Plaisir and Jouisance: May 2016

Hello hello!

Long time no writing again. This is due to many obligations and exams and new courses at the uni, because I often value just relaxing or doing sports or reading books more than writing a blog post, because I at one point seriously forgot that I even own a blog (:D) and because I knew what I wanted to write about the whole time, but it's...difficult.
I have always tried to keep this blog honest and sincere and about things I think about, without modifying my thoughts or expressions too much, even if it sometimes takes me to rather extreme statements. Because if I don't even say what I mean, what's the point of having a personal blog at all then.
Already some time ago I mentioned in one of my posts that I have bad rash on my face and body and that I will write about it soon. I did that to make sure that I will actually write about it, as I think it is a good and relevant eye-opener about why health matters and how to co-exist with your body and mind, in and with this world around us. But mentioning that I'll write about it didn't work as well as I expected and instead made me to shut up for a while. Even around birthday, which I normally so celebrate and treat as one of the main events of the year, I didn't want to write a lot, because I didn't want to say that I feel only suboptimal and can't post pictures cause I am ugly. So in this post, I would finally like to do it and write about it, post honest, sincere and ugly pictures and hope that somehow my point makes at least some of you think, and hopefully love yourself a little more :). If not, then there is a more selfish aspect to it - feeling that I got off and out of myself the trouble burden and many thoughts within in me, and that purpose, at least, will get fulfilled. Gotta love having a blog :).

But before I get to that, a little update of recent life events and excitements. In April I had birthday and turned 25. Big day. But as darling Miili said, probably I have at least 25+ years more to live, so no big pressure :D. After that I worked on two rather intense group assignments. One for estimating dietary intakes in research studies with a group consisting of 6 dutch girls and me, and in the other, we tried to plan how to reduce malnutrition and especially iron deficiency in children in developing countries with a team of 6 boys and girls from Indonesia and Philippines and me. Eye-widening and culturally and personally developing is the life and work at Wageningen University. But went well. I learned a lot about myself, about others and about the topics. Exams seemed to go well too, but I'll let you know if I get anything other than 7,5 ;).
And the biggest cool recent thing and current challenge is that..oh, there's actually two. (Lucky me ;))
1) I got a thesis topic and made plans for the summer - I will research the connections between diet and acne. It's really cool because there is no phd student or no specific project to guide me or set rules. There is only me, my supervisor and a small research team composed of skin doctors and skin clinics. Basically I have to create a diet and participate in designing and carrying out a study where half of the participants will eat the diet which I made, and other half their normal diet. After that I'll participate in analyzing the results and writing a report about all the findings. Maybe, writing more about the project should also first be done then, because I am not totally sure about how cool it is to talk about a planned study before it is done, especially if it's not mine. Probably the scientist don't find it very cool. But anyway, I'm excited! :)
and 2) By now, period 6 has started, which is also the last period with courses, so I am doing my last course! (And will never have to do more exams in WUR ever again, unless I decide so). That's a really cool but really busy course. We are divided to teams of 6-7 students and we are working on projects for actual companies. My company provides nutritional education and would like us to look into how will nutrition education look in 2025. I have taken on a challenging task of being the team manager. But it is all very interesting and not very stress-free with such a large project to carry out, with such real-life importance, and such a busy schedule. So if that goes well, I'll be really really proud of our team and of myself if I manage to manage it. :D.

Okidoki. Now to the not so cool and enthusiastic skin topic.
The thing is - I have a weird, ugly and itchy skin rash on my face and body and doctors in Estonia, Denmark or Netherlands don't know what it is or what to do with it. I have had it many times since maybe from year 2012, but never before so seriously and with such wide spread. And not on my face. Also, it's never before taken so long to recover. This time I have it since January already. And it is such a nasty thing - it itches more when I am worried or stressed AND it makes me worried and stressed. The doctors, not being able to find a real reason or diagnosis to it, have focused on treating the symptoms and done what they do best: writing prescriptions. As a typical close-to-desperation sufferer, I have dutifully also bought all the creams and drops and tried them out. The problem is, that most of them are too weak to do anything bad to the disease (good to me), and the ones that manage to create some effect are so strong, especially for face, that they make my skin thin and fragile and then they still don't beat the disease, so when it comes back, it is on much weaker skin and can spread with pleasure. It is also on my eyes, which makes my vision really bad, and some of the strong creams have reduced my eyesight even more, and my eyes want to cry almost alllllll the time.
In the Netherlands, my basic EU insurance doesn't cover visits to doctors, so for each time I go, I have to pay 30 euros if I manage to spend under 15 minutes of the doctors time (and doubleup if it takes more time). So I have also for a long time already, lost the motivation to pay to go to let them play their guessing game, as a result of which I always only have to buy more creams and which eventually are all too strong or too weak. I don't want to say anything bad about any of the doctors, because I know they try to help me. But I have given up on counting on them, and tried to experiment with different diets and use natural things like coconut oil, to help.

I'd like to continue the whining for a little more, and then write about what I've learned from it and why once again, I have come to the conclusion that health is the most important resource any of us has in life. If you'd like to keep your thoughts positive and not let nasty images and whining get to you, you can easily skip this part below and continue directly on to the section after, about the things I've learned:

(Skip from here: )
So more complaining:
Having this disease bothers me a lot. Besides it being itchy and ugly and making me go to doctors all the time, I think it is horrible and so wrong that I must have the disease (not that anybody else should have it either, but I think maybe some other types of people would be better and handling it). For me, who is always trying to be and look my "personal best" and be in the center of attention, approved and admired by others, it is a horrible thing to have. I feel sad that I have to look so ugly all the time, and I've skipped many many days of uni, just out of pure embarrassment. Also, because it is so, literally, in your face, then everybody asks me what it is and if I'm okay and sometimes think that I am just really sad or depressed, but I'm not! And I never know what to answer, but this discussion has totally replaced all small-talk, which I don't appreciate much anyway, but would still rather have on topics about uni and weather and cultural differences, than on "why your face looks like that" which somehow, in my mind means "why you look so ugly today".
So it is hard for me, not to get negatively influenced by all this. On top of that, it is hard to keep my focus at uni, especially when it gets busy. Then the time pressure and being so aware of my looks make me stressed and as said, the condition more itchy. And imagine then trying to focus on studying and doing the tasks, when you're entire body itches so that you think that if you'd only have a steal brush, oh how good it would be to use it on your body and even face. I really think like that when it's really bad. And it takes huge amount of self control and determination, not to itch and scratch all the time. Which is why focusing on work gets more difficult. And the itching worse. And so the circle goes and goes. Also, having a reduced quality eye-sight, makes uni work annoying.

And on top of that, more personal problems - I would so like to be a good and pretty girlfriend and enjoy my Wageningen-found love. And I feel really bad because I can't fully focus on things or look good. Or what's there to deny - from time to time I am a true whiny... something. Because I hold myself back all day at uni to seem at least relatively normal and on top of things, but then I come home and have so much self-pity and world-hate and don't know what, that I just pour it on to who's close to me. And most of the time it is my best friend and boyfriend, embodied in one person. And, logically, I would assume that he as well would like to enjoy the love and be happy, but it must be difficult, if the girlfriend firstly looks suboptimal at best, and secondly gets itchy and whiny all the time. However, he has handled it so great, and I am sincerely happy for having him. This at least, is much more of a support than embarrassment, and I appreciate it. And I really try to focus on being good in what ever other way I can and to help myself as much as possible.

(Continue here:) ...Which is where we can move on to things I have learned during the last four months, dealing with my crazy-gone body. ( i promise, no more nasty descriptions coming up from here on :))

I have learned, or just once again reassured to myself, how important is health. As I don't know what this disease is, I don't think that I could have done anything better or differently to avoid it and therefore, I don't mean the importance of health here as the importance of avoiding disease, because this is often impossible. I mean it more as a means of dealing with things and appreciating and loving yourself as a whole. Being physically active - running and doing yoga (still with the same youtube Adrianne ;D) has helped me to deal with this whole situation. When I challenge my body to do things, I show to myself that my body is still good, it makes an effort, tries to get better, and actually does get better. It is capable of many things, it can achieve many things, and all in all, it is a good place to be. I am a good place to be for my soul and thoughts and feelings and all what constitutes me. So I realize that it is not like my soul is trapped in some bad itchy body, but that I have a good body, which keeps me safe and protected with its powers, and which just happens to currently have a bad rash on it.
This realization is such a relief. It allows me to maintain a positive self-image and understand, that I still have great value (haha, sounds like I finally discover that looks are not all :D. actually I realized that quite some time ago) and that I can still love myself.
In times of bad health or mental state, I have really realized how important it is to continue doing the things you can to strengthen and improve your health. (Vana hea kui sa kõike ei jõua, tee pool). If you can't fix all what's badly with your health state, work on the things you can change. And I promise, this little which you actually can change, goes a long way.

In addition to doing exercise, I got two good tips from the pastor of my church. She said that it is sometimes, in these kind of situations helpful to have a gratitude prayer regularly and to pray for all others who might suffer from similar things or worse and then your prayer works as their medicine. The gratitude prayer means just giving thanks for everything everything you can think of. If you don't feel like praying, you can also just think about it, for me it helped a lot.
After about ten minutes of praying, where I had managed to thank God for all my friends and family and that I once had a dog and that I could do horse riding and that I liked my elementary school and that I found good friends and learned a lot of life and health and nutrition in Denmark and that I moved to Netherlands and found so many good things and that I know what sea is and can swim and so on and so forth until I couldn't think of more things to thank him for, I was about to go a little selfish and needy and point out to God that I am so thankful for everything and really appreciate everything he's done, so couldn't he just help me a little bit more and take the thing away and I promise I'd appreciate and gratitude pray every day, but I stopped myself and started wondering if there is anything about having the disease, I could be grateful for. And there was - I found myself being grateful that the rash is like it is that it gets more itchy when I think bad thoughts or stress. I was grateful for that, because it has taught me such awareness of my thoughts in each situation and made sure that I remember to practice avoiding negative thoughts over and over again. I was grateful that without noticing myself, I had become so good at managing my thoughts and feelings, that I could stop and change negative thoughts and feelings to positive even before I had the time to fully have the thought. Also, it really helped me to start focusing on what's good in life, the love, the ability to learn and go to uni, have friends and so on and on. So my issue already felt much smaller.

Praying for others, in turn, made me fully realize how much worse I could have it and what a true first world problem this is. I also felt really bad for letting it get to me so much that I nearly forgot about the big picture. I think that as a result of this I also realized that there are still so many things I can do for my health and that I should focus on keeping up running and other things. It made me realize how much can be avoided and how much can be improved by taking care of yourself and your health. And gave a lot more content to my next gratitude prayers.

So all in all I learned from and with this disease to avoid stress and negative feelings more than by any other incident in life, because if I din't, I had an immediate reminder in the form of horrible itch. Also, I reminded myself all the things in life I am grateful for, and it made me really appreciate what I have, rather than focusing on what I don't, and opened my eyes to bigger problems in the world. It re-confirmed that I am studying the right thing and really believe in it - I believe with my whole heart, that health is the thing that keeps us going and helps us through many things, much more so than money or other material values, and also, that you need good health to be there and tolerable to the people who matter to you.

As my skin still hasn't fully recovered, the learning experience continues. However, I am not at all a near-desperation sufferer anymore, and I think me and my body are doing a good job fighting the rash. Some days are better, some a bit more bad, but slowly but surely I feel that I am beating the thing, and coming out of the situation as a much better person than who I was, when I first got in. Maybe it was set like that by whoever decides these things - maybe I had gotten so self-centered and narrow minded that I needed to go through all this to realize these things. And now that I have, the rash is also ready to go.
Any way I am happy and satisfied, and continue giving gratitude prayers and praying for others, in hope that it will really help them, and I also continue running and yogaing and trying to be my personal best, but more importantly from the inside than out.
And how exciting then, that I can write my master thesis about diet and skin health, and actually design a study like a real researcher, to test all these things. And also I will get dermatologist buddies. Now, that the rash doesn't bother me as much any more, I am happy to be able to focus better on work and really excited about the thesis. (So guess what comes now: .............) ..........Amaaaaazing! <3

I post some pictures of my journey, for the selfish thing I mentioned at start - so I feel like I have fully admitted it all and gotten it all out of myself.
Thanks for reading and I hope it made you see physical activity and being healthy from a bit different side than just as the annoying thing we have to find time for in order not to get chubby or to loose weight.

Pictures below. A real exhibition of boyfriend too now, but it's just because at better times, I forgot to take selfies and only took photos with him. And at least he looks as good as he is all the time and does not suffer from anything now that I have also gotten my brain and body back ;).

Til next time!