swilkinson

Could you post a message on how to join the chat please Deigh. I know a lot of people come to a forum like this out of frustration, looking for help. I know that was the case for me and the reason I stay. We really need people to post, to chat and to blog about their post stroke life. I was a chat host for many years and that was very rewarding and I made a lot of friends who are still friends on my Facebook page. Please Asha if you read this message can you reply too.

If you are reading this forum please introduce yourself. Just a few lines to let us know who you are and why you came here. It may be the start of the healing process and some great friendships.

If you are reading this forum please introduce yourself. Just a few lines to let us know who you are and why you came here. It may be the start of the healing process and some great friendships.

Here it is, November already. November slips away fast every year. No sooner started than hello December and December is holidays, school holidays, workers holidays and this year Christmas. But that is still a long way off and there is much to do between now and then. Simple things like Christmas card lists and complicated things like what do I send to family members so far away? Because I still belong to the Stroke group WAGS I still support caregivers and widows who were formerly caregivers. This has been a privilege to me, to use my past knowledge to help other women to make the transition. And believe me we all need some help. So I still go to a few of the meetings, morning teas etc. And try to keep up with them in various ways so that is another part of how I spend my time. This is of benefit to me too as some of these women helped me through my caring years. Of course we are all getting older too and so some of our problems are age related. Some of my good friends have died including a couple that Ray was close to. So funerals are also a feature of my life. And there are some now in care that various members of the group keep in touch with and relay that information via various media groups, which does help us keep up with them. A lot of my time is still taken up with church groups , including a low key community lunch on Fridays. It is just toasted sandwiches in winter and now salad rolls for summer and coffee but a small number of local people are regulars and now included in my friends group. People ask me if I am ever lonely and the answer is "yes", but if tomorrow is Friday I have that to look forward to. And if it Saturday it is church tomorrow etc. When I look in the mirror I see a little old lady, but she is off and away to some place where people gather, where friendships are to be made, where folk need a quiet word or reassurance or simply am opportunity to talk. That is where my life is right now. As you know my three children and grandchildren are all far away. And I can't do anything about that. But as long as I am busy I am happy. So roll on the holidays. I don't know what the future holds but I know there will be people to share it with and that is good enough for now .

Welcome back Mark. I am sure someone will see your post and reply. But just thought I'd let you know some of us a few still on here and posting. Sue.

Janelle, I didn't tackle your actual question in my first answer because I am a caregiver. From my point of view whatever Ray asked me to do I did but not always immediately. That got him frustrated. I sometimes wished I'd had a screen in my head that could have sorted out the proper priorities for me. But we are just soft shelled human beings with limited brain power and that did not compute. Looking back now I wish that I had paid for some extra help, the occasional cleaner or handyman so I could have devoted more time to him and his needs. Instead I sometimes felt the worries of the world on my shoulders and got impatient with him and the whole business of trying to keep him at home. Rant here whenever you need to and get it out in the open. I'll not always reply as I look at the situation from my own perspective. And that might not be helpful.

I've always been an optimistic person. Like my Dad before me I want to believe the best of people. Of course sometimes that backfires and someone takes advantage of my good nature. Ray and I early in our married life befriended a couple and they robbed us of a lot of money when Ray put together a kit home for them and they refused to pay him. We did look at taking them to court but the money we would have had to spend on the case was about the same as we would receive. But the past is the past. And we get older and hopefully wiser. It still annoys me though that recently that house sold for just on 1 million dollars. Different owners and of course with Ray gone there was no way I could claim compensation under the present laws but I still remember how much that hurt Ray and wonder if that and a few other similar "failures to pay" jobs contributed to his high blood pressure that was a contributing factor to his having that first stroke at aged 48. I guess that we will never know. So Spring is here but life is bittersweet, being a widow most of the time is fine but seeing families having lunch together in the shopping centre or cars loaded with kids and camping gear remind me that my life is emptier now. My family is not close but once again Trev and Alice were here for a week on her Spring break and I am still able to ring my daughter Shirley on Sunday nights and catch up with what has been happening in her life so I am luckier than some of my friends with no family. I ought to count my blessings. We have already had summer temperatures and it is still early Spring. That limits the kind of plants I can grow for instance making it too late for lettuce and soft foliage herbs. My flower house, a couple of decades old now, is falling apart now and would be costly to replace so I can only raise a few seedlings. My herbs look healthy though and those Mediterranean herb plants are surviving. It's the typical English plants that will not. So limited home grown produce this year. And due to inflation shop bought goods are really expensive. So I have to look at all costs now. Overall life is good. With coming up five years since my brain operation I will soon be living on borrowed time, that is time I wouldn't have had if I hadn't had the aneurysm clipped. So I am fortunate in that respect. I've got to look on the bright side of life. Enough good times to balance out the bad. Good friends that I have had for many years and mentors that have taught me to make the most of life. Church and Lions figure large in my life and housework and gardening fill in spots that otherwise might be blank. All of this was discussed last night in a phone call with my sister-in-law, the widow of Ray's older brother. We are the same age and have been friends for many years. I guess we are lucky to be in contact despite not having seen each other in some years now. With family and good friends to talk to my life is better. Spring is a good time for getting out more and that is my plan for the next few weeks. To get out more. To use my time better and achieve more is a resolution I make this time every year. So here it is again. And how many weeks to Christmas?

I think we all go through this in different ways. My problems are.due to age and my wonky left leg. I store jobs up for Trev to do while he is here for six days. Then he's here and Alice wants to go here and there, Trev needs to go to shops not available in Broken Hill and I have my list. Sometimes out of a long list two things get done. I am grateful but by the next visit the list is even longer.

Games night

Changes are hard on everyone. Here too the care facilities can be traded like cards in a kid's game and the residents have to get on with new staff, new rules. My daughter Shirley worked as Chaplain in a Care facility for three years, two of them the Covid years and had a lot of stories to tell. Now she is back working in a Corps in an isolated part of Western Australia. A mining town called Kalgoorlie .She certainly gets around. I flew out to see her and her family in April. So I will see them once a year for as long as I can travel. I hope it is a few years yet. You are certainly a strong woman to go through all you have been through in the past nine years. I guess in time you will find friends among the new staff members. Just keep going and we'll cheer you on .

Tattoo Parlour

School holidays coming up means little kids around everywhere, take extra care when out and about Janelle. Extra care with washing hands, disinfecting trolley handles etc etc.

Olympic torch

If you belong to a local library you can add books to a list that you would like to borrow when they become available. Then you get an email or message on your phone when they come in. My daughter always did that with Clive Cussler books. I've read a lot of Grisham books as a carer in Ray's time gave me 14 of them that her husband had been hoarding. I must look out for the later ones.

Jean Riva was an inspiration to many of us. Because of her I began writing blogs and found that made my life make more sense to me, mine became an examined life. Thank you for writing your blogs, they too are an inspiration to me.

Palm fronds

You're so welcome back Sassy. I have stayed on here because of what a blessing Strokenet was to me when I looked after Ray. Our numbers are low now but hopefully that will change if we can find someone to approve newcomers. Keep battling on, life is still good. We all have family problems with busy kids and grandkids growing up and in some cases moving away from us. I have my three scattered now and apart from Trevor who brings his daughter Alice here for part of her school holidays don't have a lot of contact. So we have to be content with what we have I guess.

Deigh, how many get into chat now? Hope you get some support there.

Welcome back Sassy, glad to see you've survived Covid etc. Blog your update if you can get back into that section.

There doesn't seem to be anyone in charge of approving new members. I don't have the authority as I am just the Blog Moderator, a low woman on the totem pole. Old members can get in by changing their passwords, but new members don't seem to be able to join. If someone can contact Kelli Smith off this site she may be able to help.

Palm tree

This time of the year, mid winter, time seems to stand still. There is not a lot to do. A dull grey day doesn't encourage me to do much, a bit of gardening if it is sunny, a few hours in the shopping centre if it is raining. A lot of my spare time I read, get onto my computer, watch some television, often cooking programs rather than movies or dramas. I usually crochet as I watch TV so just look up occasionally to see what the dish being cooked looks like. I get out as much as I can and as much as the weather permits. I am okay with the quiet life of an older widow but sometimes long for those long gone days when the family still lived close. My scattered family of course are busy living their own lives. Mostly I hear from one at least in a week and it's a good week when I've had a couple of phone calls. Of course there are people I see regularly, at Church, meetings, Bible Study, Coffee, Craft and Chat, Lions Club dinners and the occasional lunch out with girlfriends, which is naturally rarer in winter. But like me most of them are also widowed. Just for the next few weeks I have added a new group, Stepping On. It is a Falls Prevention program for older people run by the local Health Department. Most people attending are closer to 80 than 70, and like me thought it would maybe help improve their walking. Since I have had the Melanoma removed and then the lymph glands in that left leg and left side of my lower torso also removed I have been less steady on my feet so I thought that any small improvement in my walking would be good. In the course of the program there are consultants talking to us and to my surprise it was the podiatrist who looked closest at my movements and made a suggestion. She said I needed to work on my calf muscles as strong calf muscles would make up for the difference between the weight of my two legs that had altered my gait. My left leg without the lymph glands can gain up to two kilos on a humid day and there is no medical remedy for that. How much difference it will make I don't know but anything that helps me feel more confident walking will be good I went to a funeral recently and met up with a family I'd known for many years. The son shook my hand and I told him how much we'd enjoyed his family's visits when they came on camping trips to Karuah before my family moved back here, he was about fifteen at that time. He surprised me by asking if I wanted to see a picture of his grandkids. I thought " What the?" and then realised the time I was talking about was forty years ago! It seemed only a short time ago to me. How time flies! I wonder if there are still good times ahead for me. I hear other people, mainly couples, talking about cruising, trips overseas, going around Australia in their caravan and think "That is what Ray and I planned to do." And I sigh. Then I realised that Ray would have been 81 now! Wow! That lovely young man I married would be 81 now? Unbelievable. Because in my mind Ray will always be 70, the age he was when he died. I look in the mirror and see and old lady looking back at me but to me Ray will always be young. Strange life isn't it?

I took a couple of weeks to get over the virus, it was a nasty one. I missed seeing my grandchildren which was sad as the boys will be back for the next school holidays but not Tori as again the Uni holidays different to high school holidays. I am just glad to be out and about again

Date palm 🌴