Walking miles around Paris without my stick (see last week's blog) was obviously a huge confidence-booster. It meant I could walk the streets without fear of one thing which many disabled people dread - being picked out as somehow different because we use a stick and we're not in our 70s or 80s.
My new status was going to be challenged pretty quickly, as well. Twenty-hours after our return from France, I was due at (yet another) leaving party for some of my former colleagues at the Birmingham Post & Mail. This isn't the place to recycle the argument over the rights and wrongs of the decline of local newspapers, but I will say that this event was to mark the departure through voluntary redundancy of five highly-experienced and talented journalists with well over 100 years of experience between them.
It was being held in Birmingham city centre on what turned into an absolutely filthy night, weather-wise. I boarded the train safely at Tamworth station (no sign of my stick, by the way....) and managed to get to the venue without looking too unsteady on my feet.
The venue itself, however, was a different matter. This pub is always crowded; at 6.30pm on a Friday, it's chaos. Luckily, I found some of our party quite quickly but soon discovered that walking across a packed pub with little control over your balance is not fun; I apologise to anyone whose pint I may have accidentally spilled if I bumped into them.
In the end, it was a terrific night. The cream of Midlands journalism was in attendance and I managed to remember that drinking too much would not just have been silly, but thoroughly stupid.
That does, however, bring me to a pet gripe of mine; toilets for the disabled. When you are unable to climb stairs safely, these ground-floor facilities are essential. But most of them can (for obvious reasons) only be accessed by a special key, provided through the RADAR national key scheme. Those disabled people who are 'in the know' buy their own, but plenty of us don't and have to rely for access on a key kept behind the bar/counter and provided on request by the staff.
That's OK most of the time, but trying to get to the bar in a crowded city centre pub when you are unsteady on your feet, then get the attention of busy staff, then ask them to look for and find the key, then fight your way back through the crowd.....well, by the time you've done all that, it may be too late.
I decided not to bother; For a split-second, I considered struggling up the stairs to the gents until I realised that this pub has a lift. Suffice to say I used it, did what needed doing, got back downstairs in the lift and found a comfortable seat on the ground floor.
But this little incident just highlights one of the hundreds (thousands? millions?) of little difficulties with which disabled people fight daily. Until December 16 2013, I was as unaware of them as the rest of the population; now, especially since I threw away my stick, they shine out like beacons.
The loss of independence and control is one of the most frustrating things for a brain-injury survivor. After this little incident, I felt as if I had achieved something substantial on my own to which able-bodied people wouldn't give a second thought. But I would ask for a little understanding at times - especially because stroke can be an unseen disability in people such as me. So let me try to get up the stairs, get to the bar, get to the gents on my own; but please understand that it might take me a little longer than you.
Wednesday 29 July 2015
Friday 24 July 2015
Letting go of a not-so-vital crutch
It's been a crazy week, to put it mildly....
It started last Saturday (July 18) when Mrs Warrior and I attended a long-awaited reunion of some of my old schoolmates. Most of us hadn't met in person for 31 years, since our last day at school. Some of us stay in touch via Facebook, despite living as far apart as Dubai and Birmingham, but plenty hadn't been in contact at all.
Some still had the look of that long-forgotten school photograph (including The Warrior, apparently) while some have changed radically over the years. Whatever the case, it was a great night and I am already looking forward to next year's event.
The evening was made for me when someone called Paul Ferris came and shook me by the hand, then gave me a hug. Paul Ferris was the bane of my life at school. The class bully par excellence, he and a couple of his mates made life hell for the young Martin Warrillow.
Thirty-one years later, meeting for the first time since then, we could have let three decades of pent-up mutual dislike spill out. But we didn't. We gave each other a huge hug, I explained to Mrs Warrior who he was and felt as if the night had been made even more worthwhile.
Some people are nervous about going to school reunions at my age, just in case meeting people ruins their memories. After my experience, I won't hesitate to recommend them.
After a quick pit-stop at Warrillow Towers on Sunday, we were off again on Monday morning to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary with three days in Paris. At times over the last 18 months since my stroke, it has seemed as if we might not make that milestone. Yet we did and we even went up the Eiffel Tower and on a boat-trip along the Seine to mark the moment.
Yet in the context of my recovery from stroke, perhaps the most important event took place before we had even left Tamworth. We were rushing to catch a train at Tamworth station for the first leg of the journey to Paris when I suddenly realised that my walking stick was missing. With the train approaching the platform, we had two choices - go back to the ticket office to look for it (and miss the train and a subsequent one to London, onto which we were booked) or go to Paris without it and deal with the consequences.
So we boarded the train and I prepared for life after my walking stick. In the end, we walked miles during our three days in the French capital. For most of the time, I held Mrs W firmly by the hand to keep myself upright. At other times, I ploughed on ahead. Whatever, I coped - I had discovered what some people had been telling me for weeks and months, that the stick had become an un-needed support mechanism.
I don't propose to use it again and I certainly didn't enquire after it at Tamworth railway station on our return.
At times, life has a way of creeping up unexpectedly on you; we can never predict what is going to happen from one minute to the next. That's the story of this week, from my meeting with Paul Ferris to going without my stick. It's the story of my life since December 16 2013 when I suffered my stroke. It's why there's no point in being positive or negative about the future because we just don't know. What I do know is that The Warrior is ready to deal with whatever life flings at him.
It started last Saturday (July 18) when Mrs Warrior and I attended a long-awaited reunion of some of my old schoolmates. Most of us hadn't met in person for 31 years, since our last day at school. Some of us stay in touch via Facebook, despite living as far apart as Dubai and Birmingham, but plenty hadn't been in contact at all.
Some still had the look of that long-forgotten school photograph (including The Warrior, apparently) while some have changed radically over the years. Whatever the case, it was a great night and I am already looking forward to next year's event.
The evening was made for me when someone called Paul Ferris came and shook me by the hand, then gave me a hug. Paul Ferris was the bane of my life at school. The class bully par excellence, he and a couple of his mates made life hell for the young Martin Warrillow.
Thirty-one years later, meeting for the first time since then, we could have let three decades of pent-up mutual dislike spill out. But we didn't. We gave each other a huge hug, I explained to Mrs Warrior who he was and felt as if the night had been made even more worthwhile.
Some people are nervous about going to school reunions at my age, just in case meeting people ruins their memories. After my experience, I won't hesitate to recommend them.
After a quick pit-stop at Warrillow Towers on Sunday, we were off again on Monday morning to celebrate our 25th wedding anniversary with three days in Paris. At times over the last 18 months since my stroke, it has seemed as if we might not make that milestone. Yet we did and we even went up the Eiffel Tower and on a boat-trip along the Seine to mark the moment.
Yet in the context of my recovery from stroke, perhaps the most important event took place before we had even left Tamworth. We were rushing to catch a train at Tamworth station for the first leg of the journey to Paris when I suddenly realised that my walking stick was missing. With the train approaching the platform, we had two choices - go back to the ticket office to look for it (and miss the train and a subsequent one to London, onto which we were booked) or go to Paris without it and deal with the consequences.
So we boarded the train and I prepared for life after my walking stick. In the end, we walked miles during our three days in the French capital. For most of the time, I held Mrs W firmly by the hand to keep myself upright. At other times, I ploughed on ahead. Whatever, I coped - I had discovered what some people had been telling me for weeks and months, that the stick had become an un-needed support mechanism.
I don't propose to use it again and I certainly didn't enquire after it at Tamworth railway station on our return.
At times, life has a way of creeping up unexpectedly on you; we can never predict what is going to happen from one minute to the next. That's the story of this week, from my meeting with Paul Ferris to going without my stick. It's the story of my life since December 16 2013 when I suffered my stroke. It's why there's no point in being positive or negative about the future because we just don't know. What I do know is that The Warrior is ready to deal with whatever life flings at him.
Thursday 16 July 2015
Tired? Yes, of course I am
I've written before in this space how fatigue is becoming the hardest part of dealing with my life as a strokie. I can fall asleep in a chair and not know it; I can find myself incapable of keeping my eyes open during the day, should I have had two busy days in a row; I can start yawning at 9am and never stop all day until I go to bed.
The medical people tell you that this is a sure sign of a tired, damaged, brain saying it needs a period of complete rest to recover; Regular readers will know that The Warrior, always keen to be active and doing something, is hopeless at listening to that tired, damaged, brain.
And I don't have the worst of it. I know of strokies who often lack the energy, never mind the motivation, to even get out of bed in the mornings.
For me, it's one of the major things stopping me doing the kind of work I want to do. I'm no good to anyone if I fall asleep all the time; last Sunday, for instance, I was more or less asleep through the whole of a church service; after that, Mrs Warrior and I took her mother out for lunch during which I spent much of the time asleep in a corner. The medics say I am good for no more than three hours of work a day; sometimes, it can feel like even less.
And stroke fatigue is not like 'ordinary' fatigue; not the kind of fatigue you get from working too many hours or not getting enough sleep. Stroke fatigue dulls the brain to the point where remembering anything is impossible, where putting one foot (or one crutch, one stick) in front of the other is a challenge.
Medical research is still struggling to understand 'stroke fatigue'. Obviously, having a damaged brain is part of it, but this week, I heard the phrase 'brain energy' for the first time. It came at a meeting of the Stroke Association's Research Project Grant Adjudication Panel. I can't say anything about the results of the learned panel's deliberations, but I can say that one of the projects we discussed is looking into how much the incidence of stroke fatigue can be put down to low levels of brain energy.
Well, given how much energy the brain needs to function, I would say the answer is 'a lot'. Without getting too scientific, a damaged brain doesn't produce the same levels of energy as a 'normal' brain and it does have an effect.
So although I sympathise with those who say they feel tired all the time from dealing with young children and/or the exhausting demands of work, I'd ask them to recognise that my kind of fatigue is not your kind of fatigue. I'm not saying it's any worse, I'm saying it's different. And unless you have had a stroke, you can never know how that feels.
The medical people tell you that this is a sure sign of a tired, damaged, brain saying it needs a period of complete rest to recover; Regular readers will know that The Warrior, always keen to be active and doing something, is hopeless at listening to that tired, damaged, brain.
And I don't have the worst of it. I know of strokies who often lack the energy, never mind the motivation, to even get out of bed in the mornings.
For me, it's one of the major things stopping me doing the kind of work I want to do. I'm no good to anyone if I fall asleep all the time; last Sunday, for instance, I was more or less asleep through the whole of a church service; after that, Mrs Warrior and I took her mother out for lunch during which I spent much of the time asleep in a corner. The medics say I am good for no more than three hours of work a day; sometimes, it can feel like even less.
And stroke fatigue is not like 'ordinary' fatigue; not the kind of fatigue you get from working too many hours or not getting enough sleep. Stroke fatigue dulls the brain to the point where remembering anything is impossible, where putting one foot (or one crutch, one stick) in front of the other is a challenge.
Medical research is still struggling to understand 'stroke fatigue'. Obviously, having a damaged brain is part of it, but this week, I heard the phrase 'brain energy' for the first time. It came at a meeting of the Stroke Association's Research Project Grant Adjudication Panel. I can't say anything about the results of the learned panel's deliberations, but I can say that one of the projects we discussed is looking into how much the incidence of stroke fatigue can be put down to low levels of brain energy.
Well, given how much energy the brain needs to function, I would say the answer is 'a lot'. Without getting too scientific, a damaged brain doesn't produce the same levels of energy as a 'normal' brain and it does have an effect.
So although I sympathise with those who say they feel tired all the time from dealing with young children and/or the exhausting demands of work, I'd ask them to recognise that my kind of fatigue is not your kind of fatigue. I'm not saying it's any worse, I'm saying it's different. And unless you have had a stroke, you can never know how that feels.
Wednesday 8 July 2015
Remember the Twickenham Streaker?
Are you old enough to remember Erika Roe? I was an 18-year-old schoolboy when she took off her bra at Twickenham during an England rugby international, ran out of the crowd and sprinted on to the pitch.
The subsequent picture of this buxom brunette, arms flung high in the air and her substantial 34G assets exposed to the January air, became an iconic image. In the days before the internet, nudity was far less common in the media and the newspapers delighted in publishing pictures of the topless Erika.
At the time, she was 24 and worked in a bookshop; she later became a farmer and 'came out of retirement' this year by posing topless for a 2015 calendar to raise money for breast-cancer charities.
Having lost my mother ridiculously early to that horrible disease, I never miss a chance to support such charities and a copy of Erika's calendar, entitled "The Twickenham Streaker' now adorns the wall in the spare bedroom at Warrillow Towers.
It may seem a little late in 2015, but you can still purchase copies at erikaroe.com. Even if you just pay the money and throw the calendar in the bin (I hope you won't throw it in the bin, though), it's worth £12.
This month's picture is a re-creation of another iconic image, one which adorned the bedroom wall of many a teenage boy in the '70s and 80's. If I simply say 'tennis', an awful lot of men of a certain age should know what I mean.......
The reason I've concentrated on Erika and her assets this week is that were I to talk about my week, much of it would be awkward and depressing - and I wouldn't want that. Hopefully, next week, which includes the 2nd birthday party of a close friend's son, will be considerably better.
I'll close with one bit of good news. This week, 'The Warrior' passed 3,000 hits since it first took to the internet last December. I'd like to thank everyone who has shown an interest.
The subsequent picture of this buxom brunette, arms flung high in the air and her substantial 34G assets exposed to the January air, became an iconic image. In the days before the internet, nudity was far less common in the media and the newspapers delighted in publishing pictures of the topless Erika.
At the time, she was 24 and worked in a bookshop; she later became a farmer and 'came out of retirement' this year by posing topless for a 2015 calendar to raise money for breast-cancer charities.
Having lost my mother ridiculously early to that horrible disease, I never miss a chance to support such charities and a copy of Erika's calendar, entitled "The Twickenham Streaker' now adorns the wall in the spare bedroom at Warrillow Towers.
It may seem a little late in 2015, but you can still purchase copies at erikaroe.com. Even if you just pay the money and throw the calendar in the bin (I hope you won't throw it in the bin, though), it's worth £12.
This month's picture is a re-creation of another iconic image, one which adorned the bedroom wall of many a teenage boy in the '70s and 80's. If I simply say 'tennis', an awful lot of men of a certain age should know what I mean.......
The reason I've concentrated on Erika and her assets this week is that were I to talk about my week, much of it would be awkward and depressing - and I wouldn't want that. Hopefully, next week, which includes the 2nd birthday party of a close friend's son, will be considerably better.
I'll close with one bit of good news. This week, 'The Warrior' passed 3,000 hits since it first took to the internet last December. I'd like to thank everyone who has shown an interest.
Wednesday 1 July 2015
A fleeting dose of Monday-morning guilt, swiftly burnt away in the sun
I'm not one for dwelling on the negatives of my situation; thinking ''why me?' and 'how will we cope?' gets you absolutely nowhere. Stroke-survivors are often naturally prone to mood swings anyway and the after-effects of a stroke are bad enough to deal with without dwelling on them.
But just occasionally, I succumb. As I mentioned last week, bad weather doesn't help while Monday mornings can also be difficult. For instance, I was feeling particularly sorry for myself this Monday morning, before I went to the monthly meeting of a book club I visit at our local library.
One of the other regulars is a very pleasant lady of about my age who is wheelchair-bound for much of the time. I don't know precisely what's wrong, but it isn't nice. Yet she's always cheerful and chatty and likes her sport, especially tennis and cricket, just as much as I do.
We got talking on Monday and she said to me "Do you suffer from Monday morning guilt? That feeling you get when everyone else in the house is rushing around and dashing off to work and you're still in bed.'
You bet I do; I've just never heard it called that before. We both agreed that it's totally pointless as there's nothing we can do about our situation, so there's no sense feeling guilty about it, even if others sometimes try to make you feel guilty. And as we talked, I realised that this was another example of how talking to others about how you feel is therapeutic. It can't have been a coincidence that I had been thinking about this less than an hour before and now here I was, talking to someone who felt the same. I went away from the meeting feeling a lot less guilty about those Monday mornings. And of course, the warm/hot weather has improved my mood.
Tuesday saw me on Emily's treatment couch again. I thought I was used to the agonies this brings but this week, I actually said to her: "Wouldn't it be easier if I just died now? "It wouldn't look very good on me," she said. Indeed it wouldn't and I'm glad I didn't, because then I wouldn't have been able to run 20 yards down a field full of clover, nor climb up and down four steps without using the handrail, something I haven't done since my stroke.
At first, my brain told me I couldn't do it but as I've said numerous times, there's no such word as 'can't' in stroke-rehab. So I told my brain to behave itself, climbed those steps several times, ran down that sunlit field and felt a lot better about life. Another positive, I think.....
But just occasionally, I succumb. As I mentioned last week, bad weather doesn't help while Monday mornings can also be difficult. For instance, I was feeling particularly sorry for myself this Monday morning, before I went to the monthly meeting of a book club I visit at our local library.
One of the other regulars is a very pleasant lady of about my age who is wheelchair-bound for much of the time. I don't know precisely what's wrong, but it isn't nice. Yet she's always cheerful and chatty and likes her sport, especially tennis and cricket, just as much as I do.
We got talking on Monday and she said to me "Do you suffer from Monday morning guilt? That feeling you get when everyone else in the house is rushing around and dashing off to work and you're still in bed.'
You bet I do; I've just never heard it called that before. We both agreed that it's totally pointless as there's nothing we can do about our situation, so there's no sense feeling guilty about it, even if others sometimes try to make you feel guilty. And as we talked, I realised that this was another example of how talking to others about how you feel is therapeutic. It can't have been a coincidence that I had been thinking about this less than an hour before and now here I was, talking to someone who felt the same. I went away from the meeting feeling a lot less guilty about those Monday mornings. And of course, the warm/hot weather has improved my mood.
Tuesday saw me on Emily's treatment couch again. I thought I was used to the agonies this brings but this week, I actually said to her: "Wouldn't it be easier if I just died now? "It wouldn't look very good on me," she said. Indeed it wouldn't and I'm glad I didn't, because then I wouldn't have been able to run 20 yards down a field full of clover, nor climb up and down four steps without using the handrail, something I haven't done since my stroke.
At first, my brain told me I couldn't do it but as I've said numerous times, there's no such word as 'can't' in stroke-rehab. So I told my brain to behave itself, climbed those steps several times, ran down that sunlit field and felt a lot better about life. Another positive, I think.....
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