In between the morning gym class and the afternoon aquafitness training, I went on this walk, enjoying the last of the autumn colours. Still windswept. I made a pitstop for coffee in Café Siercks. (In a later post, I will list the cafés and restaurants I have been visiting and which – since they are still open in November – will presumably be open all winter).
I can’t believe I have been here two weeks already. Time seems to fly by (and weirdly enough stand still at the same time), especially when the outdoors keeps calling my name each time I have at least two hours free of programme items.
My 70th birthday came and went. I had not felt like making any grand plans, in case a new variant, not to mention a new virus, would materialise and/or people got sick and unable or unwilling to travel and/or a new type of local lockdown so that everything had to be cancelled, or whatever. Then, at some point, the universe made the plans for me. Not what I would have envisaged, but I am very happy to be here.
Everything is well organised, and everybody is competent, super friendly and helpful and keep saying moin like in the part of southern Denmark my mother was from.
The various types of gymnastics and workouts, as well as the aquafitness, the massage (the Marnitz method – I must try to find a Marnitz therapist in Berlin), the walks in the fresh air – and when time permits even by the sea, the stillness and darkness at night – it is all doing me so much good, and I am already wondering how I will find the discipline to keep up this level of part activity/part zen back home, especially since I don’t want to go to any of the fitness centres in Berlin in this age of epi- and pandemics and people acting like it is the good old days.
There is of course always a couple of videos from Gabi Fastner plus a walk every day, so I guess the sum total of what I had gotten used to doing post-surgery, was not that much less than what I am doing here, only too far away from the sea 😊.
Also since the diagnosis, I have been studying the rising awareness of the effect of not only exercise but also of diet on attempts to avoid recurrence of hormone-positive forms of cancer such as the one I had, not to mention the importance of achieving and keeping a minimal body weight on the low end of the recommended BMI. Especially in light of the fact that I only take a very mild dose of the recommended hormone inhibitor, and then only half a tablet daily. (I hate what I read about the side effects and I get the feeling that nobody is totally certain of the extent of the positive effects).
Based on what I have learned, I had therefore started intermittent fasting, 16:8, and focusing on (sh..loads of) salads, vegetables, pulses, lentils, whole-grains, nuts and seeds, citrus fruits, very rarely meat, and then only fish and turkey, and NO added sugar and definitely no processed food – basically an anti-inflammatory, vegan diet (while still allowing myself a dinner out from time to time, throwing all caution to the winds, and even having a glass of wine on occasion, while words like dessert and cake have almost gone from my vocabulary now that I know to what extent sugar is like a cancer fertilizer).
In that light, I do not find the food here particularly healthy, although the mid-day, cooked meal is certainly good, fresh, well prepared, nicely presented, and very varied with at least one vegetarian option each day, and I shall certainly miss having all meals prepared and served to me, in addition to having all the exercise facilities so close at hand. But for now, I am happy to still have two weeks left here.
Anyway, it turns out not all the storks have left. Or perhaps this one was just stopping over from somewhere else.
I belong to the dying-out demographic that has not destroyed my hearing by playing loud music directly into my ear canals. Therefore, it happens more and more often that I have to leave gym classes because the music is played much too ear-splittingly loud, and if noone else complains, the trainer is not inclined to turn it down.
It had to happen here too, so this morning, I was glad to have ordered a gym mat from amazon one of the first days – and that it was delivered within two days ….. This enabled Gabi Fastner to come to the rescue again-again-again so the morning was not completely wasted.
The only items on my afternoon programme were talks or lectures or seminars or whatever they were and I am increasingly skipping those. That sort of information is googlable so I prefer to be out walking and making the best of being near the sea.
I hopped on one of the local buses for the first time, in order to save time. As a very nice service, guests at the clinic – and, I assume, in the other reha clinics on the peninsula of which there are quite a few – can use the buses for free.
My walk on Mapmywalk here. My total for today was a little over 16 km.
I ended up having an absurdly early dinner, since the last bus returned to the clinic shortly after 18.00 hrs. Apparently, nobody goes out to dinner in winter in Sankt Peter-Ording :-). Next time, I think I will just walk the four-five km back to the clinic, although that would mostly be in total darkness, but better than having to eat dinner so early and so quickly.
By the way, I had dinner in Vietnamese restaurant Asia Mei (amazingly, they don’t seem to have a website) and will probably go again despite the relative blandness of the food (for want of more spicy options here). I remember also eating there a couple of times when I was here five years ago.
To the photos of the day: I finally seem to be getting the hang of the panorama function of my camera:
This morning, I saw a large phalanx (I had to google that) of storks circling low over the clinic, almost as if to say – see you in spring – before heading south.
With just one item on my programme before lunch – an early Marnitz therapy session (a form of massage – SO good, for neck and shoulders but especially for the area around my scars – it does not necessarily feel that good while it is happening, but afterwards – bliss) – I went out for a bracing walk – nearly got blown off the dike several times – to see if I might catch a last glimpse of the storks, but they seem to have gone.
That is kind of sad, but the impressive sight of so many storks in the air at the same time is forever on my retina and I regret not having had my camera with me, locked and loaded, at the time.
This morning’s walk on mapmywalk here.
The first photo is a failed attempt to illustrate how we all can’t wait to send the Corona restrictions spinning.
The weather was pretty awful but what was just going to be a short walk ended up going to the beach a bit further than last Sunday. The route on Mapmywalk here.
Because of strong winds and drizzle, I had to leave my camera in the bag and only use my phone. It is therefore a bit difficult to see, but there were many more people on the water than on the beach.
Normally there is a direct train from Sankt Peter-Ording Bahnhof Süd, but these days, it is a bus service due to maintenance.
Apart from a bit of shopping (in DM – nothing interesting, but there are many really nice shops in Husum), I visited Galerie Tobien (pretending to be an art gallery, but it isn’t really, and Haus der Fotografie – a museum of contemporary photography located in the habour area. Very nice.
Then a huge salad with North-Sea shrimp before heading back to the clinic in time for the weekly zoom course – Questionable Photos by James Prochnik.
I guess I have to become a lot more creative in order to make it anything other than boring.
I have probably mentioned some of this before, but I still can’t believe how I could have been such an idiot.
Despite feeling more and more tired starting in late winter and early spring 2022 – a kind of fatigue which on hindsight I had never known before – combined with weightloss – I should have known something was wrong. My excuse now is that that is something that sneaks up on you, and you put it down to spring fatigue, or getting old, …..
But when in combination with the fatigue (and therefore going on shorter and shorter walks, giving Max to the dogwalker more and more frequently), it suddenly became a lot easier to lose weight (I had been trying, like most people 😊 half-heartedly for years) – the kilos seemed to be falling off me – what was my reaction? That taking those two factors into consideration – something must be wrong? Naah. I only focused on the weightloss and thought – NICE!
Until the invitation in June to the public mammography screening, which probably came just in the nick of time for me.
So please, people, pay attention to your wellbeing, THINK a little, and go to all the public screenings you are invited to.
Rule of thumb, I’m told, is that any change, however minor, that lasts more than two weeks – go to your GP and start the detective work. Better safe than sorry.
It is NOT always “too late anyway, once you have those symptoms”, even when it comes to cancer. I am living, walking proof of that. As are right now all my fellow “inmates” of all ages here in this clinic.
Many people had „warned“ me that there would be a lot of talk about cancer, and a lot of fellow patients who define themselves via their sickness. All things considered, I have not yet found that to be the case. In fact, people seem to strike a balance which is just right.
The one thing everybody here has in common is a recent cancer diagnosis (for some not so recent, and in the meantime, they have been through gruelling rounds of various treatments and therapies and lived with the uncertainty and/or the fear of recurrence, for a long time), and now we are all here for a break, to get away from it all, and to regain mobility and mental and physical strength to go back and get on with our lives.
Despite the fact that cancer affects about one in three or four of us all, so that it actually should not come as such a shock, this diagnosis is crushing, even life-changing, and only others with that experience can understand the enormity. If the subject comes up from time to time in a facility such as this one, in between talking about every other subject under the sun, I find that a normal step in the process of healing and moving on, and quite therapeutic.
Changing the subject, I caught this stork basking past my balcony in the late-afternoon sunlight:
