Kind of a sick week, but hopefully on the mend

Not a lot of photos for this blog post, but just a catch-up.  I've been battling what appears to have been a virus that hit me in the chest, then in the digestive system, and finally with nasal congestion, and it has really knocked me out.  I haven't really felt much like writing a blog as I've done little worth reporting...

On Monday Christophe came by and we took the kitchen fridge out of its enclosing cabinet, and then knocked out the bottom shelf, repositioned it at the correct height, and installed the new larger fridge.  It's not all that much bigger, but is new and also has a freezer compartment so we have ice cubes upstairs.  I felt pretty crappy that day, still with chest tightness and some discomfort when I breathed deeply, but we worked together for the morning.  When he left I was feeling pretty pooped out and went back to bed.

The digestive problems have kept me up frequently in the night all week, and the coughing and persistent soreness in my chest finally led me to the doctor today.  I was able to warm up and sing some today but I needed to get some answers after at least a week, because I just wasn't feeling like I was making progress.

I hadn't seen a general practitioner in Wavre since moving here, but today stopped off at one that the boys had visited.  She saw me after a bit of a wait, and listened to my lungs, took a blood pressure, did an ECG (no trouble), took blood (the results tomorrow) and sent me quickly to the nearby hospital emergency for a chest x-ray (all clear).  So no viral irritation of the pericardium (membrane around the heart), or of the pleura (membrane around the lungs), and no sign of pneumonia, so it's a bit of a mystery why I have this persistent chest discomfort.  I hope it clears up soon.

For the cough she suggested a small amount of codeine syrup or capsules to calm the cough, and for the intestinal issues she suggested that I avoid certain foods, and take a pro-biotic, "or camembert does the same thing".  Very Belgian.

On Sunday afternoon I hope to be in good enough shape to sing a bit, and be focussed enough to give a good choral workshop for that Choir at the European Commission.

Some other nice things happened this week: I received a nice note from the conductor of that group in Flanders that did the Mozart Requiem and the Nunes Garcia Missa Pastorale at the beginning of December: they have invited me to sing four performances of a Passion cantata written by one of Bach's foremost students, Gottfried August Homilius (1714 – 1785).  That will happen in March of 2020, so I am really excited to have that down on the books.  Happily there are already lots of things already down on the calendar for next season, which wasn't so much the case last year at this time... Here is 2019/2020 so far:

- chamber opera concert in Ghent in September

- Haydn Nelson Mass in Brasschaat in October

- Bach Mass in B-minor and Brahms Requiem in Brussels in November

- Messiah in St. John's and Charlottetown in December

- Bach Weihnachtsoratorium in Brussels in December

- Homilius passion cantata in March

That's a good start, and I'm hoping that more things will show up soon, to fill in the open spaces...