PennGwyn

I was diagnosed Type II Diabetic about 15 years before my first stroke. A vew years ago, my endocrinologist replacd my hefty daily dose of long-lasting insulin with a much smaller dose of Treciba(sp?), which gave me good results initially but eventually seemed to be less effective. In Janary, he started me on Trulicity and has been blown away by the results. One injection a week brings my blood sugars down to normal levels, or often below but without the symptoms such low blood sugars would normally cause. I've had four mild strokes in ten years; none in the seven months on Trulicity. It ight be pemature to leap to any conclusion...

My friend George had a stroke in November. It was bad-- he couldn't talk or swallow; he might still have the gastric tube now. I don't know -- his wife doesn't allow him visitors... Last week, I got an email from George. Or at least from his Hotmail account. The grammar was a bit shaky, but that could be a stroke effect. Except that the message basically just said he had gotten a great deal on a new cellphone though this chinese web site.... Yup. Somebody seems to have hacked his Hotmail account password. And there's my dilemma. I can work with Hotmail to get his password reset, but that will mean he will have to do a fair bit of recovering before he'll be able to actually regain control of and access to his account. This would all be much rasier if I could tell George what is going on and what he will need to do -- and, of course, help him get it done. Penn

Computer software and hardware is my field -- and I've long been fascinated by neurology, because so much of what we know about how it works is learned from studying the ways it can break. I had a "mild" ischemic right-side stroke in January 2010, and have been coping with some degree of left side neglect ever since. It has led to some embarassing moments: Yelling at my mother in a restaurant because I looked down and saw my spoon moving, but couldn't see why. (She was trying to help me eat dessert.) Asking in meetings for information that was on the page in front of me -- in a leftmost column. One day being able to see my shoulder and hand, but not the arm that normally connects them.... As soon as I understood the diagnosis of left-side neglect, I realized that nobody would be safe sharing the road with me, and resigned myself to not driving "for as long as necessary". I *believe* I have mostly recovered from that deficit, and am resolved to drive again -- it's the thing I miss most. But NOT before it is safe to do so, of course. David