Goodbye 2014!

2014 has been the worst year of my life. In total, I spent more days in medical offices, hospitals, and clinical labs than at the gym, beach, and in other leisure activities.

In June, after three weeks of hospital stay because she contracted cellulitis in her legs, and three more weeks bedridden in our house, my grandmother had a heart attack. She died before my mother and me, and we could not do anything. I was emotionally devastated, but I didn’t have time to recover.

During the hot summer, my father’s symptoms from his neuromuscular disease (myasthenia gravis) got worse, and I took him two times to the emergency room. After that, he underwent a costly treatment of IVIG (intravenous immunoglobulin). This treatment is bearable and easy, like a normal serum, but filling out the health insurance documents and waiting for the approval is time-consuming and grueling. My father is better now, considering his condition, and probably he will receive another round of IVIG in January. Sadly, more health problems in my family were still to come.

In October, my mother was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. She required surgery, and the surgeon took out a 9-centimeter cancerous mass from her uterus. Fortunately, she is healing well and doesn’t have any side effects after the surgery. In January, the doctors will decide whether she needs radiotherapy or another procedure.

I hope I will not see many white coats (doctors) during 2015, at least after January.

Best wishes to all Scribblando writers!!!

Aldo II

Even with her swollen legs, my grandmother entered the hospital walking and climbing stairs. But a few days later, she was totally bedridden with her legs up.

Suddenly, deep wounds appeared in her legs. Through the wounds, started to drain a light-yellow liquid and some blood. A combination of factors contributed to this dangerous clinical picture: the cellulitis, the secondary effects of the antibiotics, the kidneys losing their filtering capacity, a blood circulation problem, and clogged arteries and veins in her legs.

To make things worse, my grandmother’s primary doctor, who was her nephrologist and a trusted doctor, had to travel to a medical symposium in the United States. Her primary doctor left another nephrologist monitoring her vital signs and kidneys. We didn’t trust this new doctor, but we couldn’t do anything about it.

A week passed, and my grandmother’s health continued to deteriorate. The new doctor recommended dialysis to help her kidneys. We opposed the dialysis treatment. After that, and without any tact, the new doctor even suggested in front of my grandmother that eventually she could lose both legs.

To be continued.

Aldo I

In April, my grandmother’s legs became like big red balloons. I thought that they could have exploded at any moment. But she was walking and doing her things normally. After some days of doubts, we took my grandmother to her primary doctor.

The doctor diagnosed that she had contracted a cellulitis. This bacteria infection attacks the skin and swells different body parts, such as the arms and legs.

To kill the cellulitis, my grandmother needed a strong antibiotic that compromised her immune system. For some years, she had suffered from renal problems, so the doctor hospitalized her to closely monitor her kidney’s function during the treatment.

At the hospital, a long journey started.

To be continued.

Where are the businesses?

Last week a platoon of fiscal agents from the state treasury department visited my city’s downtown. They were auditing compliance with the state sales tax. And what happened?

I think they lost their time because almost all businesses in the downtown have closed in recent years. In the future, these fiscal agents will have a hard time justifying their salaries. Hahaha!

Planet Fitness

After launching an aggressive marketing campaign, a Planet Fitness gym opened in my city. Planet Fitness is a 24-hour fitness club with hundreds of locations throughout the United States. This franchise offers a modern place to work out without the hostile environment of other gyms; whatever that means.

During January, more than one thousand of locals enrolled in the new gym, including men sporting beer bellies, middle-aged housewives, and unathletic twentysomethings. None of them look like they have lifted a five-pound dumbbell in their lives. How many will survive February?

I visited my city’s Planet Fitness during its opening week. The floors and bathrooms were immaculately clean, and the working out area was full of state-of-the-art weight machines and dozens of treadmills. However, I decided not to subscribe. During January, they had a tempting introductory offer of $0 enrollment fee and $10 per month, but you must sign a 12-month contract and consent to automatic bank payments. These contracts scare me.

When I decide to enroll in a gym, I will stick to an old-school gym. Nothing can replace the atmosphere of an old gym with its rusty machines, loud grunts, and hardcore fitness users.

Where are the kids?

 I miss those days when kids crowded the streets on Christmas Day. When I grew up, children drove their ‘big wheels’ on the sidewalks like Formula One drivers, other kids filled up their solid ‘tonkas’ with mud, and teenagers jumped sand obstacles on their skateboards. Those were the gifts in vogue in my youth. And don’t forget the never-out-of-fashion sports equipment like balls, bats, football helmets, and tennis rackets.

Curiously, it’s 2:00 p.m. and the streets of my neighborhood are deserted. Where are the kids? I don’t know. I haven’t seen a kid carrying a baseball bat in years. Anyway, whatever kids are receiving today, I hope they are enjoying Christmas Day as much as I did years ago. 

Merry Christmas to all Scribblando writers!

Behind Christmas Spirit

Behind the Christmas Spirit in Spain

Have you realized that it’s only one day for Christmas? 

Christmas, a good part of the year in which everybody seems to be happy and good feelings are widely spread all over the world, consciously knowing, that most of times, these are fake feelings, feelings that try to hide all the unhappiness and uncertainty that  has been triggered in the last years by the actions being taken by politicians.

Do you really think that families, which have most of their members unemployed, are happy?

I am positive that what they really want is Christmas to pass as quickly as possible. These days, in which they could not possibly afford to give away a toy o whatever they wanted to their children or relatives, might become a torture for them.  Our ‘developed’ society is ruled by money and the lack of values is its main feature.

But, is it money needed to be happy?

It is true that life is a set of things that make you smile, and money is not among them. What we really need to be happy is very close to us and it is, in most cases, unnoticed. Little details, as a Christmas card from a friend one thought had forgotten you, your relatives giving you a phone call from overseas or having a meal around the table, in which the most important thing is to breathe the love in the air by the mere fact of seeing each other faces, might make your heart feels the joy of being life.

Life is good and it is worth living it. We are sick and tired of this situation but shouldn’t we let   politicians make us unhappy. They should feel shame by the actions they have been taken and have supposed a cut down in our civil rights and standard of living. It is up to each other to try to overcome this situation and be happy, even at Christmas.

Vicent

Emails

Writing emails in English could be a challenging experience for English learners. Emails share some peculiarities between formal and informal language, which represent an additional difficulty for non-native speakers.

For the above reason, I am very cautious when I write an email in English. I carefully review each word, verb tense, and punctuation symbol. And I usually take a second look at prepositions, the nightmare of English learners.

On top of that, if the email is written for business purposes, I always use the Word’s spell checker. In addition, I print the email to detect any hideous errors. Finally, I copy and paste the email and send it. I know this process is time-consuming for just a few lines, but in business, errors can be costly.

On the other hand, in Spanish I write directly into the message’s body. Rarely I consult a dictionary or a grammar book. Seconds later, the email is sent without much review. Is my online communication in English better than in Spanish? Probably. Maybe it is time to dust off my Real Academia dictionary before sending my next email in Spanish.

Memories from childhood

One of my childish pranks

I must confess that I was a naughty child so choosing a time in which I got punished is not very difficult for me. Some nice memories come to my mind but, without any doubt, I’d like to tell you the one I enjoyed the most.

It was a sunny Sunday in June at about eight in the morning. My parents had just left home to go for their weekly walk on the white San Juan beach’s sand and my older brother was spending the weekend with his girlfriend so, as a consequence, I was alone at home and I couldn’t be happier.

My mind quickly started thinking about what to do and it quickly made a decision, I would spend the whole morning playing my brother’s drums, which my brother had totally banned to me.

I had never had the opportunity to play that musical instrument till then, “It’s amazing, what a beautiful sound”, I thought. While I was playing the drums my mind drove away from me and I could see myself wearing a leather jacket and having long hair, like a member of “Barón Rojo”, my favourite rock band.

All of a sudden, I had my imaginary long hair cut. My father went through the door and was standing in front of me, his eyes out his orbits. I couldn’t believe my eyes! I was as shocked as the battery sticks were stuck to my hands. “What are you doing? Are you awaking all our neighbours?”, he yelled at me.

When I gave up playing the drummer, my father told me that a neighbour had phoned him to make a complaint, so he run back home in order to stop me from playing the evil musical instrument as soon as possible.

As a consequence of this mischief, I was banned to go out to the street to play with friends for two weeks, but I didn’t mind, they didn’t know the drummer was now my best friend.

Vicent

Eye Exam VII

My grandmother’s right eye surgery was last Tuesday. The surgery finished without any complications. Today we visited the ophthalmologist for a follow-up appointment, in which we experienced the same problems of all previous visits: a small room packed with patients and long hours.

Fortunately, my grandmother’s eyes are healing well. Right now, her vision is 20/50 in her right eye and 20/20 in her left eye. These are great stats for an 88-year-old lady. In a month, she will have another appointment with the ophthalmologist. If everything is right, the ophthalmologist will prescribe new eyeglasses. The old pair has more than fifteen years. 

I will miss the ophthalmologist’s annoying assistants, and the wasted hours that we spent there. It seems that I am suffering from Stockholm syndrome. Hahaha!

To be continued.

Mistakes

Carrying so many things in my mind sometimes provokes that I commit serious mistakes. One of those mistakes happened last week.

For my profession, I shall take continuing education courses periodically. Last year, I completed some of those courses online. After finishing each online course, I must print a certificate and send it to the state board. But now the board doesn’t have the certificates of four courses; and, worst of all, I don’t find copies of them in my records. I have been all weekend scratching my head thinking about where I have copies of those certificates.

Long story short, next week I need to take additional courses to renew my professional license. That means spending more than a hundred dollars plus gas and two days of my busy life.

Lesson learned: I must keep track of my professional records and declutter my mind from insignificant things.

Eye Exam VI

Here we are again at the ophthalmologist’s office. If my grandmother is healthy today, the doctor will schedule her right eye surgery for the next month.

The doctor’s office is located in an unpleasant two-story building that looks more like a prison than like a medical building. Long corridors without ventilation, brown-painted walls, and a broken vending machine welcome herds of anxious patients everyday. The ill-tempered office assistants don’t contribute much to improve this depressing environment.

Each floor has only one bathroom. And thanks to her urinary incontinence, my grandmother needs to visit the ladies’ room frequently. The doctor’s office is in a corner and the bathroom in the other, so she has to walk the long corridor at her one-step-per-minute speed. In two hours, she has visited the toilet four times, and counting.

One hour and two more visits to the ladies’ room later, finally the doctor is examining my grandmother. Her left eye is healing perfectly, and the doctor schedules the right eye surgery for October 23rd. One medical appointment down, a surgery and two more appointments to go, and we are done. Hurrah!

Loneliness and happiness

Last week, taking advantage of one of my unemployment periods, my wife and I went to the beach midweek. It was a long time that I hadn't had holidays in September and I had also forgotten that sensation. I have to recognize that it's very nice to feel that while everybody is working one is lying on the beach reading a book, letting your mind fly listening to the sound of the waves crashing into the shore.

One of those days, there was something that caught my attention. In the time I was turning over  a page of my book I could see an old woman, sitting only twenty metres from me, wearing a cap. I am positive that that woman was in her late eighties. She was thin and wore a stick, which helped her to walk to the shore and feel the fresh and salty water in her feet and I thought 'how much lonely she must feel'.

At first I felt sorry for her but, once I thought it twice, I told myself  'She must feel herself the happiest woman on the Earth'. The only feeling of the wet sand on her feet made her happy and I could see it in the gestures she made each time she bent down to touch the water and rubbed her wrinkled face with her wet hands.

I could see myself at that age, sat in that chair, looking at the never-ending sea. How could I feel lonely with my best friend looking at me, telling me he would be always there until the end of my life?

Tears drop down my face, but they are not tears of sadness..........

My race towards English language (part II)

As I promised you in my last blog entry, here you have the second part of my race.

A big gap 

After leaving Madrid a big gap in my English learning process was waiting for me. Sometimes, it seems that when people are hooked on their working lives have the feeling that they don’t have time to do anything more. They’re always trying to find an excuse for not to do anything after work, wasting their time like a couch potato or doing something in which they don’t have to use our mind during the whole weekend.

I spent almost twenty years in this kind of lethargy, trying to keep in touch with the language by doing short courses that helped me not to forget everything, but the big day was about to arrive.

EOI enrollment 

Four years ago, I was placidly sitting in my armchair when a question came to my mind, ‘Vicent, what do you think you have forgotten doing in your life?

I quickly thought about my English studies, something that I had started when I was ten and that day, in my forties and comfortably watching a F1 race, I was still thinking about.

So I decided to restart my English studies again, this time at the EOI (Official Languages School). I started from the very beginning, I mean, in first course. I thought that, after twenty years I had given up studying, my mind was rusty and why not to say that, I was not confident enough of my knowledge.

But here I am, at sixth course. I can’t believe it!

In the last five years, I have recovered my young spirit. In the school, apart from learning English, I feel a fresh breeze and my heart beats strongly each time I see the faces of my classmates, the faces of my friends surrounding me. I have found myself again and I’m extremely happy for that.

I feel this time I’m going to get it finally, because if I didn’t achieve it, an epitaph would be written on my grave, 

“Here lays Vicent, an English student for life” .

Vicent

My particular race towards English language (part I)

My race towards English language (part I)

Hello again friends,

I have to confess that, tired of being surrounded by bad news about how our civil rights are being trampled in my country,  my mind has not taken too much time to decide to write about something different, something that makes me happy every day, something that fills my life with new sensations and hopes, this is what I have called my race towards  English.

Let me tell you how English came to my life…….

You know that, forty years ago,  Spain was a country where people didn’t used to learn  languages very well, learning English was not important at all, so people started studying English very late, in my case at ten and, what’s more, it was never learnt properly by the use of old teaching systems based on learning grammar and more grammar by heart without improving the other three skills.

As a result of that unreasonable teaching method all the knowledge people acquired was quickly forgotten……

So, after eight years of English studies I did know almost nothing about the language. At the age of eighteen, the military service put an end in my studies and after that I had to decide between carry on with my studies or started working. Die was cast!

My first job…..

It was not difficult for me to take a decision, money was more necessary at home and learning English wasn’t as important as earning money at that time.

 It’s for that I went to Madrid where an interesting job  was waiting for me. That was the first time I needed English to talk to someone. I had to talk to my colleagues in Switzerland every day for half an hour, time in which, apart from work issues, we had time to tell jokes each other.

To tell you the truth, we preferred telling jokes rather than working!!

Leaving Madrid

Time went by and after two years and a half I left Madrid. I couldn’t stand living such stressful life, always running here and there. Every place was overcrowded, the tram, the restaurants, parks, and my heart. My poor heart was suffering, filled with all things I had left behind, my family, my girlfriend, my boat and my friend for life, the sea. So when my heart ordered my mind to come back to Alicante, a shiver went down my spine and my whole body ran to buy the tickets to the train station.

I left Madrid buy I gave up practising English too, once more.

From that moment a big gap in my studies was waiting for me, but I will carry on telling you more in the second part of my particular race.

Vicent