I've done a few things in my life which, if I wasn't being terribly modest, I could call achievements.
I was the first person in my family to go to university and get a degree, I secured my childhood ambition of becoming a journalist, I've been married for 24 years, I've edited a national magazine, I've climbed Dunn's River Falls in Jamaica (Google it...), I've been in the back of an aircraft with a Territorial Army regiment on exercise; not bad for someone who hasn't always enjoyed the best of health.
Yet this week, I did something which might top all of those achievements - I ran a few yards up a corridor. I've never been a runner, I was always last in those awful school cross-country races and quickly realised that although I was besotted with sport from an early age, my involvement was destined to be as supporter, not player. I did have a brief spell in the school's mixed hockey team, mind you - something which was brought to an undignified end when a female opponent whacked me squarely on the nose with her stick.
But this week, as my rehabilitation from my stroke gathers pace, I ran a few yards up a corridor. You may have guessed that this is all the work of the amazing Emily Smedley of breathebalancebeactivated.com. When I saw her on Tuesday, after I had writhed on her treatment table in agony for an hour, she took me out into the corridor and said "Now, run." Eighteen months ago, even pre-stroke, I may well have said: "I can't run."
Of course, though, there is no such word as 'can't' in my vocabulary now. So I did. Just a few yards, backwards and forwards, probably five or six times in total. It wasn't much, but it was definitely running and if I am going to achieve my aim of a charity fund-raising 5km run (run, walk, stagger; whatever...) later this year, it has to be done.
And it has to be improved upon. Next time, I'm sure there will be more running. And more work with the Butt Bungee (you can Google that, as well....). And more physical agony. But Warriors surely know that there is no gain without pain. I can't say I enjoyed the pain, but the euphoria I felt when I realised I was running was extraordinary. As was the feeling that I've been defying the odds all my life. Now where's that starting line....?
Wednesday, 25 February 2015
Tuesday, 17 February 2015
It's Saturday afternoon, of course I'm not tired......
"How come you're never tired at 2pm on a Saturday?" It's a valid question, I suppose and it's one Mrs W always asks whenever I tell my tales of woe about stroke-related tiredness.
It's true that the thought of a few hours with my mates, a few beers (but not too many, thanks to my medication) and a football match does take my mind off the world of strokie-dom; When I started watching Tamworth FC again after my stroke at the start of the current season, my fatigue was such that I could only stand on the terraces with my mates for 45 minutes before I had to retreat to the seats. Now, I can stand up for the whole game and enjoy the camaraderie that comes from football.
My footy mates have played a key part in my ongoing rehabilitation. They look after me on a Saturday afternoon, make sure I get a seat in the pub pre-game, organise a taxi to the ground, make sure I'm not getting too tired during the afternoon and, crucially, get me home safely at the end of the game.
And I must also give a mention to everyone at Tamworth FC, who have really shown the spirit which is at the heart of non-league football. Supporters and officials alike all know what's happened, so everyone ensures I'm treated properly. I know it isn't like that for all disabled people at all football grounds, but it certainly is at Tamworth.
However, it's a good job the Lambs weren't at home this past Saturday; because for the first time since my stroke, I was indeed tired on Saturday afternoon. I'd had an interrupted night's sleep on Friday and it hit me hard, as it sometimes does.
At 2pm this Saturday, all I wanted to do was sleep. We had a Valentine's Day meal to look forward to in the evening, so I needed to be awake. With all the recent warnings I've had about managing my fatigue ringing in my head, I retired to bed for a hour; and as it always does, the power-nap did the job. I was awake enough to join Mrs W and Rascal, our chihuahua, on a walk in the park. And I was fit for the evening and the rest of the weekend.
This Saturday? Tamworth v Oxford City at The Lamb. Oxford broke Tamworth's 12-game run of league wins in the reverse fixture three weeks ago. I won't be falling asleep at 2pm this Saturday, whatever Mrs W says.....
It's true that the thought of a few hours with my mates, a few beers (but not too many, thanks to my medication) and a football match does take my mind off the world of strokie-dom; When I started watching Tamworth FC again after my stroke at the start of the current season, my fatigue was such that I could only stand on the terraces with my mates for 45 minutes before I had to retreat to the seats. Now, I can stand up for the whole game and enjoy the camaraderie that comes from football.
My footy mates have played a key part in my ongoing rehabilitation. They look after me on a Saturday afternoon, make sure I get a seat in the pub pre-game, organise a taxi to the ground, make sure I'm not getting too tired during the afternoon and, crucially, get me home safely at the end of the game.
And I must also give a mention to everyone at Tamworth FC, who have really shown the spirit which is at the heart of non-league football. Supporters and officials alike all know what's happened, so everyone ensures I'm treated properly. I know it isn't like that for all disabled people at all football grounds, but it certainly is at Tamworth.
However, it's a good job the Lambs weren't at home this past Saturday; because for the first time since my stroke, I was indeed tired on Saturday afternoon. I'd had an interrupted night's sleep on Friday and it hit me hard, as it sometimes does.
At 2pm this Saturday, all I wanted to do was sleep. We had a Valentine's Day meal to look forward to in the evening, so I needed to be awake. With all the recent warnings I've had about managing my fatigue ringing in my head, I retired to bed for a hour; and as it always does, the power-nap did the job. I was awake enough to join Mrs W and Rascal, our chihuahua, on a walk in the park. And I was fit for the evening and the rest of the weekend.
This Saturday? Tamworth v Oxford City at The Lamb. Oxford broke Tamworth's 12-game run of league wins in the reverse fixture three weeks ago. I won't be falling asleep at 2pm this Saturday, whatever Mrs W says.....
Wednesday, 11 February 2015
Getting the most out of every day - even though it may not be wise at times
One of the things I've learned about being a strokie with a fairly-substantial social media presence is that I have more people than I sometimes think looking out for my welfare.
Take this week, for instance. On Monday, I travelled to Derby for more punishment from my sports therapist, the amazing Emily Smedley of breathebalancebeactivated.com. And punishment is the right word after she did something to my jaw which I don't wholly understand but which may have been the most painful thing I've ever experienced. And that was before she had me doing sit-ups whilst she knelt on the physio couch beside me. It worked, though, because I walked away from her clinic without sticks, with my head up and looking forward to my next session in two weeks' time.
After that, I should have had a quiet day on Tuesday. But being me, I didn't. And I said so on Facebook. "Seeing a lady I met at a recent networking event this morning at 11.30, seeing my public-speaking coach at 2pm then some former colleagues for beers at 5pm. And I need to write my blog. And pay some bills. That'll do for today, I think," I said.
It looked a daunting schedule as I was writing that status. Throw in the usual hitches that we all experience in our days (unexpected phone calls, things we've forgotten to account for) and by 11am, it was a lot worse. And almost immediately, the comments started coming in on Facebook. "Full-on day :( 'Have a rest day tomorrow.' ''That's too much.'' ''Be careful you don't overdo it." ''Don't wear yourself out and regret it."
Both my public-speaking coach and the lady from the networking event told me afterwards that I should have cancelled. Maybe I should. But I'm not like that, so I carried on. I enjoyed the day but today (Wednesday) I will do no more than write this blog post then rest before my college course this evening.
I know I shouldn't have done yesterday, but my problem still is that I only know I've done too much when I've done too much. And I was sustained through yesterday by a comment from the networking lady who had heard me speak about my stroke experience at the event where we met. "One of the most emotional things I've ever heard," she said.
And if I can keep getting the message about stroke across to people like her - and my friends who hear and appreciate it tell their friends who tell their friends - the occasional full-on day like yesterday will be more than worth it.
Take this week, for instance. On Monday, I travelled to Derby for more punishment from my sports therapist, the amazing Emily Smedley of breathebalancebeactivated.com. And punishment is the right word after she did something to my jaw which I don't wholly understand but which may have been the most painful thing I've ever experienced. And that was before she had me doing sit-ups whilst she knelt on the physio couch beside me. It worked, though, because I walked away from her clinic without sticks, with my head up and looking forward to my next session in two weeks' time.
After that, I should have had a quiet day on Tuesday. But being me, I didn't. And I said so on Facebook. "Seeing a lady I met at a recent networking event this morning at 11.30, seeing my public-speaking coach at 2pm then some former colleagues for beers at 5pm. And I need to write my blog. And pay some bills. That'll do for today, I think," I said.
It looked a daunting schedule as I was writing that status. Throw in the usual hitches that we all experience in our days (unexpected phone calls, things we've forgotten to account for) and by 11am, it was a lot worse. And almost immediately, the comments started coming in on Facebook. "Full-on day :( 'Have a rest day tomorrow.' ''That's too much.'' ''Be careful you don't overdo it." ''Don't wear yourself out and regret it."
Both my public-speaking coach and the lady from the networking event told me afterwards that I should have cancelled. Maybe I should. But I'm not like that, so I carried on. I enjoyed the day but today (Wednesday) I will do no more than write this blog post then rest before my college course this evening.
I know I shouldn't have done yesterday, but my problem still is that I only know I've done too much when I've done too much. And I was sustained through yesterday by a comment from the networking lady who had heard me speak about my stroke experience at the event where we met. "One of the most emotional things I've ever heard," she said.
And if I can keep getting the message about stroke across to people like her - and my friends who hear and appreciate it tell their friends who tell their friends - the occasional full-on day like yesterday will be more than worth it.
Tuesday, 3 February 2015
Why moaning about life isn't worth it
Ask a fair number of stroke-survivors what irritates us most about our fellow human beings and we will say 'people who whinge about life; about having to get up at 6am on a cold Monday morning in February, or do the housework, or commute to a job they don't particularly like."
The reason most strokies say this, of course, is because we have to do all that (well, most of it) as well as dealing with the physical and mental challenges caused by our condition. As I write this, I've just spoken to someone who is unable to work because of the problems caused by their stroke and who has just taken a break in their day to message me 'after vacuuming, dusting, hanging out the washing, going to the post office, resetting my Apple ID which was a pain in the ****..."
For myself, I spent a couple of hours in town this morning doing a string of little things that just had to be done today; go to the opticians for a claim form for some new glasses, get a birthday card (and call into each of the three card shops in town twice, to make sure I'd got the right one), call into the Job Centre and rearrange an appointment, buy some gloves, call into the bank. It might seem mundane to you but by the end of it, I had a raging headache and was absolutely done in. Given that most stroke-survivors have to closely manage their day, taking regular breaks to ease the tiredness which is one of the major symptoms of our condition, just getting through the day is quite a challenge. The person I've quoted above, by the way, has a severely weak left side so that doing anything takes at least twice as long as it would for a normal person.
But, as I said here last week, being a strokie and being alive with all our problems is a heck of a lot better than the alternative. And I've been to two funerals in the space of four days this week, of people taken far too young (in one case, far, far too young). It might be that I'm getting old, but it does bring home to you how fragile is the human condition. Yes, one of the deceased had cancer so his family and friends had been able to prepare themselves for what was coming. But the other person involved died in their sleep at a ridiculously early age and without any indication of what was coming.
Like me if I had been run over by that bus or hadn't survived the stroke, one minute he was here and apparently healthy, the next he was gone.
That's why my stock answer these days to a well-meaning 'How are you?' is to say: 'Well, I got up this morning and I'm still breathing." It could sound like a cliche, but it's true - when you've come so close to not breathing and you hear of people who went to bed one night and didn't wake up the next morning, reminding yourself and others that you are alive is very important. And it pulls up short those who would moan about having to get up to catch the 6am train.
The reason most strokies say this, of course, is because we have to do all that (well, most of it) as well as dealing with the physical and mental challenges caused by our condition. As I write this, I've just spoken to someone who is unable to work because of the problems caused by their stroke and who has just taken a break in their day to message me 'after vacuuming, dusting, hanging out the washing, going to the post office, resetting my Apple ID which was a pain in the ****..."
For myself, I spent a couple of hours in town this morning doing a string of little things that just had to be done today; go to the opticians for a claim form for some new glasses, get a birthday card (and call into each of the three card shops in town twice, to make sure I'd got the right one), call into the Job Centre and rearrange an appointment, buy some gloves, call into the bank. It might seem mundane to you but by the end of it, I had a raging headache and was absolutely done in. Given that most stroke-survivors have to closely manage their day, taking regular breaks to ease the tiredness which is one of the major symptoms of our condition, just getting through the day is quite a challenge. The person I've quoted above, by the way, has a severely weak left side so that doing anything takes at least twice as long as it would for a normal person.
But, as I said here last week, being a strokie and being alive with all our problems is a heck of a lot better than the alternative. And I've been to two funerals in the space of four days this week, of people taken far too young (in one case, far, far too young). It might be that I'm getting old, but it does bring home to you how fragile is the human condition. Yes, one of the deceased had cancer so his family and friends had been able to prepare themselves for what was coming. But the other person involved died in their sleep at a ridiculously early age and without any indication of what was coming.
Like me if I had been run over by that bus or hadn't survived the stroke, one minute he was here and apparently healthy, the next he was gone.
That's why my stock answer these days to a well-meaning 'How are you?' is to say: 'Well, I got up this morning and I'm still breathing." It could sound like a cliche, but it's true - when you've come so close to not breathing and you hear of people who went to bed one night and didn't wake up the next morning, reminding yourself and others that you are alive is very important. And it pulls up short those who would moan about having to get up to catch the 6am train.
Tuesday, 27 January 2015
The ups and downs of being a strokie
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'.
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'.
Monday, 19 January 2015
Small steps - or big steps?
Stroke rehabilitation is mainly about taking small steps; indeed, one person who frequents a stroke-survivor Facebook group I use wrote a book about their experience and called it 'Small Steps."
Sometimes, though, a small step can feel like a big one - being able to move a finger for the first time; being able to use a knife and fork, to actually take a step (I recall the first time I walked on sticks from my bed in hospital 20 yards down the corridor to the physio's room - it felt like doing the London Marathon)
And sometimes, very rarely, you do something which feels like a giant step. I've done one of those this week.
I was going to use this post to mention the first week of my counselling skills course. But what happened last Tuesday was so important to my recovery that this post will be twice as long as usual - and classroom affairs will have to wait.
Earlier this month, I went as usual to a business networking meeting in Lichfield; As I always do, I made a concerted effort to speak to people in the room I had never met before. It makes them feel welcome and it is good networking practice - you never know what they have to offer you, or you have to offer them.
On this occasion, the only newcomer was a lady who looked as if she had cycled to the meeting (she hadn't) and who was drinking an interesting green concoction. We started up a conversation (having walking sticks IS a great conversation-starter) had a one-to-one chat during the meeting and agreed to get together again afterwards.
In fact, she's a therapist from Derby called Emily Smedley. I was so interested (if a little nonplussed) by what she said that I agreed to travel from Tamworth for an initial consultation with her. We were together for about an hour, during which she poked and prodded (sometimes slightly painfully) around my legs and feet, all the time talking about the importance of restarting the neural pathways in the body.
Now as I said in my last post, I've learnt a lot during the past year about the neural pathways in the brain and how they reconfigure after a stroke, but I knew nothing about how they work in the rest of the body. So it was all a bit 'over my head' as I listened to her talking while she did her work (her worst?).
But at the end of our session, I did know that my legs felt somehow different; more connected to the rest of my body than they had since that awful day in December 2013. Not only did I feel more able to walk without support, but I could do so while holding my head up (I am notorious for staring at the floor while I walk - always have been) and while walking straight. I have been able to get about sans sticks for a while, but only indoors where I could grab on to something if I became unsteady; outdoors, I have been too nervous. But now, I felt that I could.
When I got back to Tamworth, I tried to walk without my sticks. And not only did I find that I could, but that I could sustain it. Gathering confidence, I picked up my sticks, put them under my arm and walked from Tamworth railway station to Warrillow Towers (which Mrs W tells me is an eight-minute walk at normal speed) without using them, or without feeling unsteady.
I did that walk again on Wednesday morning and almost (almost!!!) broke out into a run as I went to catch a train that afternoon. I refuse to get carried away (sorry) and I've arranged to meet Emily again next week for more poking and prodding. She feels as if we've only just started. I feel as if a big hurdle has been overcome (sorry again!).
Emily Smedley can be contacted via breathebalancebeactivated.com and on 07813 798643.
Sometimes, though, a small step can feel like a big one - being able to move a finger for the first time; being able to use a knife and fork, to actually take a step (I recall the first time I walked on sticks from my bed in hospital 20 yards down the corridor to the physio's room - it felt like doing the London Marathon)
And sometimes, very rarely, you do something which feels like a giant step. I've done one of those this week.
I was going to use this post to mention the first week of my counselling skills course. But what happened last Tuesday was so important to my recovery that this post will be twice as long as usual - and classroom affairs will have to wait.
Earlier this month, I went as usual to a business networking meeting in Lichfield; As I always do, I made a concerted effort to speak to people in the room I had never met before. It makes them feel welcome and it is good networking practice - you never know what they have to offer you, or you have to offer them.
On this occasion, the only newcomer was a lady who looked as if she had cycled to the meeting (she hadn't) and who was drinking an interesting green concoction. We started up a conversation (having walking sticks IS a great conversation-starter) had a one-to-one chat during the meeting and agreed to get together again afterwards.
In fact, she's a therapist from Derby called Emily Smedley. I was so interested (if a little nonplussed) by what she said that I agreed to travel from Tamworth for an initial consultation with her. We were together for about an hour, during which she poked and prodded (sometimes slightly painfully) around my legs and feet, all the time talking about the importance of restarting the neural pathways in the body.
Now as I said in my last post, I've learnt a lot during the past year about the neural pathways in the brain and how they reconfigure after a stroke, but I knew nothing about how they work in the rest of the body. So it was all a bit 'over my head' as I listened to her talking while she did her work (her worst?).
But at the end of our session, I did know that my legs felt somehow different; more connected to the rest of my body than they had since that awful day in December 2013. Not only did I feel more able to walk without support, but I could do so while holding my head up (I am notorious for staring at the floor while I walk - always have been) and while walking straight. I have been able to get about sans sticks for a while, but only indoors where I could grab on to something if I became unsteady; outdoors, I have been too nervous. But now, I felt that I could.
When I got back to Tamworth, I tried to walk without my sticks. And not only did I find that I could, but that I could sustain it. Gathering confidence, I picked up my sticks, put them under my arm and walked from Tamworth railway station to Warrillow Towers (which Mrs W tells me is an eight-minute walk at normal speed) without using them, or without feeling unsteady.
I did that walk again on Wednesday morning and almost (almost!!!) broke out into a run as I went to catch a train that afternoon. I refuse to get carried away (sorry) and I've arranged to meet Emily again next week for more poking and prodding. She feels as if we've only just started. I feel as if a big hurdle has been overcome (sorry again!).
Emily Smedley can be contacted via breathebalancebeactivated.com and on 07813 798643.
Monday, 12 January 2015
Are you living or just surviving?
'We're merely surviving. Very few people actually live; don't just survive, be one of the people that actually live."
It's not an original quotation, I believe it's from Oscar Wilde, but a teenage friend of mine posted it this week on a website for strokies.
Of course, she's right (as was Oscar). Most of us drift through life, commuting to work, dealing with our daily family crises; it takes something like a stroke to make us realise how swiftly life can be snatched from us and how important it is to live, not just survive.
How do we do that? Lots of strokies decide that they are going to get out of their comfort zone; do something they have always shied away from previously. I'm going to be one of them. As a start, this week, I begin a course of introductory training in counselling skills. It's not something I would have contemplated before December 16 2013 but I now feel my experience of life is something I want to share with others who may need it.
My neuropsychologist thinks I can cope with the demands of the course and that I'll be good at it, as long as I remember how to deal with the thing that plagues every strokie - mental fatigue. Tiredness is the brain's way of telling us that it needs rest; ignoring tiredness only makes fatigue worse. So I'm having to break the habit of a working lifetime and accept that when I'm tired, I need to rest. Only then will I be able to live at what is now my full capacity and not just survive.
On a different tack, I've been thinking this week about the different words we use to describe what people go through when they have a stroke. That word itself, 'stroke' somehow sounds mild, doesn't it? Yet, believe me: having a stroke is like having an atomic bomb go off in your head. It's brain damage. I have to tell people that there are parts of my brain which died that afternoon and aren't coming back.
The brain is brilliant at reconfiguring itself by building new neural pathways (I recommend The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge to anyone who wants to know more about brain injury) but the fact is that a stroke is a life-changing event which can strike and kill at any time. That's why those of us who have been through it really know the difference between living and just surviving.
It's not an original quotation, I believe it's from Oscar Wilde, but a teenage friend of mine posted it this week on a website for strokies.
Of course, she's right (as was Oscar). Most of us drift through life, commuting to work, dealing with our daily family crises; it takes something like a stroke to make us realise how swiftly life can be snatched from us and how important it is to live, not just survive.
How do we do that? Lots of strokies decide that they are going to get out of their comfort zone; do something they have always shied away from previously. I'm going to be one of them. As a start, this week, I begin a course of introductory training in counselling skills. It's not something I would have contemplated before December 16 2013 but I now feel my experience of life is something I want to share with others who may need it.
My neuropsychologist thinks I can cope with the demands of the course and that I'll be good at it, as long as I remember how to deal with the thing that plagues every strokie - mental fatigue. Tiredness is the brain's way of telling us that it needs rest; ignoring tiredness only makes fatigue worse. So I'm having to break the habit of a working lifetime and accept that when I'm tired, I need to rest. Only then will I be able to live at what is now my full capacity and not just survive.
On a different tack, I've been thinking this week about the different words we use to describe what people go through when they have a stroke. That word itself, 'stroke' somehow sounds mild, doesn't it? Yet, believe me: having a stroke is like having an atomic bomb go off in your head. It's brain damage. I have to tell people that there are parts of my brain which died that afternoon and aren't coming back.
The brain is brilliant at reconfiguring itself by building new neural pathways (I recommend The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge to anyone who wants to know more about brain injury) but the fact is that a stroke is a life-changing event which can strike and kill at any time. That's why those of us who have been through it really know the difference between living and just surviving.
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