swilkinson

You posted two blogs on the same day - are you trying to confuse me? Just as well I found this one or I would not have been able to put it into my report. Good for you Stu. Sue from Down Under

Hey Stu, you keep on coming back here, we need you on the sidelines as a cheerleader. It is easy for the newbies to get disillusioned with the stroke journey and we need some of the old hands to stay on and act as mentors. We may not be as exciting as online gaming but we can sure help support those who have had strokes wherever they might be. Sue from Down Under.

Fred, we know you'll find a way of keeping yourself busy, you always do. Glad you are still coming on here and commenting on the blogs, you are always such an encourager.

Julie, summer will come and then get out and about as much as you can. Our days are getting colder, was at my daughters for five nights and the second night I had to ask for an extra blanket. Miss you in Caregiver Chat, I hope you can come back soon.

Katrina, I echo what everyone else said: "don't give up". You have time on your hands but spring is there and no better way to fill it than out in the fresh air, plan on doing as much walking as you can, get out and about and enjoy the gardens and any other local attraction that you can get to. Keep making memories and when you are eventually an old person you will have them to look back on.

Thanks Pam, even the encouragers need encouraging sometimes. I am waiting to see what life brings, I can be impatient about that sometimes but can see that relationships can change as time goes by so maybe I have to wait and see what g-d is bring into my life right now. In the meantime there is always plenty to keep me busy. Keep smiling!

As you have had a lot of experiences that have changed who you are and how you feel about life so maybe you have grown out of stuff your friend is still very involved in. It is hard. And you will mourn that as another loss due to stroke. My caregiving experiences have put me on a level beyond what some of my friends can comprehend so my friendship group has really changed a lot. I am happy and sad about that, but tell myself some day when trouble hits them maybe we will get together again. In the meantime I have made friends of people who do understand what I have been through and where I am at now.

Several things have suddenly changed in the past week. I will blog sometime soon. I am away for a few days so not till the weekend maybe. I thought life was going along a bit too calmly. Silly me.

Fred, Easter Sunday night here and am all churched out. I spent a lot of time there today, 6am dawn service, then Parish Breakfast and then a 9am service. We had kids at both services and yes, we did give them an egg each but small ones as too much chocolate is not good for them. The adults sang the hymns with emphasis conscious of the meaning of Easter and as it was the first day off daylight saving conscious of the season changes too. Whatever you did over the Eater period I hope you enjoyed it and found real meaning in it.

Pam I wish I had an answer for you but I don't. I have had pain for short periods of my life but nothing like what you are going through, it sounds horrendous.. I wonder if there is a place you can go to get off the meds the neurologist seems to think you are addicted to? Some live-in place? I would want that if I was in your situation. All I can do is encourage you to look for a solution, going cold turkey is one but there must surely be others? (((hugs)))

Hi ts, thanks for starting a blog. I hope you find it useful for sorting things out in your mind, for charting your progress and for getting some support. The Blog Community is very supportive so I hope you make friends here, I certainly have and am very thankful I started a blog 8 years ago. Look forward to getting to know you better blog by blog.. Sue.

I haven't posted a blog because nothing has changed, nothing has stood out in my memory with sparkle. So just plodding along here doing what has to be done. I had a disappointment on Monday when a friend I was expecting for lunch didn't turn up. No explanation, no phone call so hope it wasn't me that had got the date wrong. This is a friend of long standing who is usually trustworthy so maybe the trip she planned didn't happen...without an explanation who knows? I think I do better with that sort of thing than I used to...getting more philosophical in my old age...but was I annoyed at the time? You betcha. Yes, the days are getting shorter and cooler and on the long weekend for Easter we change our clocks back. Not looking forward to that. We have had some autumn storms, it rained so heavy on Monday night I thought it was going to flood down inside but it didn't. I have three sets of guttering on the back roof so it was just overflowing from one section to the next and sounded like cyclonic rain but next day it was all bright sunshine again. The boys always cleaned the gutters out and now I have no-one to do that so I guess I had better find myself a handyman who can still get up on a roof. My life seems to be full of dead ends at the moment. I am trying to make a few small changes and every time I attempt one it seems to be on the wrong day at the wrong time. So maybe I had better be at peace with where I am now and stop struggling with this balancing act. I am still busy at church and that is maybe complicating things for me. However once Easter is over maybe life will slow down a bit again. There is a heated hydro pool not too far away so I might drop in there and see how much a session it is as that would be good for winter. I did think of line dancing as a suitable winter exercise but no, that is on my Craft day. I said I was willing to go to Jazz on Sundays with another widow but no, she has something else on Sunday afternoons, looking after a grandchild while the mother takes the other one to dancing classes. In case life gets boring I am starting to sort through those unfinished projects again. Got a few dozen crocheted squares that are going to make a rug, got a pile of old wool with no plans so have to go through the animal book and find some small patterns for knitted bears. I think those kind of jobs are idea for winter as I can do them any time I am free, no equipment needed just a bag with the pieces I am working on. A friend asked me if I was a workaholic and I said no, I just like to keep busy...lol. Which is a left over from my days as a caregiver as then I was busy, really busy, so now I am just filling in time. Just talked on chat about what is "real" in our life. I think a lot of it is subjective and about our preconceptions. What is a good day? When I was a caregiver it was a day when nothing much happened, when Ray was not incontinent, not sick, was co-operative and easy to look after,. That definition is so different now, to me a good day is socially diverse, full of activity and at the end of the day I feel satisfaction in having just lived it. And there are more of them now. And it was good to have Pam (SassyBetsy) and Mary (Mary Goldberg) come for a visit to our chat room too. I do enjoy the different perspective having a stroke survivor join us brings. But I do enjoy a peaceful day too, not a day with nothing to do but a day when I can choose what to do and at the end of the day have simply enjoyed it. That is the new skill I am learning now, to be content to be alone. Although I would like a new someone in my life I still need to learn to be on my own and enjoy my own company. I know this is the next thing for me to work on and I am doing it. But keeping busy helps too.

You are so right Asha. On the other hand sometimes we do wallow in grief a bit. I know that is true for me anyway. So glad you were able to be there and join in the mourning process with your family.

No, I did chaplaincy and all I found I needed was a couple of open ended questions like: "How's it going?" . Once you start asking questions that get personal then you are as intrusive as the social workers and other professionals. Any questions you ask need to be open ended so they don't answer "yes" or "No". Those kind of questions that can be answered just "Yes" or "No" can get to be conversation killers. You want to have a conversation that goes their way not your way. If they ask you questions answer as briefly and honestly as you can. Share some of your story in a concise way so it doesn't dominate the conversation, the conversation is to benefit them. Right at the end of the conversation ask them "Anything else I can tell you?" before using some kind of closure like : "Keep going, you're doing fine" or "Sorry to have to meet you here." After a while you will get a feel for it and do fine.

Persevere with the discussion group David. Do explain that you have had a stroke if that is what you feel you need to do. I have a rule with public speaking ( I do some preaching) and that is a pause is a good way of letting your brain catch up with your mouth...lol. Try that next time you have a brain freeze.

I am finding the same Kelli, I want to have a companion, don't want to go through the steps that lead to that. I have been on a couple of lunch dates with a man I have known for a long time but was ready to take flight at any sign that it was more than lunch out. I guess I was married for 44 years, life was predictable and starting a new relationship would take me out of my comfort zone and put me on quaky ground. And I am just not prepared for that. I guess like everything else in life we learn by taking baby steps.

So glad you got the opportunity to go back to India and join with your family in the grieving process, I know that would have been a support for them too to have you there. I love the "no fuss" airports too rather than the major ones. I was pleased to hear your son operated well alone that must be reassuring for you that he will manage as well in college.

Good you enjoyed the holidays and the games you were able to see. Hope the weather starts to warm up for you back home Lenny.

I used to love fishing too. Just as much as I also like to be outdoors on a good sunny day. Great you have had basketball to keep you interested all winter, now it is tie to plan your outdoors excursions Fred.

What do I do with my time? Life seems to be full on at present with the new minister not selected yet and a lot of my time taken up with extra church services and of course visiting in nursing homes. I now have nine little old ladies to visit, two of them are personal, a lovely lady Lion who had a stroke and has been in a nursing home now for four years and my daughter's godmother who lives in the assisted living units in the same complex. The rest are church people but now in two facilities not one. For some reason it has taken me two weeks to visit them all and I now have an extra person to visit so it is taking me forever. Easter and the time leading up to it is a time for contemplation and renewal. In the northern hemisphere with the ice melting, the streams running full and all the baby birds and animals I guess that is a time for rejoicing too. Here in Australia where we are going from summer into winter it is a time for thankfulness for what we have had and sobering thoughts of what may lie ahead for us as winter approaches so a time to ask for courage for the journey. We need a lot of courage as death stalks the old ones and we hear tales of the horrendous flus and viruses to come. On my widow journey it is time to plan for the days when all doors are shut and people stay inside and I will be alone and feeling the loneliness once more. I need piles of books, plenty of craft material so that when the days are short and grey and gloomy I can sit down alone and keep myself busy. Hopefully too busy to throw a pity party. I can still get out but a lot of the ladies I have coffee with will not risk the shops during cold and flu season so I don't see them for a while. Luckily I have not been too badly affected in the past so hope to go through winter without too much bother this year too. One of the ways I can keep in touch during the colder months is via Skype and Facebook chat. This week I was lucky enough to speak to my grand daughter Alice on Skype. She has no concept of distance at 2 1/2 so thinks Granny lives close by. On Skype I play games, this week I was a crocodile and snapping at her so she would run away from Trevor's computer screen screaming, come back and say :"Do it some more." I love to talk to her on Skype as I know that way she will not forget who I am. It is important that she remember me. I just wish she was a whole lot closer so I could drive to where she lives. I am on Skype and talk to Jeannie (jeanniebeannie) and at first we laughed at each others accents but now we just talk as old friends do. It is more personal than typing chat and in a way the facial expressions help. Of course it is distracting too. But it is good to have access to friends in many ways, the phone, the computer or tablet or whatever you have and if you can do it, in person. It is unlikely to happen with so many of you who are my friends here on Strokenet because of the distance in between us but who knows? sometimes life surprises us. And there is a place for members meeting members to post on the forums so if you are lucky enough to meet up with someone else from Strokenet then you can post your pictures in the gallery and do a post there. Daylight saving finishes for us on Easter Sunday. I will be sorry to lose the longer evenings but already there are plenty of signs that winter is coming. I have missed the outdoor BBQs Trevor used do for us, the scent of the spicy chicken wings he used to cook in his own round BBQ with special herbs and spices and all the usual family summer fun. With the family so scattered none of that happened. So sad. I don't know how to introduce any of the summer fun back into my life. I guess I will have to find my own ways of celebrating summer, of doing the changes of the seasons and of celebrating my own milestones now. I have been swimming a few times at one of the safer beaches. With so much church work that has been about the extent of my personal time, most of it has been spent at home catching up with the housework. I am busy because I choose to be busy. Busy for me as always had the effect of reducing my moping time. All the time I am busy I don't have time to do a "poor me", all the time I am busy I feel useful. I told an old friend tonight that I don't have time to think if I am busy and I do worry sometimes, about the intrinsics of ageing, growing old alone, and the question "who will look after me when I am old" always pops into my head whether I like it or not. And so it is time to say farewell to summer, sleeveless dresses, shorts and tops, sandals and what you call flip flops and we call a pair of thongs. It is time to look at the winter wardrobe and see if it is wearable, fashionable doesn't come into it. I have recycled my clothes over so many years it is hard to tell what era the garment is from, but that is okay as long as it suits me. I am no fashionista and come from the era of co-ordinated skirts and jackets so plenty for me to wear. And that coupled with the things to keep me occupied there is nothing more I really have to do to prepare physically for winter but a lot I think to do mentally to prepare myself for that bleak season.

Reading your blog helps me to see my pitiful little ups and downs in perspective. I think you are a valiant soul battling on against great odds so Bravo! I hope you do get those walking shoes by this time next year and are able to be part of the race, not sitting on the sidelines.

Don't feel back about Spring behaving so badly Fred. I was born in England and on 4th June the year I was five, four days into summer supposedly there was sleet. We were supposed to go on a picnic as the weather should have been fine and warm. We are all victims of the wiles of the weather. So cheer up, a day or two could make all the difference.

Ken, you are doing so well. I can't imagine not being able to use my right hand at all. It is certainly my dominant hand. I know Ray tried to use his as that was his affected side but could do no more than cup it and use it that way. The show sounds good and the theater staff did well to have an empty seat each side of you so you had the room you needed. While a lot of people can ignore your problems or even comment adversely on them I found with Ray there are a lot of people of good will out there who are looking for an opportunity to help.

Rose, sorry the medicos are taking so long to find a solution to your problem. Sometimes medication can have strange side effects so hopefully weaning yourself off one anti depressant and going onto another one may make a difference. I hope it works, with summer approaching you need to be alert and ready for fun activities.

Hey Jeannie, you had a good birthday, with friends getting the message out for you. You do great, I know from what you say that life is difficult sometimes for you but you give it all your best shot. Talk to you soon my friend.