Category: Spiritual

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Clinic Art

With most museums closed for the pandemic and me now low on energy, it looks like I won’t be visiting Art Museums in San Jose during radiation. so I will share today just a few of the art pieces I photographed with cellphone at the clinic and tomorrow some more from the hotel.

These are from the waiting rooms and treatment hallway. I didn’t go into the doctors’ offices.

And in the parking lot I consider this sign a type of art: 🙂

TRANSLATION: We are life expectancy, for the cancer patient. Twenty-first Century Radiotherapy – Or most here translate “esperanza” as “hope,” making this “hope of life” but my online dictionary considered the context and used “expectancy” as a more modern translation. Languages cannot be translated word for word in every case. Spanish speakers know what it means! 🙂

And at 2:30 this afternoon I get the stitches removed from my left eyelid. Hoping for minimal pain.

¡Pura Vida!

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Age 107 and “My Abandonment” – Related?

This and Feature Photo at Top are Sunrise from Hotel Banana Azul, Caribe, Costa Rica

Many days an older women in a wheel chair is treated at Radioterapia just before me. The other day I asked the therapists how old she was and in unison they said, “107.” She’s obviously a fighter, still battling cancer at this age! And always smiles when I speak to her, though I don’t have her name or photo yet, I hope to one day.

In Costa Rica many people live to be over 100 years of age. Five areas of the world with a high concentration of people living past 100 are called “Blue Zones” (Wikipedia link), including one in the Nicoya rural area of Costa Rica.

The ingredients of health and long life, are great temperance, open air, easy labor, and little care.

~Philip Sidney

This 107 year old woman reminded me of the many motivations that led to my radical decision to move to Costa Rica in 2014 – including health and old age – while many Americans were questioning me “abandoning” the security, safety, and richness of the U.S. (though I had trouble “making ends meet” living there). 🙂

I spoke to this in my December 21, 2014 blog post (just 3 days before arriving in Costa Rica) sharing one of my favorite Thomas Merton poem-prayers which I repeat here as one example of my Costa Rica Adventure being as much about faith as it is retirement in nature:

Continue reading “Age 107 and “My Abandonment” – Related?”
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Happy Easter!

Its a beautiful sunny day in Atenas, Costa Rica for Easter Morning with the Yigüirro singing his heart out for the rains to come (any day now) though I cannot photograph him or any birds for several weeks now because of the high winds. The birds are hiding in the thick trees for protection from the wind. Thus I resort to Easter Flower Photos! 🙂

And our online English language newspaper Tico Times also wishes you a Happy Easter with a photo of the oldest church in Costa Rica. It is a beautiful historical place that I have visited once (my gallery link) in the Orosi Valley. The Ruins of Ujarras (Wikipedia link) is the site of Costa Rica’s oldest church, the Spanish colonial church built between 1575 and 1580 . . .

One of my photos of The Ruins of Ujarras in Orosi Valley

Happy Easter!

He Arose!

¡Pura Vida!

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What’s a Texas Smile?

A lot of you asked that question, and the answer is sort of a “figure of speech” or a euphemism for an asymmetrical smile or lopsided smile or even a sneer or smirk. 🙂 Possibly the name “Texas smile” came from one of those old cowboy movies my doctor saw, who knows? But that’s what my Costa Rican surgeon called it when, because of the cut nerve, I cannot lift the left side of my lips when I smile. But I’m not sneering! 🙂 Just not functioning normally and hopefully with some exercise we can call up some other nerves to help left that side a little more than now, but no promises. Same hope for blinking and closing my left eye which is burning most of the time now because I cannot blink or close it. In fact that is even more important to me! At night I now use an eye patch and put an ointment in my eye. My two big challenges before we even find out if the tumor was a cancer. Hopefully I will not permanently be “the sneering, one-eyed Charlie!” But if so, I’ll make the best of it! 🙂

The scabs on my lip are where the dermatologist removed growths earlier and they are just slow to heal. And of course I can’t shave on my left side with cheek and neck swollen and sore, so I’m an ugly mess! Like an old house or old car, everything breaking down at once! 🙂

Drainage Tube Removed Tomorrow

At least I have that to look forward to! Tomorrow afternoon the doctor sees me again and says he will remove the drainage tube which is a real bother. Then I think I will have one other post-op visit in another week when I will learn if cancer or not and what else we need to do. So seemingly always something else, but we are getting there – step by step.

Drainage tube from my neck to a little plastic bottle until tomorrow afternoon.

Dinner Delivered to My House Every Afternoon

The ladies of Roca Verde have been wonderful! Delivering a “soft” food dinner each evening that will continue into next week. I’m really getting the “royal treatment” from my neighbors! And its looking like enough leftovers for more extra meals than I will likely need. This is the life of being “Retired in Costa Rica!”

Plus Prayers from Around the World!

I’m so thankful to have so many friends and family around the world who believe in prayer and have assured me they are praying for no cancer and a quick and complete recovery. Wow! I’m a fortunate person in so many ways! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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Staying Positive When Cancer Comes

Since I was a high school boy when Mom gave me that book The Power of Positive Thinking for Young People by Norman Vincent Peale, I have made being positive a part of my life philosophy and really a part of my personal faith in God and the act of following Jesus.

It is kind of like happiness, it is inside you and you actually decide to be happy or not I believe. Then when bad things happen or come to your life, you make the best of them and keep on living. That is what I did for 20 years of a very difficult marriage while she was never happy and I was always happy in spite of the situation. Likewise with those overlapping years of a special needs child with autism and another rebel child. One survives by staying positive and finding the good things and opportunities, even within the bad!

Now don’t jump to conclusions – I’m not announcing my imminent death by cancer! 🙂

What has been for several years little skin cancers all over my body may have grown deeper roots or a separate and totally different cancer may have come that is more complicated.

New Adventure Started February 11

Not sure what to expect, I kept a journal of what was happening on one of the “static pages” or non-blog-post pages of my website and called it FIRST RAMPANT FEELINGS ON POSSIBLE CANCER. Kind of long.

The Latest Diagnosis

All those appointments and diagnostic tests lead to this current summary diagnosis with more detail in the online journal:

  • I have a tumor inside the salivary gland between my left ear and left eye that has grown fairly rapidly to around 3 X 4 cm now.
  • Though the needle biopsy indicates it is almost certainly a type of cancer only removing it will tell us for positive. Outside chance of no cancer. Prayers appreciated! 🙂
  • Surgery is scheduled for 15 March at Hospital La Católica in San Jose, Costa Rica
  • Dr. Christian Hernández Mena is my oncologist and surgeon – terrific in every way!
  • After surgery, a full biopsy is done, and the exact type of cancer determined, I could be receiving radiation and yes going bald! 🙂 More reports after surgery!

My Blog and Travel Plans Continue

I had to postpone my March trip to Tambor Bay, but hopefully by the time of my planned May return to Arenal, I will be able to travel just like always if radiation schedules don’t interfere! 🙂

For any readers who are also facing cancer, I want to recommend the following website and encourage you to stay positive and continue life as I will with the same kind of travel and nature blog posts right here at Retired in Costa Rica!

How to Keep a Positive Attitude With Cancer

“Choose to be optimistic, it feels better.”

—Dalai Lama

¡Pura Vida!

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Have You Ever Watched a Campfire?

Have you ever watched a campfire
When the wood has fallen low
And the ashes start to whiten
‘Neath the embers crimson glow

With the night sounds all around you
Making silence doubly sweet
And the full moon high above you
Just to make the spell complete

Tell me were you ever nearer
To the land of hearts desire
Than when you sat there dreaming
With your friends around the fire?

Author Unknown
Montgomery Bell State Park July 2003
Continue reading “Have You Ever Watched a Campfire?”
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The Beginning of Life 2 Outside

This fabulous documentary movie from Brazil present hundreds of ways to deal with the “Nature Deficit Syndrome” of modern children, particularly city kids around the world. Available on Netflix and other streaming services for free with English Subtitles though the audio is a mix of Portuguese, Spanish and English. Beautifully filmed and Life-changing for the whole world! It shows how NATURE is what the world needs now! 🙂 I RECOMMEND!

Nature is a tool to get children to experience not just the wider world, but themselves.

-Stephen Moss

¡Pura Vida!

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The Cattle on a Thousand Hills!

God is speaking . . .

For all the animals of field and forest are mine! The cattle on a thousand hills! And all the birds upon the mountains! 

~Psalm 50:10-11 The Living Bible

On that overcast morning of so many other hazy photos of birds I see this group of cows on a nearby hill just waking up. Yep! I’m up before the cows! 🙂 At least the ones on that hill shot below on my cell phone. The cows above were zoomed in on my big camera. It was truly an inspiring morning as I tried to photograph “all the birds upon the mountains (the last few days of photos) and the cattle on a thousand hills!” God provides a lot for me to photograph! 🙂

The sleeping and waking cows are under that central tree on the horizon. A nice wake-up scene! 🙂 I zoomed in on that central tree for the feature photo at top.

And God concludes that Psalm and my walk by saying . . .

But true praise is a worthy sacrifice; this really honors me. Those who walk my paths will receive salvation from the Lord.

~Psalm 50:23 The Living Bible

And with that I’m preparing to spend time with God in Nature for Christmas next week, my favorite kind of worship and photography that I will share daily. 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

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The Future We Choose

Book Cover

BOOK REVIEW that I posted on Goodreads today.

The best thing I’ve read about climate change in a long time and it’s not all negative because we do “Choose Our Future” collectively as a society and they even give us a possible “dream future” in Chapter 3, while Chapter 2 has a pretty realistic picture of where we will be in 2050 if we don’t act now and it is not a pretty picture!

Book Cover

There are a lot of practical things in this book like the 10 Actions each one of us can individually take and of course one of those is to vote and influence your politicians and other government leaders to take positive actions to green our planet before it is literally too late.

This is from the people who brought you the Paris Climate Agreement. If every human on planet earth read this book and did half the 10 actions we would be headed in the right direction!

Read this book and plant a tree to help save humanity!

¡Pura Vida!

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Forest Window

Not only does one create his/her own happiness but also the world in which you want to live. When I moved into this fairly new rent house it had the basic trees and shrubs but I immediately planted a garden and added other plants around the yard and that now big Cecropia tree that appears in so many of my photos.

Another one of those early plantings was a row of palms outside my two bedrooms to gain additional privacy from the street that my bedrooms face, howbeit down a steep hill through lots of other trees and flowers and my big Strangler Fig Tree. It was not only for additional privacy but for the feeling that I live in a forest as seen from any of my windows and doors. Yes – we can create our own world! That is what I was trying to show in an earlier post: My Windows – My World, and back then the above bedroom window feature photo was different with an indoor palm (at right). I have to change pot plants occasionally because this window gets minimal sunshine! 🙂

And because it also changes a lot, there’s another earlier post titled Kitchen Window View. I love being surrounded by nature, the main art in my house along with some of my nature photos.

“Nature is the art of God.”

—Dante Alighieri

My Monstera deliciosa plant provides a good habitat for the birds in my photos! 🙂

“Just remember life is all an illusion…..

it’s your creation and you can dismantle it and re-create at will.”

― Nanette Mathews

¡Pura Vida!

For more pix of my “forest house” see photo galleries: My Home Garden, or My Rent House in Roca Verde, or Vistas from My Terrace, or Vistas from Hill Above My House. Of course all of Costa Rica is my big backyard and I travel to all parts of the country about every other month in national forests, parks and reserves, so watch for reports on the blog and/or check out my big gallery where I have photos documenting more than 80 Costa Rica trips in the CR Trips sub-gallery! 🙂

¡Pura Vida!

Costa Rica offering all-expenses-paid vacations: How to enter

An article in Tico Times on how Canada and U.S. Citizens can win one of 15 free trips to Costa Rica for 2 people each. Just write a brief article or statement on an “Essential Person” to you during the pandemic. The 15 best will be published and you get the free trip! 🙂