Deigh

Welcome back, we have all missed you! Deigh

Dave, Welcome to the forum. I sympathise with you risking putting your eye out. In the early days my right eye was very painful and this was not helped by the fact that I would regularly hit it with the toothbrush when trying to clean my teeth. Even trying to blow my nose could end up with my thumb in my eye. I had completely forgotten about that problem and it was only reading you lettter that reminded me! Deigh

Sue, About fifteen years ago my wife and I had a series of financial disasters which resulted in a loss of our house and business. All we had left was our campervan, a twenty year old 6 metre Japanese bus which I had converted into a mobile home. We lived in it totally for six years and it was the best time of our lives. We would make trips to the trout fishing centre of the NZ and I would spend as much time as I could in a rubber ducky trying to catch fish. Then we would return to Auckland, park on our son's driveway and spend a while doing repairs and saving up enough to fill the tank.....then away again.... Nowadays I dream regularly of winning some cash on lotto and buying a camper again! I think I have my stroke problems under control enough to handle the plan again as long as I take it very easily. Deigh

I wish you luck with that plan but in my experience good dreams don't repeat! The bad ones can and do come back. Anyway, I hope I'm wrong........good luck! Deigh

Mornings are my best time, I have the energy then to exercise and practice my speech techniques. By lunchtime I have had it and can feel the eyelids drooping as I eat. I go for a kip straight away and can sleep for an hour if lucky. There is a time after this to do guitar and keyboard practice and perhaps the odd minor bit of gardening but I end up working over a jigsaw till teatime. After this it is watching TV for the evening except for a short burst of being thrashed by my wife at Scrabble. By 9.30 I have had it and unable to function at all mentally so I crash to bed and leave my wife to watch TV recordings. I am invariably asleep by the time she joins me. This has become my daily pattern, to break it by doing something unusual can leave me exhausted the following day. Deigh

I don't know whether or not to tell you this but If the situation was reversed I'd have liked you to tell me! Five years ago, before the stroke hit me I found a lump in my cheek, (I presume this is similar to your experience). My Doctor looked at spots on my chest and decided that one did not look good. In a minor operation he took it out, sending the bits away for examination. This showed that there were some problems there and I was sent for a deeper dig in hospital. They were happy that this cleared the problem but my lump did not decrease and I was sent for major scans. Eventually the problem was pinpointed to my spleen and a decision to remove it was made. The operation was a success and I was cleared of the cancer threat. I was recovering nicely when after three months the stroke hit and I believe it was because the hospital doctor took me off blood thinning tablets and failed to put me back on them when the op was over. The loss of a spleen has never been a major problem except that I have to take care to avoid infections. Deigh

Here it is approaching spring, daffodils are poking through the ground and you don't have to go far to see woolly balls of fluff called lambs. Have a look at this lighthearted greeting from New Zealand

What a staggering experience. Do you have any problems with your arms, legs eyesight or voice? You talk of therapy. What form does it take? Welcome to the club. Deigh

I have written my memoirs for my family to read, the evacuation story was very high on my list. I've tried to find via the internet other survivors of this experience but so far have had no luck. There were 400 of us so there must be others still around. By co-incidence I did meet a NZ engineer who was evacuated from Singapore to the same area, he was six years younger than I so I would have had little to do with him then. We stayed in contact with him and his family for a few years, but had little in common with those days. Deigh

Paul, I lived in Margate for half of WW2. I was evacuated there from Egypt via Jerusalem. That is a long story on its own! My wife and I did a world trip twenty years ago and I was able to visit the place again. I was able to repeat a fifty year old photograph of me fishing from a bridge over the lagoon. Deigh

However, the medical system works really well and the country is peaceful and law-abiding, so weather is a minor inconvenience. That sums up NZ pretty well too. Sounds as though you lived in the Durban area, I know it well. We have another great advantage over here, the people are easy-going and accepting of other races, I find they are also tolerant of people with disabilities and I find that personally a great asset. There is also no class system here and as an ex-Pom (Limey) I find that very attractive. Deigh

I practice my speaking as much as I can but avoid the phone if possible. Most adults understand me but I have some problem with youngsters. I do agree though that I'd rather resort to texting than talking over the phone especially if I have something tricky to talk about. Deigh

Here in New Zealand it is mid winter but from my kitchen window when I'm doing the washing up (just to let you know I'm a well trained house husband)! I can see no less than nine different flowers (including roses) that are still in bloom from summer. There are lemons on a new tree which are nearly ready to pick. We are finding the weather cold with a few frosts but the native trees and bushes stay green all year round and the grass still has to be mown. Only the imported deciduous trees loose their leaves. We emigrated here fifty years ago, Initially we found the winters to be a bit of a joke. Now we take them more seriously! Deigh

In the first few days of recovering from the stroke I had major problems with biting the inside of my cheek when eating. I believed it to be caused by the swelling of my cheeks and also the lazy face muscles. The biting causes more swelling and the only way to get that down is to not bite them again for a few days till things get back to normal. Giving up eating was not a consideration so I overcame it by swinging away from the table (Swivel chairs a must!) and chewed bent at the waist with my head horizontal and twisted a little left. This meant that gravity and the extra weight on my cheek pulled it away from my teeth slightly and this was enough to clear the danger area. It was a very untidy way to eat and I had to have a napkin on the floor to catch mishaps, but it did work and after a week or so I was able get back to normal civilised behaviour. In those early days I had to learn a lot of tricks to overcome the handicaps forced on me by my new disability. Recently I've had a few more cheek biting mishaps and have had to resort to the old trick to make life comfortable and thought I'd pass the idea on to anyone else suffering from the same problem. Deigh

Great to hear you are back and fighting again! Deigh