IT's been 5 years since the stroke that changed everything. I'm mostly happy and live is mostly the way I think I remember it being before. I love my job, doing technical writing for a restaurateur company - you may have heard of them. They own Outback Steakhouse, Carrabba's Italian Grille, Bonefish Grill and Flemmings. Everyone seems to be very happy with the work I am doing. I get a lot of positive feedback and kudos. My granddaughter just turned a year old. It's been wonderful sharing the house with her and her parents. I so look forward to getting home from work so I can see and play with "Bugs" (short for Doodle Bugs", my nickname for her from birth). Cookie Monster loves being at home with her during the days and still going out with me when we do to places like the mall or shopping, on the weekends. I'm less and less dependent on him in the everyday, but having him in crowded or unfamiliar situations is comforting, emotionally, as well as helpful, physically, and he loves to be out and helping me. I've started seeing a nice gentleman I met in the office. Life is pretty good right now. But there are a few things that are starting to concern me a little.....

I'm a technical writer, and my writing is just fine. But my speaking is getting a little flaky. I've dealt with aphasia the whole time. It took me almost 3 years to stop calling the tea kettle an iron, or to remember that the fridge is the fridge and nit just "the cold food place." Yes, there have been times that I've stopped, mid sentence, to try to find the word I no longer have, or pick up the train of thought that just got away from me, but they have been, untill recently, few and far between. Now what used to be a couple of times a day is becoming a couple of times in any conversation longer than about 6 sentences. My writing is still great. It's just my speaking that seems to be faltering again. I also notice that there are days when my words slur again.

All of a sudden, well, over the past couple of weeks, my typing is fine, but other fine motor skills with my hands are starting to falter. My handwriting is getting smaller and has lost some of the artistic quality is used to have, which strikes me as strange, considering I am left-handed and the stroke left me right-side affected. I'm also having problems crocheting and doing things of that nature. To round it out, I seem completely incapable of transferring things from one had to the other without dropping, or at least fumbling them, and getting jar lids open is more of a struggle than it has been since the days newly post. I won't even go into the frustrations I am having at the fact that I, now, seem completely incapable of screwing a lid on straight with my right hand. It's all very frustrating and a little frightening to me.

The fatigue is coming back. There are nights where I come home from work, play with the baby for about an hour, and just go to bed. On nights I am babysitting her, sometimes it is a struggle to get to the time when I can pick her mother up from work and go to be once we are home again. Sometimes, in the middle of the day, I find myself, literally, fighting to keep my eyes open at work. I've nearly fallen asleep at a red light or two.

All of these things I will ring up to the doctor when I see him later in the week. It just, really, concerns me because I should be maintaining or getting better, not sliding backwards. It makes me wonder if something isn't very wrong with me. That scares me.