's covered in buds and I can't wait until they're in bloom. Very cheering.

Mother's Day was lovely. I was treated to breakfast in bed, a bunch of gorgeous orange roses and chocolates. Then Tim took Rhiannon out for the afternoon and left me in peace. Perfect!

I went back into the garden and sowed seeds of recovery. I had a couple of dozen envelopes full of seeds to deal with.

These precious seeds were gathered by my daughter from my mother's garden. What better way to spend Mother's Day?

One Year On... Japan Earthquake & Tsunami

It's March 11th. And if I've programmed this post correctly it should publish at 2:46pm Japan time. Precisely one year on from the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

It's hard to find any words suitable to mark this occasion.

We shall spend the day together, just as we were in Tokyo on that Friday last year. Perhaps we will visit the Japan - German cultural centre as there seems to be something on later in the day although we haven't ascertained quite what that is.

So much has happened in our lives in the past year but the events of March remain very close the surface of all our minds. Even now, eleven months since we moved here, certain things have the power to freak us out.

Just yesterday, the sound of someone wheeling a suitcase down the road had Rhiannon hurtling down the stairs thinking it was an earthquake.

Kita, our dog, really does not like going down into the basement. And if someone moves something down there the poor creature rushes to the back door.

But overall, we're doing OK.

I wish the same could be said of the many thousands of people still displaced and seemingly forgotten.

We shall be thinking of them and everyone else in Japan.

If you'd like to read more, please visit my Japan blog. I wrote a lot about it all in real time on  Japanory - I still find it fascinating yet horrific to read it.

Our bedroom furniture after the earthquake

Where's my Mojo?

You'd think that getting such good news as "all clear" would have a massively positive effect on one's mood. But it hasn't.

I'm finding it all very odd right now. I was expecting to feel re-energised, upbeat, over the moon and ready to start on all sorts of new projects. What these new projects would be is actually a mystery as I have none in the pipeline, but the intention was there.

However, I have lost my mojo.

I am so tired; still not sleeping well and have little or no energy. My brain will not settle on one single thing for more than a few moments. Joy is missing and this surprises and disturbs me. I feel restless and uneasy.

I guess it must be some form of shock.

Whilst talking to a friend who recently went through something similar, I discovered that this feeling isn't that unusual. Perhaps it's the mind and body's way of dealing with the fall-out? Is this normal?

Keeping it all together - to a greater or lesser extent - over the past three weeks has been bloody hard work. Mentally I am strong. My body has also been proved to be strong. But I guess there's a limit to how much strength the mind can cope with and now it is drained and utterly exhausted.

How on earth to people with a less favourable result cope? I am in awe of their strength.

In an ideal world I'd be able to recharge on holiday somewhere. Some time to myself would be lovely as it's my personal favoured way of recovering. We don't live in an ideal world so I have to fit my me-time in between school hours. And then I get "The Guilt" because I feel I should be doing something useful.

Also, I have nothing in particular to look forward to. This sounds mad, considering that I've just been given my life back.

Looking back over my life (I've done a hell of a lot of this recently, too) I find I've always managed to stay upbeat by having something concrete to look forward to - a holiday, visits with good friends, a good job. None of these are in my immediate future at the moment and that makes me uneasy.

But I'm not going to wallow in self pity; it's not my style. It's just surprised me that I didn't wake up the day after my 'all-clear' with a renewed sense of vigour and zest.

Perhaps I expected too much of my bruised soul and should give it more time?

Spring has sprung - a season of renewal and growth. Hopefully I shall find something to energise me soon; some sort of new project or job, and my life can really get going.

Renewal and growth; something to work on.

 

 

Judgement Day

Today was the day I went back to the doctor for the results and findings of my CT scan. To say I was petrified would be an understatement.

To recap:

Three weeks ago I had an abdominal ultrasound scan to see if I had any random cysts floating around. I had no symptoms, but an ongoing minor condition apparently leaves me predisposed to this. It was a precautionary scan.

I mentioned in a previous post that the scanning doctor found a peculiar shape in my right kidney, thought to be a stone but it didn't look like a 'normal' kidney stone.

What I didn't mention previously, however, was that something else was seen. Something far more terrifying and potentially serious to the point of fatal. A hypodense mass measuring 12 x 13 x 9mm on the head of my pancreas.

This was bad. Very, very bad. And that was why I was sent for a CT scan.

Naturally, one's brain immediately flips to the worst case scenario; pancreatic cancer; then back to... "I have no symptoms, they must have it wrong", then back to, "no - there's must be something there otherwise they wouldn't have said anything. What is it?" And so on and so on. I knew enough to realise that if it was cancer, I was in deep trouble. This was beyond serious. Even if it was "just" a cyst, I'd be having an operation followed by more tests.

Against general advice, but it's something that I had to do, I hit Google for more information and have since become quite an expert in the ailments and different growths applicable to the pancreas. Basically, I discovered that whatever it was would indicate the start of a whole heap of crap.

Most of the time I was able to partially detach myself from it all. I had to. It was the only way to cope over these past three weeks. Life had to go on and there was no way I was going to let Rhiannon know what I was facing.

Some of you may already know, but in case you don't, Rhiannon had her own cancer scare in 2009. She had a rapidly growing mole removed which, after testing, showed to have massive numbers of abnormal cells in it. It was called an Atypical Spitz Nevus. She had to go back for a much larger resection where they got it all and she needed no other treatment. It was a hard time for all of us and her fear of doctors and all their accoutrements has never left her. She is also aware precisely why she had to have to operations.

Anyway, I had to force myself to wait until today for the results: I only fell apart when nobody else was around. I couldn't sleep. Last week I had to put it all out of my head in order to go to London.

But this week was tough. I had nothing to look forward to and my thoughts were all over the place.

"I won't see Rhiannon grow up", "Rhiannon will lose her mum, what will that do to her?" "I might be dead by Christmas?" "Which songs do I want at my funeral?" "I wonder what German hospitals are like." They were constant. I could barely look at my gorgeous daughter sometimes, the pain was physical. My heart broke countless times.

Yesterday was the worst and I didn't stop crying until Rhiannon phoned me on the way home from school, then it was time to pull myself together again and be 'normal'.

By today I had disconnected myself totally ready for my GP appointment at lunchtime. Tim had taken special leave to come with me.

We waited for quite a while then I was taken into a room and given an ECG. Why? I have no idea - perhaps they wanted to make sure I wouldn't drop dead with heart failure when they told me the bad news? Yes, this was the way my mind was working by that point.

Eventually the doctor came in.

I held my breath.

"There's nothing there", she said. "You're absolutely fine".

I made her repeat that several times.

No, nothing there at all. Not even a kidney stone.

What? How??

She could offer no explanation, just stupendously good news.

I got out as soon as I could to tell Tim and we all went out for a celebratory meal this evening.

I'm still disconnected; I had to go a long way away from myself in order to cope with it all so it hasn't really sunk in yet.

But I'm sure after a good night's sleep I will be ready for the rest of my life.