What a difference a few days can make...

After that last post, I sunk into the depths of dispair and fear. It drove me crazy to only have use of one eye and I had essentially lost all my energy for a week. The frequent trips to the doctor and hospital put me back to bed for the rest of the day each time I went. But in the middle of this week, things began to turn around. The sores stopped coming, my eye slowly started opening, the pain started to subside a bit, and I started to get my energy back.

For shingles, this is just a few hairs short of a miracle. Usually it lasts much longer and is much worse in intensity. Looks like I managed to get off relatively easy compared to the experiences of others who live with it for weeks and end up with chronic pain afterwards. So I'm going to rest up for the remainder of this week, start getting some work done at home (am now up-to-date on e-mail and got a draft presentation out this afternoon), have a relaxing weekend and get outside into the beautiful outdoors and recharge my batteries to be ready to go back to work on Monday. The truth is I'm completely stir-crazy and can't wait to get back. Well, at least this week at home managed to get me almost caught up on the first season of Lost...

New Tradition - Disease of the Year

I've always been relatively healthy. After growing out of a touchy stomach in my youth, I've very seldom had anything serious wrong with me. Then last year I got a nasty case of the whooping cough and was active but coughing my brains out for about three months.

Well, it seems this is going to become an annual tradition; but for a bit of variation, this year we're going to do something new: shingles ("gordel roos" in Dutch... literally "belt dandruff"). It's caused by the herpes zoster virus, the same one that causes chicken pox. Read more about it by clicking on the link above.

My rash (a funny moving painful sensation under the skin) began on Monday, and blisters started on about Wednesday. By Thursday they were much worse and it was clear something was wrong. I went straight to the doctor, who diagnosed me easily considering it was all on one side of my face - a prominent feature of shingles (from the Latin "cingula", meaning belt - the place where a lot of people seem to get them). She advised a "few days" of bed rest. It's likely to take more than that.

By Friday, my eye was starting to swell shut. My own doctor had blown me off and not returned my urgent calls on Friday, so Wilbert took me to the emergency clinic where I was finally prescribed some decent pain medication (Tramadol) and both oral and salve anti-virals. But by the next morning, my eye was completely swollen closed, so Wilbert carted me off to the emergency clinic again, then off to Hoorn for a special consultation with an opthamologist. The good news is that there seems to be no infecton in my eye itself. But I'll have to keep an eye on it because it can wreak havoc with your sight by leaving scar tissue on the surface of the eye. The bad news is that my eye is still completely swollen shut and I pretty much stayed in bed all day yesterday with the blinds closed and slept, followed by a full 8 hours sleep last night. I seldom every need that much rest, so I know my body is fighting something pretty serious.

Why have I joined the "Disease of the Year Club"? Well, both of these illnesses have had to do with pathogens that are either regularly present in our bodies or in our environments, and only cause illness when our immune systems are diminised by other illnesses, stress, or fatigue. I had just completed the busiest period ever of my professional life (with great pleasure!), as well as a tremendous amount of travel (seven hours west and six hours east) in a very short span of time. I think it took its toll on my body as a result. So I'll just have to find ways to take better care of myself in the future and plan my schedule more carefully.

So far I'm feeling pretty upbeat (not depressed as mentioned in the description referenced above), but just exhausted. The pain is somehwat under control, but I only have one eye and it's difficult and tiresome to even type this much text. Sigh. But I'm taking good care of my self (and Wilbert is taking excellent care of me, God bless him), so hopefully I'll beat this thing soon. I'll spare you any pictures, because it's not a pretty sight! If you're really interested, then click here.

Marketing Man in Action (in China)

One of the reasons I don't love being in China...

I got a beautiful three-line love note from Wilbert last night on e-mail saying he missed me. He's not always very verbally expressive about how he feels about me (but shows it in abundance with his actions every single day), so it was very special and made me realize how much I miss him when I go away on business. It's nice that after eight years of knowing each other I can still feel how very much I love him. There's nothing in the world like knowing I have such a wonderful person to go home to after galavanting around the world.

See you in two days, L.P.! I miss you too!

One of the reasons I love being in China...

And this was food down the street from the office at a "workers"-type restaurant. Gorgeous! And it costs next to nothing.

September Recap

Recapping September, it was by far the busiest month of the year for me (for both personal and professional reasons), and I think I came through it pretty well. I wrote a whole blog entry about it, but Blogger.com ate it (lesson: use Word or another offline text editor to write your blog!). Here are the highlights:

We had four major tasks as a department this month: rebrand the company, run a successful annual customer meeting for about 90 customers and staff, run a stand at the year’s largest trade show, and launch a new website. Without an incredible team effort by my team in the U.S. and Europe and a divide-and-conquer strategy, it never would have happened. They pulled together and kicked ass. Way to go, guys! Here’s what we accomplished:

• Rebranding of the company has been mostly very successful. New logo, new house style, new marketing collateral, new everything. Still working on it through the end of the year, but it looks fresh, cool, but also stable and trustworthy. Easy for us to work with ourselves, so less dependency on our agency and lower costs for the company. And we got a brand new color printer which produces gorgeous stuff. This was my baby (though the first time doing it!) together with the invaluable experience and effort of one of my staff who has gone through this before. So one thing down. Wish I could show you, but don’t want to identify my company here.

• Next thing was the company’s annual customer meeting in Spain! This is my second year producing it, and I decided to run it this year more like a professional industry conference. I’ve been to so many of them in the last year that it was easy to pick and choose the best elements to include. The city and hotel are fantastic for conferences, and I would recommend the Hotel Maria Cristina in San Sebastian to anyone for a conference. Prices were incredibly reasonable, and the group events manager, Juan Pablo Beorlegui, was fantastic. The hotel is historic, gorgeous, and centrally located, and the pricing for a large group was about half that of what we did in Italy last year. I created lots of opportunities for participation, got in some interesting experts, and our customers were generous with their knowledge and participation. We had dinners on the beach, in a cider house and in a 19th century fort, we learned about Basque sports like tug-of-war, hand ball, rock lifting and wood chopping, and we spent three valuable days networking and talking about the future of our businesses. Was very cool, and again could not have been accomplished without the leadership and hard work of one of the talented people on my staff (N., you da bomb, girl!). Thanks to our efforts (and those of a handful of other company staff), the event was considered to be the most successful ever. So another notch in our September belt.

• The trade show I had far less to do with, as I was mostly focused on the first two projects, so I left it to the proven expert in trade shows in the company, and she pulled it off with flying colors. Because the new branding was only finalized less than a month before the show, she had to scramble extra this year to get everything done, but the result ended up being both a boot we could be very proud of, and we’ll fine-tune the few rough edges for the next show. Way to go, M.!

• Last but not least was a brand new website in less than 3 weeks from start to finish. Fully tuned to the new brand, fully loaded with content, and managed by 1) a guy in Amsterdam who had been with the company for just a few months and 2) a gal on the west coast of the U.S. driving the agency that was building it. So lots of challenges, but a great Phase 1 result. Now on to Phase 2! Way to go, J. & E.!

• And not to leave the other key person out of this, we had one guy playing “Flying Keep” the whole time, helping literally everyone out and making our lives easier by picking up difficult bits and pieces of each project; a video here, a flash animation there, a few brochures and flyers over there. Without you, R., none of us would have made it. Thank you!

• All of this was a total rush, very fulfilling personally and professionally, and also led to a small reward for me in the form of a promotion from Manager to Director. That was nice, thanks, boss. I’m really enjoying what I’m doing for the first time in about as long as I can remember.

• Next was my brother's wedding in Des Moines (USA). It was great to see so much extended family, and wonderful to watch Josh & Lorie (see below) enjoy their special day together. Made me long for my own special day some time in the future when the time is right. I went into it expecting to barely spend anytime with my family, and that was a good expectation to have, because everyone was so busy. Good lesson for the future (last Christmas at home was pretty much a train smash, so I've learned my lesson). I felt a strange combination of being connected to and at the same time disconnected from the whole scene. Lots of old familiar friends and family, but lots of people from Josh's life that I know nothing about. I guess that's what being an adult is all about. And I shopped myself silly, of course. :-)

Other cool stuff that happened this month:

• Reconnected with long-lost grad school friend Timo (http://timmuh.blogspot.com/) who I had somehow managed to lose track of. Spent a little while talking on the phone, was great to catch up with him. Hope to see him at Christmas back in Iowa.

• Because of all the summer preparations for September, I let the garden go completely to hell. Got sick of it and just hired someone to come in and clean it up. Result = gorgeous.

• Am participating in a project to remodel our street and move the sidewalks, parking and street around to be more friendly and safe to pedestrians. Feels good to be involved in something local that binds me more to my city. Lots of the time I feel more like a citizen of the world than of this country or city, and it’s nice to do something “grounding” like this.

• In that vein, we’re trying to be more social with other couples and friends these days, which has resulted in some nice parties, trips to the spa, etc.

• I think I’ll actually have a birthday party this year for the first time in a while. Should be fun.

• Am so digging my Sony PSP. I’m not much of a gamer, but the device is just so cool! Feels like the whole Star Trek era has sort of arrived when you’re walking around with a little thing like that that has such a high quality screen with built-in WiFi and a web browser!

• Found decent tickets home for Christmas with New Year’s in NYC for both Wilbert and I. Economy on an airline where I have no points or status (could there be anything worse?), but pretty direct flights and a reasonable price. Can’t wait to do that with Wilbert. It’s likely the whole family (all 5 of us including spouses and kids) will be together for the first time, so that will be special. We’ll have to do a nice portrait.

• Am off to Beijing for a week in about four hours. Am going to make sure the new branding takes hold in our office there. I’m looking forward to being back there… it’s been a year, which is about the longest I’ve been out of China since I started working for my company. I love it there.

So that was my exhausting but fulfilling September and a few words about the future. Off I go to pack! Be well, everyone!