Blonde Eyes

I would agree, Jean, that most of those things might happen to anyone at some time, except that last one for me. Before my stroke, I was good at keeping more than one thing on my mind at a time. Now I can't seem to remember simple instructions for longer than a minute. And if I'm interrupted or distracted at all during the process, it's as if it never happened. That's ok, I'm learning coping skills for that (such as writing things down) to deal with the deficit. Lisa

Things I did badly today: -Wasted about 30 sheets of copy paper (made wrong copies) -Left my coffee by the reception desk, someone knocked it over onto the desk, floor and the phone lists -Didn't write down the name of someone calling for the office administrator, she took the call anyway -Had to keep getting re-instructed on simple procedures and tasks Things I did well: -Smiled at everyone and tried to be helpful -Made hundreds of pages of good copies and did mundane tasks others don't want to do -Talked to the Kindergarten teacher and helped her with some curriculum she was confused about (I taught Kinder there for 4 years, so I knew how to do it) -Helped get the weekly bulletin ready -Made phone calls, sent faxes and ran errands Ok, it looks like the good outweighs the bad, so I feel better. Sometimes I just feel so dumb when I make mistakes like I did today. I know most of it is stroke related (how I think and process information is a lot slower and more disorganized), but it's frustrating. I'm trying to stay focused on the things I can do well and not worry about the rest. At about 1:45, one of the other secretaries told me I looked very tired. I guess it was the glazed, far off look I had in my eyes. She insisted I go lie down in the infirmary. I told her to wake me up in 15 minutes. She let me sleep until the bell rang at 3:00! I really needed the nap, but felt a little guilty. I am really grateful to be able to work in a place where I can do that! I saw the school doctor today. She ordered a shot for the nurse to give me on Wednesday for my wrist. She said it's bursitis. I hope this one lasts longer than the last one.

I worked today after a looooong holiday. I took two weeks off before school was officially out and then school was out for 3 weeks. So, I haven't worked since the first week of December. It was great to go back. I find that even though I love having my alone time, and if it were totally left up to me, I might never leave the house again, being a part of something bigger makes me feel good. I have been working in the office of our school and find that it's so relaxing to have someone tell me what to do and not have to make a million decisions all day long. Today I got talked into leading worship for middle school chapel and then the kindergarten teacher's aide is out this week with a bad back. So, I went from office to chapel to kindergarten and back to the office after lunch. I did so many different things and got to rub shoulders with so many different people. The time flew by. I'm really tired tonight, but it's a good tired. It's the kind of tired you have when you have accomplished a lot and go to bed with that good feeling. I'm looking forward to the time when I can have enough energy to do that every day, but for now I'm content to be able to work two days a week.

Nine months ago today, I woke up at 4:00 a.m. having a stroke. Sometimes it seems like I have always been a stroke survivor and sometimes it seems like it just happened a couple of months ago. Thankfully, it no longer feels like it was just yesterday. That's a milestone! I wonder sometimes if I will ever feel like the old me again. I wonder if I will always be haunted by this fatigue that can just wash over me in an instant, and usually when I'm not in a place where I can just collapse like I would like to. There are times that I no longer notice I have lost all my right side vision, and times when it seems like it just happened all over again. The claustrophobia engulfs me and my brain struggles to try to see what it can't. I have come so far since the beginning, when my sister tells me I couldn't speak above a whisper and I could barely walk around the block one time with assistance. I have long since given up the cane and I can even drive now! I count myself among the fortunate, that the stroke obviously affected my life, but now does not consume every minute of it. I am working two days a week again and even though some days I feel I can't make it to the end, I feel grateful that I can even attempt it. I'm finally feeling well enough to do some things around the house that I've been puttting off and am again waking up with high (although my high is quite a bit lower than it used to be!) expectations for the day ahead. It feels good to be able to say that.

I love what you are doing! Preserving the past! Keep up the good work. Your children or their children will thank you. I have been the photo historian in our family. I'm addicted to it! I'm also sitting here with a cup of coffee, a big chunk of freshly made banana bread after having gone through quite a few videos, marking and organizing them. It's an enjoyable task for me, as I love watching them while I do it! Lisa

I love to sing. I am a good singer. I love it when a song I KNOW comes on in some random place and I can sing along to it. I LOVE singing on the Praise Team at church and love spontaneous sing alongs with others. BUT... I don't enjoy listening to music alll the time like most people. Music tends to make me very meloncholy and sad when I'm just listening to it. And, I tend to feel very irritated when "noise" is going on in the background when I'm trying to do something else. Plus, since my stroke, my ears are super sensitive and I can't bear to have anything like headphones on or having a phone too close to my ears. So, when my husband bought an ipod this past summer and asked if I would also like one, I knew I didn't. I don't listen to music on the radio, nor do I listen to CD's (unless I'm trying to learn a song to sing). So, I knew I wouldn't use it. My husband LOVES his! He downloads his daily podcasts of sports, sermons, news radio, etc. I love that he can do that because it relaxes him so much to be able to distract himself with something in the horrendous traffic here and it gives him lots to do when he is waiting for me at doctor's appointments or shopping. However, I have found it EXTREMELY annoying when I am around and he is plugged into it. I am not a big talker, so if there is a lot of silence in the car when we are going somewhere, he automatically goes into ipod mode. I might not even want to say anything, but just knowing that I can't makes me feel very isolated. I get bored and feel left out of something I don't even want! I know, it doesn't make much sense, but at least I've learned to just ask him to unplug when I'm around, so if I need to say something, I don't have to keep repeating myself or worse, talk to myself for a few minutes before I realize he is plugged in and hasn't heard a word of what I've just said! On another note, I think that stroke brain just keeps rearing its ugly head with me!! I have been feeling really irritable the last few days and keep getting the shivers. And I'm ravenous all the time. I finally put 2 and 2 together and realized that when I was putting my weekly meds together a few days ago, I must have left out my Cymbalta! I don't know 100 percent for sure, since I'm not home right now, but it all adds up. I have been having terrible episodes of anxiety as well, and I now am remembering that I don't remember (surely there is a better way to say that!) putting the Cymbalta into the mix. I'll have to check on that when I get home. I'm sitting here wondering how those who have had strokes and have small children to care for ever keep up with them! I got married at age 19 and had my three sons by the age of 24. I'm now 42 and my last one is graduating from high school this year. How would I deal with the needs of a grade school child right now? I guess God would give me the grace and help I would need if I were in that situation. As it is, I feel that right now I have my hands FULL just trying to take care of myself! Edit to say that sure enough, I did NOT put my Cymbalta into my daily meds this week! No wonder I've been feeling so bad this week! Ok, I took one tonight and will start anew tomorrow!

I'm finding it a bit difficult to get back to blogging after being so busy. So much has happened since my last entry it is hard to organize my thoughts into something that resembles continuity, so this will probably be very random thoughts. I'm back at 8,500 feet high, so my doctor thought it would be a good idea to have oxygen. The huge tank was delivered a few nights ago and it has made a great difference in how I feel. In the States I felt better and had more energy. Here I suffer bad headaches and much more "brain burn." The oxygen is really helping. Yeah! I did something really dumb a couple of days ago. I put my laptop on the nightstand and got my foot tangled in the cord. I ended up pulling the laptop off onto the floor! It broke the hard drive and nothing could be recouped from it. Not only was it money spent, but the worst part is that I lost all my pictures (I'm a picture fanatic!). I have been spending the last couple of nights backing up pictures from my camera (thankfully, I hadn't deleted them yet!) and from the other computer. It' a huge chore because I have put off doing it for far too long. I won't be making that mistake again. Who said that bad things come in three's? The same day I broke the computer, my son and daughter-in-law lost my cell phone. That's not a huge deal, as we have insurance. Mostly the hassle in that is getting all the phone numbers put back in. Something else I need to learn to have a back up of! The day before these two things, our washer stopped working. Well, there goes the Christmas bonus! Thankfully, all my tests I had done in the States turned out well. I didn't have another stroke and the hole in my heart is completely closed. I am a bit anemic, so I'm taking iron pills. The weddings were both beautiful! We enjoyed watching our boys get married and enjoyed the time spent with both of them, along with the youngest son, my family and many friends. We are still quite exhausted from the frenzy of activity, but are slowly regaining our strength. Austin is now back in Germany, but his wife is still working on her green card, so it may be a couple of months or more before she can go back and be with him again. Tyler and his wife are settled into their apartment and enjoyed a wonderful two weeks together. He will start graduate school in a couple of weeks and she will return to work after the first of the year. That's about it for my first blog back. Now that I feel a bit "caught up" with my thoughts, I can concentrate on more focused blogs.

YIKES! The wee hours of the morning seem to keep getting wee-er! But I so love the quiet and the peacefulness of this time. Tonight (this morning?) I'm up because I had a shot in my hip yesterday for bursitis. YOUCH! That was surely painful. But it's MORE painful now. The doctor gave me a prescription for Lortab. Normally, one Lortab will have me dead to the world, but after two, I'm still in considerable pain and not sleeping. That is so strange for me. I have no idea why I'm not sleeping deeply. The results of my bubble test were perfect. I have no shunting in the heart, so the ASD repair is working well! I'm so relieved. I had my MRI on Monday, but don't have the results yet. I should know something tomorrow. Knowing now that the repair is closed, I'm not worried about him finding anything. Dh is still unconvinced. I had one of those stroke recovery moments on Monday before the MRI. Dh took me to Arby's for lunch. I saw that a man walked in quickly in front of us as we were coming up to the door, but then didn't think about that again. Dh and I were standing for a long time in front of the menu/order area, trying to decide what to eat. Since we live in South America, when we come back for a visit, EVERYTHING is new and we have no idea what we want to eat! So, when I finally decided on the Reuben sandwich, I stepped up to the counter to order. I'm right side blind since the stroke, but have adapted to the point that sometimes I forget to scan my environment before I walk, which often leads to trouble. I walked up to the counter and I thought the lady was talking to me, when she said, "May I take your order?" So I began blathering on about what kind of side dish I could get with a combo, while dh is a few steps behind me calling out, "Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa, Lisa," getting louder each time. He had just reminded me about 4 times that I wanted combo number 10, so I'm thinking to myself, "OK, I got it....combo 10!" Does he think I am recovering from a stroke and have no short term memory or something? So, I'm about to turn around and tell him that if he says, "Combo 10" one more time, I'm gonna rip off his head and spit down his neck (in a good way ), when I turn my head to the right and see the guy who passed us coming in standing right next to me ready to give HIS order! I could have crawled under the counter out of embarrassment. I began to apologize all over him and tell him I didn't see him standing there (I'm SURE he believed that one!). He was sweet and assured me it was no problem but that he was in a hurry and had to get to work, etc. I didn't bother to go into the long story I sometimes feel compelled to tell people when I blunder like that: that I had a stroke that affected my right side and I'm blind on that side and that I really had NO idea he was there, etc. I figured if he really had to get back to work, it would only prolong his order and my embarrassment. I just slithered away behind him and tried not to look his direction anymore and focus on my fear of the upcoming MRI! Well, dh did his best to warn me of what I was doing! If only I would listen! I had the MRI after being at the imaging center for more than 4 hours waiting. It was ridiculous. They had to call my cardiologist, who said they would have to look up my chart, have the doctor look at it and call back. We asked them (in person) the day of my bubble test to please fax something to the imaging center to clear me for the MRI. They said they would do it right away. They didn't do it at all! So, while they were waiting for that, they had to call the neurologist to get an order. Did he fax an order over or send me with one? No, he didn't. Sigh. So, while we are waiting for all that, people are passing me up in the MRI line. I have lots of time to worry about whether they will sedate me or if they will have to keep pulling me out of the tube. No one told me it was an open MRI. Thankfully, so much time passed while I was waiting, I had dh go home and get me a clonazapam, one of my meds for Restless Leg Syndrome. It makes me sleepy, so I thought it would be a good calming agent for me. I worried so much that my legs would start firing off during the test and I wouldn't be able to lie still. Thankfully, once I got approved, I had no problems at all except staying awake! I was completely sedated at my previous MRI, but I guess if you are not completely sedated, if you fall asleep while having a brain scan, you blink too much and I moved my head around a bit as well. She kept having to do them over and tell me to not go to sleep this time! She was really sweet and would keep calling out to me, "You aren't sleeping are you?" It was all I could do to keep from dozing off. The second part of the MRI was for my lower back, looking to see why I'm having so much hip pain. She said I could sleep as much I wanted to for that one, so it went by very quickly as I was off to the land of nod. So, today, dh, oldest ds and I made our way to Birmingham/Tuscaloosa (Alabama) to pick up his fiance and see their new apartment, where she works, and where he will go to school in January to start his master's program in choral conducting. Their apartment is just darling, a small first floor, 2 bedroom apartment. First apartments are so exciting and the one that always seems so special to us as we grow older. It's the place where we make our first memories together as a family. I told them to take lots of pictures there, as they would want to remember this place and all the joy they will experience. Tomorrow we will do some shopping and then back down toward the gulf for the pre-wedding activities. We pick up youngest ds on Thursday night (with our Rottweiler in tow) at the airport, and then we will pick up middle ds and his wife on Friday night after the rehearsal dinner, coming from Germany. This will be the first time middle ds and oldest son's fiance have met. And it will be the first time in a year and half all of us have been together at the same time. We are so excited. The time will fly by, as there will be less than 24 hours before ds and his new wife are off to their honeymoon. But it will be sweet and cherished. We plan on taking LOTS of video!

I love being up in the quiet hours of the early morning when no one else is awake. I turn on the Christmas tree lights and listen to the sounds of the quiet house...the clocks tickng, the shower dripping, an occasional cough or snore from one of the bedrooms. This is the time when no on is vying for the computer, the tv is not blaring, and no one needs me for anything. I'm noticing a big difference in the change of medicine, since I started on the Cymbalta. I have much less brain burn and have more energy. Also, I've noticed the difference in the altitude since I've been at sea level. I'm wondering how hard it's going to be to go back to a mile and half high. My afternoon meltdowns are considerably less, and even though I'm still napping most afternoons, when I've had to go without them, I've been ok and have just gone to bed earlier in the evening. So, the past few days have kind of been a blur of activity. I saw the James Bond movie (interesting, but not my favorite kind of movie), cut oldest son's hair, went to church, had my bubble test. The bubble test was interesting. They do an echocardiogram to take measurements first. Then they give you an IV in your vein and shoot bubbles through the IV and watch them go into your heart. Looks kind of like someone opening a coke inside your heart. Of course, the tech wouldn't tell us if what she saw was good or bad. I have to wait for the doctor's appointment on Monday for the results. They will be able to tell me if the heart is closed properly if the bubbles don't escape from one side to the other. I hope that if I'm going to have an MRI, it is scheduled for this morning and not tomorrow. We are hoping to go with our oldest son to pick up his fiance in Birmingham and see their apartment and where he will be attending school in January to start his master's program. He really wants us to go and I don't want to dissapoint him. I hate having to choose between their needs and my health issues. I can't believe the wedding is this weekend! I still have a few things to do, but don't feel panicked about anything yet. (Well, it's only Monday!)

Today was the day for doctor's visits! The craziness began by having a mammogram. Nothing like having your bazooms pressed flat early on a cold winter's morn! It'll wake you up faster than a Starbuck's caramel macciato. Now that I was good and awake, it was on to the internist. She is such a sweetheart. Well, at least I THOUGHT I was awake! When I got back into an exam room, I curled up on the examining table and fell asleep. She and dh were calling my name to wake me up. She thinks the hip pain I have been experiencing for a couple of months is bursitis in my hip, so is sending me to an orthapedic to get a corisone shot. To kill two birds with one stone, dh and I stopped at the tea room to have lunch and finalize the menu for our oldest son's rehearsal dinner the night before the wedding on the 16th. We ate tomato bisque soup, lemon chicken quiche and sipped white mocha and double chocolate hot cocoas. YUMMMM! The menu for the rehearsal dinner will be tomato bisque soup served with basil/cheese scones, chicken cordon bleu with murray sauce, served over wild rice, gingered vegetables (baby carrots, squash and something I'm forgetting--she says it's a touch spicey, but delish!) and for dessert, a dark chocolate mousse served in a champagne glass with chocolate dipped shortbread and garnished with strawberries. Drinks will be chilled peach tea, hot Christmas tea and flavored coffees. We are so excited and think this will be a memorable evening. After lunch, we went to the neurologist. I was so tired and had my normal afternoon brain burn. The nurses were so kind and saw me sleeping on my coat against the wall in the waiting room. Knowing they had quite a full schedule, they took me back to a room with a flat bed and gave me a pillow, turned out the light and shut the door. I immediately went to sleep and dh said I snored pretty loudly and slept for at least 45 minutes to an hour. Dh had his ipod, so he was happy. The doctor paused and listened through the door before he came in. Then he teased me and said the people in the offices next door called and asked them to knock off the sawing in the building!! After telling him my symptoms, he is worried that I have had another stroke and would like to order an MRI. We stopped by the cardiologist's office on the way home so they could fax over a statement saying that my amplatzer occluder is not metal and that I'm safe to have an MRI. We barely made it to the ophthamalogist appointment following. I had another vision field study, which showed that my vision has not improved at all (which I already knew). The good news is, it isn't any worse! If I get a decent night's sleep, I'm going to go to school with my sister in the morning, as her kids are doing a Christmas program and then she has a block of time free that we can sit and catch up. I have not seen her more than 30 minutes since I arrived because she is so busy. In the afternoon, I have a bubble test scheduled for the afternoon, to see if the hole in my heart is closed well.

Delta has changed the types of airplanes they are using. We flew in one of their new 767's yesterday, which was heavenly. International flights are always better than national, but this plane had so much leg room, so much bottom room, nice leather-like chairs with easy to reach buttons, nice roomy aisles and even more room in the bathrooms! We made it through immigration and customs very quickly and had enough time to grab a sandwich before our connecting flight! The best news of all was they were able to get my flight switched to the same as dh's (we even got to sit together), as we booked our flights at different times and I was scheduled to leave about 3 hours after him! We arrived in Pensacola around 5:30 p.m. Our sweet son (oldest) picked us up. He's getting married in less than 2 weeks! I can hardly believe it. Because I slept a little on the plane, I was even able to make a trip to Walmart with my sister when I arrived in Alabama. When I got back, I was exhausted, but happy to have survived the day without a big meltdown! Tomorrow starts a barrage of doctor's appointments. I believe I have 4 tomorrow. I will see the neurologist, ophthalmologist, internist and have a mammogram. I hope to get some good answers from each about my lingering symptoms and what I might expect from here. As for today, I'm resting up and taking it easy. Everyone is at work or school, so I'm enjoying the peace and quiet before the busyness begins. I spent the morning unpacking and repacking (things we are leaving here for our move later next year) and now I'm off for a well deserved nap.

We are in South America and are traveling to Alabama tomorrow for our oldest son's wedding! Lisa