Topic: health

11 Nov: I feel something strange in my right foot. It becomes an inflamation, not on the skin but inside.

12 Nov: I walk with crutches, because if I walk without crutches I have pain in the foot.

14 Nov: I have also pain in my leg if I use it for walking. I don't have permanent pain. I eat a raw food diet with little furits, and I fast sometimes a bit.

21 Nov: Our friend Pascale visits us and brings a natural medicine: DSMO, produced by friends in the Alpujarras, and magnesium water. I don't like taking medicine, not even natural medicine. I would like to give my body the time to heal itself without using any means to speed up the healing process. But this time I make an exception. I put the magnesium water on the skin of my leg a mixture of DSMO and magnesium water on the skin of my foot. After a few hours, the inflammation in the foot becomes more severe, the foot becomes warm and hurts a little even when resting. I can't sleep for several hours at night and have to move constantly to endure the pain. I get up and work on the laptop, now it's easier to bear. After a while the pain subsides and I fall asleep.

22 Nov: I try again without any more medicine. The symptoms become a little less.

1 Dec: The leg feels better. I start to use the leg a bit, but I walk with crutches still.

17 Dec: Since some days I walk sometimes without crutches. Yesterday I cycled 14km to the church service and back. Now I notice: it was a bit much, the foot feels a bit worse..

24 Dec: Today and yesterday I cycled to the chruch again. Now it feels ok to do that, although there is still a rest of inflammation in the foot.

26 Mar 2024: In the meantime, I have had my foot checked by a doctor. It seems that I have a small fracture in my foot. It could be from a fall after the paddle tour in Oct 2023. After the examination, I was sent to a hospital in Málaga to have a minimally invasive operation to widen the vein. However, the doctor at the hospital said that the operation was not necessary and that the foot could still heal on its own. I can still feel a difference between my two feet. However, I am cycling to El Morche again. From 14 March, I will try to hike carefully.

I had a similar disease already two times before: In April 2013, during the gathering over Órgiva, I jumped from a 1m high wall and couldn't walk suddenly anymore. I used crutches for about a month. And in October 2021, during the paddling tour, I couldn't walk for a few days.

In the meantime, the two large wounds no longer form pus. They have grown big, but now they are clearly healing. A few small pus blisters have appeared, but they didn't get so big because I treated them earlier. The photo is from yesterday, you can see a new pus blister before I opened it. It looks better now, the pus is gone, the wound is just a bit red. Every day I dip a needle into neem oil and open the pus blisters with it - carefully, I don't want to press on the pus blisters too much. And several times a day I put some neem oil on the wound. This is my personal way though, as I had already bought the neem oil, didn't want to buy anything else, didn't want to go to the doctor and felt it would be fine. Normally it is recommended to put a traction pointment on the pus blisters earlier. If that doesn't help, you should have the blister cut open by a doctor.

Update: since 27 Sept I don't use the neem oil anymore, because the wounds are looking better. After the paddling tour in October 2023, I got another infection with pus on my index finger, which I also treated successfully with neem oil.

I've had these two festering sores for a few days now, and they're getting bigger every day. I have the feeling that I will open the blisters with a needle by tomorrow at the latest. The wounds were probably caused by the small spines of prickly pears (cactus figs). I prefer to hold these fruits in my hand instead of handling them with a knife and fork. I've been doing this for many years, but this time two spots became infected. I think it has something to do with my diet, although this assumption is not scientifically based. Since reducing my fruit intake, I've been eating more cooked veggies, whole grain crackers, and oatmeal. All organic, but it's heated food. A few days ago a bar of organic chocolate was added, with 100% cocoa content, i.e. no added sugar, but the cocoa beans were of cause roasted. In the past, however, I sometimes ate 10 to 20 prickly pears and picked them up directly, apart from many other small injuries that I got on the finca without them becoming infected.
P.S. I opened them, it was necessary. But still the wounds become bigger from day to day. I wonder if it's the contagious form of Staphylococcus.  Therefore I use neemoil for the wounds and avoid touching other people.

My partner Murielle considers the headstand a particularly good yoga exercise. And as you can see, she practices it regularly! It's one of her favourite posture. She learned it 2011 in Belgium from an 80 years old yoga teacher, who practised the headstand everey day at home. She still appreciate his teaching. When she does the handstand, she often thinks of him. "The practice is claimed by the Dattatreya Yoga Shastra to destroy all diseases. to increase the digestive fire, and to banish signs of ageing" (Wikipedia)

Since September 2022 I haven't had any illnesses except for 3 days of coughing in January and occasionally slight symptoms such as a cold for a day or some slight pain. For more than a week now I have had slight abdominal pain with certain movements and my stomach then feels a little heavy. I researched something on the internet: it could be gastritis. I only ate a green smoothie today and am beginning to fast or eat very little.

P.S. A few days later it felt more like a problem with the liver, a squeeze right below the ribs. During august the symptom disappeared.

Sometimes I have ideas that totally take over my mind. As a student I went through a phase where I was composing canons like crazy. Later it was even crazier: chess openings! In the last few weeks it has been this blog. I was particularly fascinated by improving the design of the blog. New ideas kept popping up. And how to implement? I worked my way further into the programming languages CSS and html - and almost always found a solution. I like this quibble.

But it also meant that I often sat at my laptop all day. It was difficult to motivate me to do gardening. I think it was also an illness, a mental illness, rather worse than Corona (see above). Now the design is largely complete, I'm working more on expanding the content. I find it easier now to only do this during siesta time when it's hottest outside. And so the garden can see me more often again. But now Corona is coming...