This going cold turkey is a completely different approach than I had 20-odd years ago and as that period of abstinence lasted merely two years, chances are that this sticks better. I am very aware that obviously my current age helps a bit too.

Anyways, there are plenty of people that can/will tell you how wonderful life is after smoking. After a while your taste/smell senses improve, your skin will look healthy and not so grey, your general fitness improves and what not.

What they however don’t tell you about is that there are quite a few symptoms and withdrawal effects that can have a big impact on your life!

Right after my flu, my first week of not picking up smoking, I was constantly dizzy – as if stoned out of my head – just a lot less comfortable.
I have no explanation for it, although I think it has to do with the fact that your lungs all of a sudden have access to a lot more oxygen than before. That oxygen is absorbed by the blood and travels straight to the brain, hence dizziness.

Week two was mostly coughing my lungs out. My lungs were constantly irritated by dryness which resulted in a week long of uncomfortable coughing. Not a walk in the park at all!

Then came the days with the feeling like an elephant was standing on my chest. I actually still have some of these days. Absurd and it’s very easy to start panicking about this. I don’t have an explanation for this one, really no clue where it’s coming from, but would like to hear!

And during these days of discomfort I hardly had any feelings of missing my ciggies. As a matter of fact I had a full carton of them lying around and Mia also was still smoking. This was going to change though…

Looking at the relative ease with which I seemingly not needed to pick up smoking again, Mia decided that she was going to follow me in my footsteps. Her going cold turkey was not helped by a flu or something like that, so RESPECT for pulling through those first 3-4 days!

But it is weird. At first I just didn’t think of smoking, but when Mia has quit, it much easier became a topic in conversations. She also got some kind of metal cigarettes with a battery in there to deliver some kind of smoke and to give you the “nice smoking feeling”. Those are things, similar to patches, chewing gum and what not, that you just shouldn’t use! You shouldn’t even think about them to start with. After all it’s all between your ears!
So the third week there were some difficult moments.

And this last week has been quite ok, only every now and then the elephant on my chest. My skin looks nicer than before, I have a healthy appetite, but try not to snack too much and instead much on a carrot or cucumber stick.

We hardly have any problem with being around smokers and during the past week of Chinese New Year we were among plenty of those! Also we have said from day one to keep drinking wine/beer just like before. Lots of people use alcohol as the excuse to pick up a cigarette again, but of course that has nothing to do with it!

For me it is now one month ago since I had my last cigarette and I didn’t even know that after that one I would not pick it up again. Mia has just reached her third week. We have good hopes though that the side effects of not smoking anymore will soon wear off.

Not your every day citrus press, but a real “all-you-can-think-of-throwing-in-juicer” made by none less than Philips. Being Dutch that counts as a big plus!

Some juicy facts: Enjoy fast juicing with multiple speed controls for soft and hard fruits, get fresh juices at speed with the powerful 700 watt motor. Make more juice with continuous juicing thanks to extra large capacity, micro mesh-filter made of stainless steel.
Delicious and easy-to-make juice recipes with recipe booklet. No pre-cutting needed as the extra large tube swallows even bigger fruits and vegetables. All parts are dishwasher safe so this juicer is quick and easy to clean.

And after watching a few videos to see what can all be done with it, we decided to click the “buy now” button.
It’s now several weeks later and our juicer has only arrived two days ago. UPS informed us that it was some kind of delay at the China Custom. Anyways, it has been well worth the wait and we have been juicing away these past two days!

I went to the local fruit stall and bought a variety of fruits and veggies with the sole purpose to feed them through the “extra large tube” of the juicer. Oranges and mandarines (with or without the peel), lemons, apples, strawberries, melon, dragonfruit, peaches and nectarines, kiwis, spinach, celery and cucumber, all can be mixed in an endless stream of different combinations!

A few favorites so far:

• tastes like lemonade: 2 apples and 1 thick slice of lemon
• green monster: spinach, kiwi, carrot, cucumber, thick slice of lemon
• morning delight: strawberries, peeled orange, peach, nectarine, kiwi, carrot
• tropical cream: strawberries, quarter of pineapple, apple, peach, quarter lemon

And below some pictures of our Philips HR1861 Aluminium Whole Fruit Juicer, how it operates and the juices it can make. We’re going to have a Juicy Summer overhere!

Today however has quite a bit different air quality.

I woke up to see Beijing covered in fog and once behind my desk I saw a tweet of BeijingAir retweeted by Kaiser Kuo telling me it was not only foggy, but also unhealthy.

Compare these two pictures (I edited the clear one a bit to make it match the other’s horizon).

The ones at my sideburns were usually treated by a doctor with a small incision, until I came to China and the doctors decided that it was time for hardcore surgery. The end result was not all that beautiful with a scar of about 7cm long.

That experience let me to walk with the lump under my eye for about 3 years until the sight of it was absolutely gross. Then someone told me that the Xiehe Hospital in Beijing could do a cosmetic surgery on it, so there would hardly be any scar left as end result. I decided to go for it and it was a much better experience and result than the previous sideburn surgery.

A couple of days ago another of these lumps (they are actually sebaceous cysts) flared up in my earlobe and yesterday I tried to get rid of it myself. I bought a razor blade, disinfected both the blade and my ear and asked Mia to cut it open.

Well… that didn’t work. So a trip to the hospital became therefore inevitable (something Mia had tried to persuade me to do from the beginning).

I will try to describe the procedure that followed. First disinfection of the area and then some outside applied anesthetic (I think it was fluid nitrogen to numb the area a bit). Then the surgeon made the incision and was surprised my the wave of pus and blood that erupted. The female surgeon and 2 male nurses – yup 6 hands – then did their best to remove everything from my little earlobe, pushing and pulling and more cutting.

They said that they have removed everything and placed a gaze in the hole and I have to go back to the hospital every day for the next 7 days to get it renewed.

[as described on Wikipedia:] …the resulting hole is filled with an antiseptic ribbon after washing it with an iodine based solution. This is then covered with a field dressing. The ribbon and the dressing are to be changed once or twice daily for 7-10 days after which the incision is sewed up.

They promised me that there is a very good chance that afterwards I will be forever cured from these cysts in my left earlobe!

Still have others though in my right earlobe and in the general area of my face…

While having a look at my Woopra stats two nights ago, I came across an article that was recently published in CityWeekend Beijing, about hikes on the Great Wall. A nice piece, although I was interviewed by telephone and then some things do not come across. One of these things that got into the magazine completely “upside down” is

Start your Jiankou hike from the back side (hou Jiankou). There is a little parking lot marking the start. The descent brings you down about 500 meters down the road.

The descent obviously has to be an ascent, since you’re climbing up to the Wall. After all the Great Wall mostly follows the ridges of the mountains, not the valleys…

Anyways a nice enough piece that I can add to my “press-portfolio”

This morning I got an sms from Mia that she was enjoying the Modern Sky Music Festival (their website looks absolute crap in all 3 browsers, typical Chinese to fabricate sth like this!) Last year I visited this festival too and it always have been a lot of fun!

On this side of the world I went to book our Spanish language courses. As said before I will start on Monday and today I found out that I only will have 1 other co-student, a Scottish lady. Because the morning schedule is pretty full, the first week or weeks we will have class from 4-8pm, so that saves me from some waking up early!

I also went looking for a hospital for my thrombosis and by accident I found a great clinic! They speak 3 words of English and together with my 3 words of Spanish we manage to have a comprehensible conversation.
I saw a really nice doctor and he seems to know what he is talking about!
He wants me to do a very complete bloodtest tmrw morning as well as a new doppler (also called echo or ultrasound). Then afterwards when I get the results I have to come back to him.
He said that it is very very difficult to establish the cause of the thrombosis. And he mentioned that there are two ways of treating a thrombosis: taking a relatively low dosis of warfarin for the rest of yr life OR going in with the “heavy machinery” and try to get rid of it. He wants to see the results of the doppler and bloodtests first to be able to say anything that makes sense, but after my last doppler in Beijing I actually don’t count on the 2nd treatment… After all they said then that the entire vein in my right leg was collapsed!

So tmrw morning at 8am I have to be at the hospital, not allowed to have eaten or drunk ANYTHING! I can brush my teeth though, hahaha! Will also don’t drink any alcohol tonight and go to bed early. The clinic is on the other side of the park, so that’s close by.

Tomorrow afternoon the movers come to clear out Amparo’s stuff. It will be empty then, but I can finally start making a “home” for Mia and myself. We will also try to change the beds around, so I can finally sleep in the bedroom instead of the livingroom, which probably also gives it a more homey feeling.
As things are looking now, Mia will apply for her visa in about two weeks and when it is approved she can join me here around November 15… Let’s hope for the best!

Yup, wish it was different, but unfortunately it has returned after a mere 5 months. It has switched to the left leg, right under the knee.

I already had a feeling of a cramped muscle in my left calf for about 3 weeks, but the morning after Faithless I couldn’t even walk anymore…

After returning to the Jing, I tried with a bandage to pressure it, but to no effect, so today it was doctor time. At first the doc also didn;t have a real idea, although he immediately started to measure the legs (yup, that is a sign of a good doc), but after I told him I last year had DVT, he immediately came to his conclusion. Good for him and unfortunate for me he turned out to be right.

The blood test already came back way below average (INR of 1.2 which should be something between 2 and 3), but if that was not enough, the ultrasound was the real proof: a big clot in the vain next to the aorta.

The reason as it turns out is that people who had a first DVT are likely (30-60% chance) to have a 2nd one within 5 years. This time however I won’t be done in a year, it will take 3-5 years.
And to make matters even more serious: the chance that you get a 3rd DVT is 90% in 9 years thereafter. In other words: I’m fucked for life with this one

Ah well, been there, seen it, done it, could be worse, right?