Day 4 with CI

Monday, 27th August 2012
Dismissal of hospital - at last!!! Heaven!
Out with the infusion needle and back to normal life! My stomach was still upset but better than yesterday.
I can walk normally and also stand on one leg without troubles. My balance is perfect, but a slight dizziness is still here. My doctor told me, it´s normal and I should take time.

At home I removed the headscarf and - SHOCKING! - found out that nearly a third of my hairs were shaved! Crap! My hair!
I understand it´s necessary but soooooo much! I look bald! Well I will go out of the house with a headscarf as long as possible.

 

Day 3 with CI

Sunday, 26th August 2012
Because of the fluid antibiotic which I get intravenous I got sick. My stomach rebelled and I had to order a lot of peppermint tea to ease it.
I told the doctor that I want to go home tomorrow ASAP and he was kinda delighted that I didn´t lost my big mouth and my courage.

As kind of farewell I shot this picture from my window at evening:

 

Day 2 with CI

Saturday, 25th August 2012
I received the ID-pass as CI-owner from the doctor in where informations in almost all European languages are written. In future I have to hand them over to the airport controll staff because the implantat will beep at the controll sector when going through.

When my parents visited me they handed over an envelope from the HearPeers community of MED-EL and inside was my winning prize from the homepage survey: an USB-stick in form of the audio processor!

What a day!

Day 1 with CI

Friday, 24th August 2012
The first getting up from the bed and the first steps were done very, very cautiously. I swayed a little and the dizziness in my head was uncomfortable! I was not able to move my head and a pressure in my inner ear hurted.
After the rounds of doctors the small bandage in the inner ear was removed as well as the head bandage.
At afternoon I was able to sway through the corridors of the station with my parents.

 

Day 0 with CI - Surgery!

Thursday, 23rd August 2012
Day Zero started today!
At 8 o´clock in the morning the surgery started and 3 hours later I woke up from the narcotics. My first thoughts were if I can move my toes, my fingers and my facial muscles. Everything was fine!
Except for the pressure on my earlobe because of the bandage.

 

It started!

22nd August 2012
At 10 o´clock I entered the throat-nose-ear station of the General Hospital of Vienna and it should take about 2 hours till I entered my room for the next days.

My right ear was marked for the surgery at next day.

 

Eid al Fitr, Part 2

I finished my self-made cards for Eid al Fitr. It was a good opportunity to keep my mind off the surgery.

The last one is for my Moroccan brother Aziz and his family.

Japanese Omamori

My friend Manami from Tokyo recognized my silent wish and sent me the most important item for my surgery: an omamori from the Baishô-in Temple in Nakano-ku in Tokyo. An omamori is a kind of luck charm blessed by the gods.
Baishô-in is famous for health and recovery and with this omamori I feel safer and more secure than before.
I will keep it in my near while being in the hospital.
I wish everything would be over so I can have back my normal life. I hate this nervous feeling in my stomach and the insecure thoughts in my mind. Crap!
Sometimes I am thinking of giving up the surgery. But then I want to pull the trigger because I have to think about the future and if my ear decreases slowly it would be too late for surgery in the next decade.
So I will hold the omamori in with the blessings of o-kami-sama everything will be well then.
A pilgrimage to Baishô-in would be due during my next visit of Tokyo then.

End of Ramadan

Ramadan is over - now it´s Eid al Fitr.

I wish all my friends in the Islam world a wonderful Eid al Fitr and blessing of your families and your homes.

Japanese TV series

I have to admit that Japan has a lot of splendid and gripping TV series and thanks to Torrent which allows me to download these series via internet, I can watch them.

One of my favourites are "Code Blue - Doctor Heli" (コード・ブルー -ドクターヘリ緊急救命) and "Rescue - Pride in Orange".

"Code Blue" is about four medical doctor interns on a Fellowship program in where they have to learn to join the Doctor Heli program. To perform medical tasks in a helicopter is very difficult but also a life-saver. Heroes indeed.

"Rescue" is also dedicated to our daily heroes, this time about the firemen who also have to perform difficult tasks during earthquakes, gasoline leaks and medical problems.

I know, it´s a film, but I met some casualties in Japan where I could see the real firemen in orange uniforms and I know how hard their works are. It´s good to watch "Rescue" and "Code Blue" for acknowledging the work of daily heroes instead of nagging on their "coming too late" or "where are they?".

Let´s watch more Japanese TV series!

Further piano lessons....

The weekend is almost coming and this week I mastered these piano plays:

Old Woman
Hänschen Klein
When The Saints Go Marching In
Mary Ann
Down the Valley

These parts are new and I will try to improve them at weekend:

Clementine
Lavender´s Blue

Amazing, how many songs and plays can be improved in one week. I admit that I am not a master pianist, but it´s important to have joy with the play and don´t be strict if some mistakes happens.

Part Three of the Lady Oscar Project followed today!
The story is getting gripping and the French Revolution can be felt very detailed and with a lot of personal feelings of Lady Oscar and her friends.
There is hardly any manga which is so detailed in historical facts like "The Rose of Versailles"! Even all the famous names around the French Revolution matches with the drawn faces of the people mentioned in the story like Maximilien de Robespierre.

Thanks, Junko, for your amazing project! I am looking forward to the next book and I hope it will come before my surgery.

A lot of desert-adventure-movies

Lately I noticed that there are a lot of desert-adventure movies lately, mostly with all these sheikhs, beautiful women and dashing warriors on camels or horses under the sorching sun of Arabia or the Sahara desert.
Only one of them is a kind of quiet humour movie based on a novel: Salmon Fishing in the Yemen.

The other movie is Black Gold which I also mentioned in an older post:

The next is a Germany-based production which was produced in Dubai and in Namibia lately and will be on TV-screen around February 2013 (gosh! - I hate to wait so long!). The original title is Die Wüstenärztin but in English it will be named Whispers of the Desert. German actress Esther Schweins will play the leading female role.

A lot of desert-adventure-movies, not?
In today´s super hot and super humid weather with 36 degrees it´s perfect to watch such movies. If we look at the poor thirsty warriors under the blazing hot sun and undulating sands, we feel far better and the hot weather is only a short intermezzo in the August.
Don´t think about polar bears and the Polar Sea - you will feel hotter than you are.

What a big surprise!

I got a postcard fom Munich from my Japanese friend Akiko from Hyogo-ken in Japan - the first message after almost 3 and half years!
I thought she didn´t want to hear from me anymore because she didn´t write back and it hurted me to stop this wonderful friendship. I learned a lot from Akiko and her amazing and kind parents. I remember everything we explored:
the New Year 2007/08, Takarazuka theatre, Ako and the 47 Ronins, Ikuno silver mine, the delicious edamame, traditional Japanese architecture, the lovely grammar school with the cute kids and top of it, I still love Hyogo-ken!
I was also inspired by Akiko and her piano lessons thus I wished to play piano too. This was the first thinking before I ever bought a keyboard.
I hope, Akiko will be my friend again!

This is the postcard, I got from Akiko! And on the left is a maple leaf from Ikuno where we saw the silver mine and ate an absolutely unforgetting, delicious lunch in a totally historical and romantic house.
If you look at the notes of me you will see the vague outline of Japan with Ikuno which is on the top of a mountain range and it´s covered with low clouds. It´s also famous for snow so the traffic lights are hanging vertically instead of horizontally. Akiko told me this. It was awesome to know about it.

Akiko also taught me the "Yubikiri"-song in where you hook your small finger with the of your friend and sing the Yubikiri-song as a vow or promise.

First piano lessons

For three days I had wonderful piano lessons on a big, black Bösendorfer piano. It has a magnificent sound and it´s fun to play on a real big piano. Compared to a keyboard, how good it might be, it´s a total difference!!!
It´s so great to have a wonderful teacher with patience and good suggestions.
After three days I can play following songs already:
Merrily we roll along
Au Clair de La Lune
Ode an die Freude (Beethoven)
Frère Jacques

Today I played Frère Jacques in front of my parents and suddenly they remembered this song sung in the Club Med where they had their summer vacations before I was born.

I never dreamed that I will play piano one day! And Frère Jacques is my favourite till now. It´s very joyful.
I hope to be able to play the Flea Waltz (or Chopstick) one day!

I am looking forward to the next lesson tomorrow!