Hello!

I feel incredibly joyful and grateful this year, because I honestly have not felt this great for…well, I don’t even know when I last felt this good. Destiny is a weird and wonderful thing: back in July, if Cedric hadn’t randomly run into my friend Leslie at his golf club in Bonmont, Switzerland, I would never have heard about Dr Santos in Barcelona. To be honest, I didn’t really harbour much hope, because my gastroenterologist in Geneva didn’t have anything more to offer me apart from immunosuppressants, and other doctors told me that there was no way a doctor in Spain would have an alternative solution.

But Dr Santos did. I waited two and a half months for an appointment, couldn’t even get to the appointment because I was too sick to travel, so we spoke via Skype, which was fine since he had already looked at the medical file I’d sent him, read my detailed email, (which to be honest is definitely not a given; how many times have I arrived for an appointment with a specialist to be asked what can I do for you, and have to use most of the allotted (short!I) time of the appointment explaining my symptoms) so we could just get straight into the small details of my symptoms. He suggested a different cortisone (I have collagenous colitis) which turned out to not be available in Switzerland or France. Two days after the Skype consultation I managed to fly to Barcelona, took the medicine the next morning, and I have been symptom free ever since.

Also, Dr Santos suspects I have another autoimmune disease (it seems it’s often the case with colitis) which would explain the constant aches and pains throughout my body. He prescribed a neurological medication, and my pain vanished within 48 hours! Gone! All of it!

It “only” took four years to find a doctor who listened to me, and knew how to help!

Never give up.

Love

Cesca

I air my skin,

Let it jiggle with joy,

Dip the new me in the sea

Twirl into a tutu of frothy waves,

Not in my birthday suit,

But simply on my birthday.