Personal Updates

Who is that beautiful white ball of fluff? That’s hamster Spekkie, our new housemate who moved in last week. It wasn’t so long ago that my childhood dream finally came true, with the arrival of hamster Sniffles. What happened in the meantime, and how we went from having hamster Sniffles to having hamster Spekkie? It’s a long story. Let’s start at the beginning, the very beginning.

While walking to the metro station I smoke a cigarette and then a few hours later around ten o’clock I take my first smoking break at work. This is followed by about three or four more smoking breaks and in the evening, on my way home, I smoke another cigarette. It’s strange that just over six months ago my days looked like this. I can still remember that when I lived in my student room, I woke up and had a cigarette in my window frame first thing in the morning. In the meantime, I have quit smoking for six months now and it is going better than expected!

In the past year, I have been visiting the physiotherapist regularly because of back and shoulder problems. During these visits, some adjustments were made and then I went home again. When you spend 40 hours sitting at a desk, it is logical to think that this is the cause of the problems. But once I was referred to a Mensendieck therapist, they looked more closely at the cause of the symptoms, such as my posture. It then turned out that there was a completely different cause for my symptoms.