Being back to health and a growing mail pile

I just noticed that I've been ignoring this blog for almost a month now, but in-between my hospital stay and recovering at home, there wasn't a lot to write about. But I figured that it is time to give an update on the health situation, as I have good news to tell! :)
My hospital stay went as okay as a hospital stay can go: I was lucky and only had one roommate who was mostly nice and only sometimes annoyed me, all the doctors and nurses were again very nice and really seemed to care about their patients, I could leave and go home after a week, and last but not least: the surgery went well! They removed one of my ovaries and my omentum, and because of some adhesion, also my appendix. In the beginning it was rather painful and I felt quite helpless because I couldn't move around much, but it already has gotten much better by now! Walking for a longer period of time still gets uncomfortable, but the feeling is less intense and I'm also able to do more walking. After seeing a short walk up and down the street as a challenge only a few days ago, today I was already able to walk around the city center of a nearby town before it started to feel uncomfortable. So that's big progress! :)
But the best news is that yesterday, I finally got my lab results about all the samples they took from my remaining ovary and my abdomen. Fortunately those results are the best results possible and don't show anything. So after the surgery, all bad cells are gone and I am healthy! :) There is a prospect of it coming back in the future, but I will just see my gynecologist very regularly from now on and have check-ups every three month (I can hear the universe snickering at me, as now I will kind of make up for all the visits at the gynecologist that I missed in the past years..) to have the remaining ovary controlled. And hopefully all will go well and it won't come back anytime soon! :)

So, after one and a half weeks of complete laziness since I went home from the hospital (all I did was read "The Rosie Project" - great book! -  and binge watch three seasons of Nashville), I'll now go back to more productive days again. My next challenge is decision-making, as I have some trouble to make up my mind about where I want to go for the further lawery education in the fall. Do I really want to leave Bavaria and go to Baden-Württemberg? Or maybe Bavaria isn't so bad and I want to stay, after all? Ugh... I will just apply to both places and postpone the decision for a while, but I also don't want to end up flipping a coin in August. So from now on I'll have a new project: actually visit towns to find out if I like them or not, see if it is easy or a huge hassle to get there in the morning, and so on. Hopefully that will help a bit with making a decision that I won't regret later - and trips are always fun, anyway! Especially with the nice spring weather that we are having at the moment. Oh, and in May I will go on a trip to Spain!

Today's trip also included this very nice spot

Before I end this blog entry, there will also be a bit of mail talk. My own writing mood has left me for now, so I didn't send anything out recently. But I received a bunch of great mail!

 The Penpalling&Letters group on Facebook is organising Cheer Up!-Swaps, and I received lovely mail in a pretty envelope from Katia in Brazil recently.

The Letterworms group is also hosting a swap at the moment, and I received this lovely postcard and flower seeds from Liisa in Finland! I am very bad with plants and am afraid that I would kill them if I planted them in a pot myself (there was a tragic incident with a cactus that dies because I wasn't giving it enough water - I never knew that you could give a cactus too little water!), so they will be planted in my parents' garden. This way they have a good chance to actually grow into beautiful flowers!

My friend Nadine was on a vacation in Tokyo recently and sent me this great postcard. In the past her postcards had a history of not reaching me at all or reaching me in a destroyed state, so it was extra great that this one reached me safe and sound! :)

I also received a nice letter from Maude in France. She is living so close to the German border that she actually sends her letters with German mail! And I really liked the stationary that she used, so I will indulge in one of my guilty pleasures and check the LaPapierre-shop soon..

Tessa sent me a great and superlong letter! In fact, it is the longest letter I ever received, and I loved every page of it. Also, her letters have a tendency to show up in my mailbox with perfect timing and when I really need something to cheer me up, so that is great too. :)  She also included funny cards, and I just have to show off the card with the dog, because it is the weirdest card that I ever received - the eyes actually move! :-D For some reasons, the mail services often stick those weird labels onto her envelopes. It is a mystery that yet have to figure out..

Yesterday I also received this lovely long letter from Elena in Spain. It was great to read from her again, and great timing to get the letter because I could really need the distraction before going to my appointment in the hospital. She also included these pretty postcards from Madrid that will go on my wall!