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About this blog

Stoke June 23 2019: Blog to track my recovery

Entries in this blog

Zoom & buiscuits ( cookies)

It seems zoom is becoming a regular thing in my life for all sorts of meetings the last one just before I wrote this with my in-laws in Saudi Arabia. There on total lock down except for shopping by appointment and of course no one argues with the King. The headiness has reduce to mild back ground now and I hardly notice it. I made a personal best on the treadmill on Monday at 40mins at 3 mph. I paid for that the following day with muscle soreness on my left leg sufficient to leave me limping aro
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Winter is here!

Well another week where I thought i'd have no specific improvement to report. Then yesterday i was caught with my hands full in the tack room of the barn, Feed in one hand and a kitty in the other. I had managed to pen the door and go in but now needed to close it .( The cat is closed in the tack room at night due to coyote and owls) With out thinking I flipped my leg back and kicked it close. I then realised what I had done! I had transferred weight onto one leg, a balancing that I would have n
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Winter is here

So live is pretty good and motion is back for the most part and moving without the concentration it used to take 6 months ago. I still get a little light headed when I enter a balancing challenge from a position that I may not have tried since the stroke. I find I work more naturally and actively but then run out of energy. I find after a certain amount of work I will suddenly get fatigued and muscles are harder to control. Or as I tell Deb, I have gone wobbly. I can return to better control wit
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Weather Break

Finally a break in the weather ! After a hard winter here we seem to have entered spring. There's an ornamental pear tree that w use as a kid of indicator and its starting to bloom. Spring has high wind but they come later in the day. So there is a gap early morning where the sun is shining and temperature are above freezing so I got a few rides in. Seem the yoga and physio therapies have paid off! I am riding passably, doing best since my stoke. I still finding my posting trot rather bumpy as m
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Water is Life

Sill in isolation so tending to use my treadmill as I cant get out, Walking has suddenly become more balanced, only limping slightly when tired. So Im trying to build up the leg muscles and my stamina which is still far from my old levels. My headiness has reduced some and seems to be associate with balance in new or unusual motion. For example I had to go down om my knees while checking tire pressure this weekend, not a usual position and the headiness was induced. One of the community wells in
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Warm

At 5500ft we can get freezes as late as May 28th. but it looks like we are clear now.  47F this morning and we will go to 80s lter in the day, Every thing is blooming and the nest built in our chicken coop is now home to newly hatched chics. My stamina seams to be increasing slightly as I get thru more in the day with less breaks. Some lovely sunny mornings which are prefect for long rides.  Recovery is small increments now and realizations. Like I went to mount the other morning and
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Turmoil

I find the level of turmoil in the USA rather disturbing and it tends to affect my mood. So there's little I can do about that so I try and remember to enjoy each fay and that I almost left the planet. Things are growing rapidly now and we are already eating produce from the hoop house. Our first tomato was harvested this week , we ate it separate from any other food. The flavor was intense after a winter of shop bought ones. Many green ones will soon ripen and follow. Gardening still takes
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Tomatoes

So actually had to go out this week! We get our income form a few rentals and we had a tenant leave so we had to go out to assess clean up needs, which included taking a traitor of junk to the dump. So some interaction with others hopefully at a safe distance, wearing masks and gloves.  It felt good to be out and about but I was somewhat nervous in the interactions. Its good to be mobile enough again that I can do a lot of tasks required .,but I must admit I hired 2 guys to help with the heavy l
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Time to change how I look at things

A recent snow blizzard created some extra work for me. The roof of a horse barn ah to be well ventilated but that means there is space for snow to enter when blown by strong winds. This resulted in stalls been filled with melting snow and making the horse bedding wet. So one evening we had to dig wet bedding out of two stalls and replace it. I decided to do the heavy digging work myself and let Deb drive the tractor to dump the stuff onto out compost piles.    The situa
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Thanksgiving

So I clear improvement form last year. I use thanksgiving as an excuse to put up the Christmas decorations and last year i could just manage to climb the step ladder and then my balance was precarious and i had to use a free hand to steady myself. This year was pretty easy tho I did need a nap after I finished. So while I decorate Deb cooks  a big vegan meal this time with a roasted faux beef joint.  Mental attitude has shifted also.. after my stroke i was thinking I'd be happy to make anot
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Starts

"He puts his pants on like anyone else, one leg at a time" This phrase popped into my head yesterday as I put my pants on. A year a ago putting my pants on was quite an effort as my left leg was virtually incontrollable. A few moths back I actually managed to pull my pants on while standing, although i needed to hold onto the door jam for support. Yesterday I did it free standing! 🙂 Of course this mean i had to balance standing on one leg at a time for a couple of seconds. So it things like this
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Spring

So the use of the treadmill seems to be paying off. For most of the day I can walk around and no one would notice anything wrong and I don't have to focus on movements it starts to fall off a bit as I get tired and wobbly. Also the headiness is absent around only when I make more exaggerated movement. The weather has got warmer so spending some time in the garden and on horse back, but later in the day the wind blows me back inside.  We are now harvesting greens as above and had our f
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SALADS & ZOOM

Well last weeks record of 40mins at 3 mph was not exactly by intent. I walk watching cold West Wing episodes and loss track of time.  Paid or it with some soreness next day so I kicked back. I returned to exercise Thursday for 20 mins. I should have waited longer! I strained the same muscle and ended   up having to take 3 days to get out of pain. In fact I've decide to take the week off the treadmill. Even so the week wasn't all off as we cleaned out the chicken coop. We deep litter this so it o
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Running

Improvement these days is in subtle increments and easily over looked. My fist consistent walk of  the day is over to the barn to feed the horses and I always use this to gauge progress. This morning I was most of the way to the barn when I realized I was thinking about something completely different and just walking naturally. Most of the time since the stoke I have to concentrate on every step I take. Another thing I added to my routine is I now run back from the barn , a distance of some
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Re-pot

Continuing my e-entry into a more normal life, i have spent every day bar Sunday in the green house transplanting tomatoes into small individual plots. The effort has now filed 16 trays each of 18 pots.  That's 288 plants in all. My stamina is still a little low and a couple of hours work in the green house has me wobbly and heading for my sofa! Still I seem to recover faster and after a little rest I'm ready to go again.   My other project which is not demanding on my muscl
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Pushing for Normal

Those who may have read last weeks blog will know i'm pushing for normal. Generally its been working great! i'm estimating about an 85% rate and it feels good when I get it right as for a few minutes I fell no deficits. The slight down side it that occasionally on rougher ground i lose a little balance. and may stagger slightly for a stride or 2 it challenges my balance and may induce a little headiness. but I have not taken a fall yet, and believe that balance challenge is probably good neuro p
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Project

Well this week I can't identify any actual improvements. Of course they can be so subtle now I have to pay attention to spot one. I do catch my self slipping back to my safe walk and find myself having to coach myself , like "Come on a bit faster" as I continue to move more as I used to. This week I have been involved with installing a big drum composter. The screwing of nuts onto bolts was an exercise they used to have me do in rehab, and I found I was flashing back to that as i had to do it a
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Presentation

A goodly amount of travelling reduced mu exercise program but still:- Wed: Yoga joined by my wife. Thu: Gym Fri: drove tp Phoenix ate out. Sat: event & drove home. Sun. Day off. Mon: Drove to Sedona and made presentation. Ate out. Tues drove home got sick - feels like a flu.   The big challenge for the week was returning to public speaking. Especially as I still have trouble controlling speech. I was sufficiently concerned that I had a dream 2 day
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Peppers

Here we are on the weekly blog, but little to tell. No identifiable improvements but I  am to be getting to do more work than at the beginning of the year so I'm hoping that's a sign of increasing stamina. So we are down in the 30s some mornings lately though still 80S afternoon. That kind of highj dessert swing can let an early frost sneak in so we have been harvesting crops that would get damaged. This weeks main target the peppers. The various wok loads make it hard to gauge but I
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OK Bored Now

So the Governor's Stay Home Edict has now expired in Arizona but out covid-19 numbers are still steadily going up, so Deb an I are just staying home. We have a lot to be grateful for. 1. We are retired and so I don't have to work. 2 Our income is still pretty steady. 3 We don't have to go out much , perhaps once a week tp put trash in the dumpster and pick up mail parcels. 4 we are on a 40 acre, with 2 miles of track for riding the horses. 5 We have a hoop house to play
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Odd Jobs & toads. anniversary

So Wednesday around again so soon.! This week seems to be an odd job week. Which is in itself a good thing. These projects are quiet tiring as my stamina is far from what it used to me but I can balance, climb ladders (carefully ) and am dexterous enough again to handle power tools. Its also the anniversary of my stroke so its been a year. This time last year I was making a bucket list as I was not sure I would last much longer! I made Monument Valley & Carlsbad Caverns before the virus grou
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Not such a good week

Well on Thursday last I was moving a bail of hay , which had fallen weirdly and jammed in position. I lifted with my legs but had my elbow bent slightly. Just as it started to move I felt my forearm muscles tear like breaking old sting.  The felling was sickening , both mentally and physically! So that led to 3 days off nursing the arm. Its been getting better each day but  is still to tender to risk riding. I did get back to the treadmill. On a better note I have been lengthening my walking str
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new Year , New day

Now movement is almost back to normal and is more a matter of fatigue, in that as I get more tired i will get a little more wobbly but only slightly and an increase in concentration will often improve the motion. Still waiting on results of MRA. So a new year , and hopefully a better one than the last. Though its become apparent that this pandemic will  take more effort to beat!   Personally i used to avoid new year resolutions as a set up for failure.  I had attempted earlier in
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New Mexico

My father was a master Marine on the Great Lakes run. At 7 he brought me a View Master 3d viewer and I remember most a cavern wonders of the world disc and image of Carlsbad Cavern. Well I finally got to see it. Deb and I took a 5 day road trip for valentines and our 19th anniversary, From a recovery point of view I probably did more walking than ever since my stroke. The caverns were a couple of hours of very up and down and uneven trails but the hand rails were a great help. The trip was fun a
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New Days

This week was about changing focus onto stuff I can now do again or do new. I still caught myself indulging in my rehab mode, where i judge the quality of movement but less so than a year ago. So I have been creating a second , and bigger warm place to start seeds. Below your working on it. Just to the right out of view is my existing 'plant house' in which we already have stated tomatoes. These are due for transplanting to bigger pots this week.   In addition to
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