3 steps forward and 2 back?

This is the pattern my stroke recovery seems to take. Some days are good and I feel things are improving, only for this to be followed by a day or more when I appear to slide backwards.

Today has been a bad day: although food and drinks have gone down OK, I feel very giddy and tire easily. I very much hope I can overcome the giddiness. This and the uncomfortable sickness feeling in my stomach and food pipe are making life very hard.

If  I am honest, only sleep is a release.  Days are long and uncomfortable and I am sure no-one (not even my long suffering wife) understands just how miserable life still is for me. I very much want to be well again and able to do all the things I used to be able to do. But almost everything I do exhausts me. A slight bit of gardening and I am zonked out

I keep going because people tell me I will get better given time. God, I hope they are right as life as it is now is unbearable for too much longer.

Gym referral

As my physio sessions for my stroke draw to a close in Ely I have now been recommended "on referral" to the Newmarket Leisure Centre for further work on balance and stamina. Being referred, one gets discounted rates for the 12 weeks of group sessions twice a week for 30 minutes each. Hopefully this will help my recovery.

I  am not really a "gym" sort of person, but I am game for anything which will help me recover my "old" self.

Sepura

Can you believe it - it is over 6 years ago that I retired from Sepura.  For the first few years I still felt "connected" to the old place but these days it is just a distant memory. Most times were good ones, but towards the end things were getting silly and I was glad to get out and realise there was more to life. When fully fit I really enjoyed my retirement: time to do what I wanted, when I wanted, for a change. Our grandchildren came along when we had time to see and be there for them. At the moment, with my stroke, retirement is harder work and I cannot do as much as I'd want. Hopefully this will get better again soon.

Sepura shares are doing well, having risen from around 30p to 137.50p currently, although they were even higher earlier in the year.  Most of my Sepura shares have gone, but I do still hold some.

Of course, I wish all my old Sepura colleagues every success.  It must be even harder working there now I expect.  I have no idea about projects or people there these days. It is several years since I have been in.

Hedge trimmer

Our (quite old) hedge trimmer is lost: we have checked the garden shed and garage and cannot find it. The Qualcast 500W hedge trmmer is £39.99 in Homebase, less 10% OAP discount on Tuesdays, which seems a fair price. I bet it does NOT last as long as the old one though!

Sadly this stuff is made in China (I expect) and almost guaranteed to fail within a few years. My son had a so called " decent" fridge that failed after just 2 years. Although the parts were under warranty the labour was not and it was actually cheaper to buy a new fridge. What a crazy world we live in!

Flight MH370?

Notice how this is no longer news worthy?

It still strikes me as VERY odd that not a single piece of wreckage has been spotted by anyone anywhere. My guess it was secretly landed somewhere. The USA remains extremely quiet considering they must have the spy technology to have located it by now.  Is the USA in some shape or form complicit?  Who knows.

Day in Canterbury

For the first time since my stroke last September I ventured out of the county (Newmarket and Bury-St-Edmunds, Suffolk excepted), with my wife, to visit my son and family who live near Canterbury, Kent.

As I cannot drive (currently, as a result of the stroke) we did a day return by train. It was seamless and travel in both directions was fast. We had from 12-4pm with our son and family and about the same time in travel on fast trains, especially in Kent.

Now we have done it once we may well do it again. Being a Sunday, parking at Cambridge station was easy and cheap. Our son picked us up at Canterbury West station. There were no delays because of engineering works.

Booking in advance, via http://www.thetrainline.com/, and using our Seniour Railcards, the fares were reasonable too. 

All in all, a very good day.

What does my stroke feel like?

People who see me say, "you do look well" and similar.  I have then to explain how I feel on the inside.

Outwardly I do look pretty good: I have put back lost weight, got colour back in my cheeks and am looking more and more like my "old" self.  Inside it is (still) a very different story. The best way to describe how I feel is by saying I feel wobbly all the time when walking - like I have had 8 pints of beer -  always giddy and unsteady when on the move. Any physical exertion, like a tiny bit of gardening, leaves me shattered and in need of a sit-down and rest. I also feel near constant, low level nausea in my stomach and gut.

Overall, I AM making progress but this is too slow!  I desperately want to be "normal" again . At present, it seems 3 steps forwards and 2 backwards. I should be off  the stomach liquid feed by June/July and already the amount through the peg is vastly reduced compared with when I first came out of hospital. I think my giddiness and sickness/nausea are slowly improving.

So, I may look OK but inside I still feel rough at the moment. Normality is a way off yet still, sadly. Thankfully I sleep very deeply: when I drop off it is (usually) a long and good quality sleep. Sleep is the only time in the day I feel OK. The rest of the time is still a struggle.