Well, no-one ever said life as a strokie was going to be easy. In fact, of course, it's bloody hard at times. But, as a close friend of mine is fond of saying and as strokies have to tell ourselves all the time, it's a darned sight better than the alternative.
This week, I've had perhaps my plainest view of this.
Last Wednesday, my diary included a visit from my private physio in the morning (he didn't turn up, but that's irrelevant to this story), a one-hour lunchtime appointment with a yoga teacher I know who wanted some business advice, a lengthy visit to my GP in the afternoon and Week 2 of my counselling skills course at college for three hours in the evening.
In my heart, I kind of knew it was too much for my strokie body to handle; throw in an unexpected 30-minute phone call in mid-afternoon and a panic over getting to college on time because of traffic congestion and the result should have been inevitable. I was yawning all the way through my class (sorry, ladies!) and was dead on my feet by the time I got home.
For the first time in my business networking career, I had to cancel my attendance at a Thursday morning meeting. Not only was I in no fit state to get up at 6am, but I spent most of Thursday and Friday lying on the sofa doing absolutely nothing. Have I mentioned that I have struggled with the concept, regularly talked of by my medics, that sometimes my body and brain will tell me that they've had enough and I need to do nothing? Well, that was it. You might call it, to use a term beloved of long-distance athletes, hitting the wall. I'd hit the wall.
During those two days, I had some conversations with friends in the strokie community about how to avoid this happening again. They all told me I need to manage my fatigue better, build regular breaks into my day, stop worrying about the future and give my brain time to heal. It all makes perfect sense. It all requires major changes in attitude which I know need to be done. The difficult bit is making myself do them.
By the weekend, I seemed to have recovered; Saturday passed in the usual blur - breakfast in Wetherspoons, football, church, a pint with Mrs W, a chinese takeaway, Match Of the Day and bed. Sunday promised to be calmer - a leisurely breakfast, two hours reading the Sunday Times in the supermarket cafe while Mrs W shopped, the two of us taking the dog for a walk round the block, a rest before dinner, Sunday roast and an evening spent reading the papers while Herself watched her terrible choice of TV programmes. But Wetherspoons was hosting a boisterous children's party, every rowdy six-year-old in Tamworth seemed to be in Asda.....by 5pm, I was poleaxed again.
I got through the evening, went to bed early - and woke on Monday morning paying the price for a busy weekend, with the effects of a dose of man-flu thrown in. It's been a fair few months, since just after I came out of hospital in January 2013, since I couldn't move off the sofa. Now I'd been stuck there twice in five days and I didn't like it.
It's not been the best of weeks, then. But it ended in extraordinarily positive fashion. A good night's sleep got rid of Monday's woes and I awoke on Tuesday, primed and ready to go to Derby for another session with Emily Smedley, the therapist I mentioned here last time.
"She's got her work cut out after this week," I thought, as I boarded the train. Yet my hour on her couch was extraordinary. She poked and prodded me even harder than she had first time around, but this time I made the mistake of pointing out specific problems. I was worried about my knee, I said. So, she worked on my legs, my back, my feet - everything that could help me feel better and healthier from the waist down.
I yelped and howled in pain at times - but what is it they say about if it's not hurting, it's not working? By the end of our session, I was almost able to do that yoga pose where you put your foot behind your head.
Then I walked (I'm not quite up to striding yet) up and down the corridor outside her treatment room several times, standing ramrod straight, not veering from side to side and without my sticks. I am doing all this because I want to do at least one 5km run for charity this summer. There have been times this week when that has looked a million miles away. But in the roller-coaster world of stroke-rehabilitation, there is no such word as 'can't'.
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