Falling through life

This week I've experienced the most horrifying possibility through which a 26th year old person's life could end.

I can't really call Lucia a friend, it would not be proper. I share with her my deepest passion - stray animals, and spent my summer with her at fairs and different adoption events. We both love cats especially, so we used to chit chat about this all the time. By chance two weeks ago I started a project at work with her sister, Raluca. Weird coincidence, but the world is not that big after all and I got used to it.

A weird phone conversation with Raluca almost had me collapsing from my chair. Last week we were talking about Lucia and it all seamed fine and now all of a sudden Raluca's scared voice gave me the worst news ever - Lucia had suffered a septic shock. The disease din not have any noticeable symptoms so it was nothing but a shocking surprise.

The doctors knew what she had, but did not know why, so they didn't really know what to do with her. Her lungs and right leg seamed to be the problem. A huge campaign was started for blood donations. She needed thrombocytes, and because Romania, especially Bucharest lacks blood donors, there were non available. They finally managed to get some from other cities so she could be taken through surgery on her right leg.

This is how Lucia in two days went from being normal, with a slight pain in her leg, to a septic shock, to inducted coma and with her leg split in two in search of dead tissue.

Without a clear diagnostic, Lucia is still in hospital. Though she was taken out of the inducted coma she is still on random treatment, as her results did not come yet. It seams to be a mix of viruses - S. Aureus and probably Lyme disease.

Though they had to go through an unpredictable shock, they had to fight with the doctors and the Romanian medical system to make things go faster, her family and friends stood by her strong. It is amazing how many people got involved in the case and did what they could to help a 26th year old continue her life.

Unfortunately all I could do is promote the case. My weight is below the donor's accepted level, so I am not allowed to donated blood. I promise that when I reach the necessary weight, I will become a blood donor. I am sure that Lucia is only one of those many young people fighting for their life right now.

I hope she will get well and go home to her beloved cats :)

Lucia died on the 26th of February 2012....

TwoZeroOneTwo

I never finished my last story...and never continued the story of my 2011. All I can do now is wrap it up...

I've had a great 2011 (the year of my 25th). Visited new places (Zurich and Bangkok), made new friends, learned new things - Spanish and driving :)....but most of all discovered more things about myself. There are a couple of people who made my year, especially my summer, and though it might be a bit different this year, it's all going to be here, recorded on my egocentric blog.

TwoZeroOneTwo started perfectly...with snow! Now there's so much snow that I kinda regret ever wishing for it. It continued perfectly, with my wallet stolen on the bus, and so a brand new set of documents. It took me till about last week, when I received a new credit card and driving license to recover most of the things I had. That's exactly 1 month...considering that I declared them lost and not stolen...easier.

I recently moved again, in a different part of Bucharest - different nice story - and I'm actually discovering my own city now... I think I'm going to develop a bit on this in a further post. It's interesting how you live for 25 years in a city and at some point you discover that there's actually more to it than you thought.

Short term plans - spring's gonna make me:

- work on my creative side again, I miss making stuff...

- experience my blonde side...Wella Trend Vision 2012 here I come

- cook again...ol' Denmark life style getting back to me...I kinda like it

- new places to discover: Tel Aviv, Jerusalem and the North of Israel

- read, watch movies, do nothing :)

- turn 26 and leave behind the first quarter of my life

Bangkok weekend nights

Saturday was a different story. This was a whole day full of adventure. Four different countries: Italy, Spain, Romania and South Africa on a hunt to visit as much of the city as possible. Everything started with a great taxi driver - Charlie - who amazingly spoke a bit of English...and recommended us to take the boat on the Canal. I must add the fact that this city is huge, but every street you go on looks exactly like the other, so you constantly have  the felling that you are going around. The amazing thing is that taxi drivers have no idea where main streets actually are. I don't know if this is because they actually have a different name in Thai, or we don't pronounce it correctly or...I don't know, but it is confusing. Anyway...here the taxi is the best and only way to get around, even if the traffic is horrible!!

Anyway this turned out to be a great experience as we got to see a different side of the city. The side which is even poorer that what we saw on Patpong.

On the Canal people actually have their houses in water. The image of people washing themselves, clothes and probably getting water to cook from the dirty Canal was a shock. Children leave here and I even saw somebody who had a dog on the porch. Some literally have a 10 cm of water in their houses. I have to admit that some houses were really nice, but all in all it just looked like a permanently flooded city.

We also passed Wat Arun, a Cambodian model temple. I always thought Cambodian architecture is really nice, but now I am sure about it....definitely on my list.

...and we also saw this giant golden plated Buddhist monk statue's back...I have now idea what it was..

As soon as we got off the boat a new era began for my smelling senses. I think this is the city with the worst smells I have ever felt in my life. Nothing could ever beat this. The thing is that they don't sell just objects in their street markets (which are on every street), they sell food...meat that stays for a whole day in a terrible heat, fruits and dried fish (which is absolutely the worse).

Our goal was to see the Royal Grand Palace, but I've learned that you should never make plans in Bangkok. Everything happens really fast and one plan becomes another in a couple of seconds. Instead of going to the palace we got on two tuk tuks which took us around the city for a couple of hours. The experience was great, until one of the tuk tuks broke....and to fix it the drivers tries to connect the two with a rope that obviously broke when we started the engine...but it did get the other one working.

The story never ended because it was too long and exciting...to many things to write down...