RonA

Stroke Caregiver - male
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About RonA

  • Birthday 07/11/1944

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  • Stroke Network Email
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  • Stroke Anniversary (first stroke)
    10-09-2013
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  • First Name
    Ron
  • State
    NC

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  1. RonA

    my gratitude list

    What a wonderful attitude. You are blessed to have it as are those around you.
  2. Do you see your son often? And I agree with what someone else posted, there should be a way for you to make it to his place for Thanksgiving even if it means arriving the day before and spending the night at his place. I hope he knows how you feel. Sometimes the obvious isn't at all obvious. I hope you somehow have a nice Thanksgiving regardless.
  3. RonA

    What a Big Difference

    It already has. Big time.
  4. I recently stumbled across yet another device that can make a huge difference in the daily lives of stroke survivors and their caregivers. This one is called Shower Buddy and it is a high-quality, well designed product that makes bathing easier and safer for people with mobility problems. My wife is one of those people. She had been growing increasingly anxious about bathing and as result my own anxiety level climbed as well. We were starting to dread bath times and our stress load grew heavier with each bathing. Dorothy was suddenly paralyzed with fear each time she had to move from her transport chair to her shower bench, with help from me throughout. I'm reasonably strong for a guy of my age, 73, but I couldn't help but worry about what would happen if she slipped or fell. Keeping her safe has been one of my primary objectives for the four years that have passed since Dorothy had her stroke. i considered several approaches to this problem, including a major bathroom remodel that would cost thousands and still not be ideal. I also considered one of those walk-in tubs but I had serious doubts about whether they would work for Dorothy. She would still have to walk on potentially slippery surfaces and she would still have to sit and stand on the tub's chair. After researching the Shower Buddy I decided that it just might be our best option. I showed videos to Dorothy and she agreed. So we bought one. They retail for $3,000 but we bought ours online from a woman who had bought it for her brain-damaged daughter but had never been able to use it. She offered to reduce her price a little to persuade me to buy but I paid her full asking price, which seemed fair and which I assume she could use. (I didn't want to add to her problems.) The Shower Buddy has turned out to be a huge improvement for Dorothy and me. It has a big, sturdy a chair thanks to excellent design and engineering can easily be slid over the tub. She never has to get out of that chair. No more danger of falling during transfers, no more anxiety. Bathing is now pleasant for her--and for me. I wanted to share this with people who read this part of StrokeNet in case any of you might benefit from this product. I realize it is not cheap but I also realize it is a true godsend for some people. Be advised that the Shower Buddy is made of metal and appears to be of high quality. It is very sturdy too and is designed so that there is no wiggling at any point. Like the lightweight foldup power wheelchair about which I previously wrote on this web site, the Shower Buddy takes a lot of stress out of day-to-day living for us. And had we not stumbled upon it in the course of doing online research we probably would never have known about it.
  5. RonA

    An Unexpected Improvement

    Hang in there, Sandy. Maybe it is time to buy a lift for your car so that you can transport your husband's chair without having to lift anything. My wife and I may well reach that point eventually but for now the fold-up power chair works great for us. If I keep hitting the gym I may be able to use it for another ten years or so. :)
  6. RonA

    An Unexpected Improvement

    No, Sandy. My wife's chair is totally electric. It runs on batteries that use the same technology as computer batteries, meaning they are far lighter than regular wheelchair batteries. The battery provides plenty of power and lasts five hours or so. I think the pumping mechanism you had in mind was featured in a different wheelchair that someone mentioned after reading my posting.
  7. RonA

    An Unexpected Improvement

    Sure: https://www.wheelchair88.com/
  8. RonA

    An Unexpected Improvement

    I took your advice. Thanks for the suggestion.
  9. RonA

    An Unexpected Improvement

    Looks like fun for sure, but for my wife it wouldn't work. For one thing she has use of only one arm and this one seems to require two. Also, a bid advantage of my wife's chair is that it is battery powered as well as lightweight. If the chair you showed works for you, that's great. Enjoy.
  10. RonA

    An Unexpected Improvement

    It looks pretty cool for sure but it is a far cry from my wife's chair. My wife's chair runs on batteries. She couldn't use the kind shown in your clip because she can only use one arm. I think that different people have different needs. If the chair you showed works for you, that's great.
  11. RonA

    Are you kidding me?

    Nancy, on top of everything else you seemed to be consumed by anger and negativity, from McDonald's "crappy" food to the nursing home to Dan. I understand those feelings but they only make things worse for you. Somehow you need to conquer your own dark side, which, again, is perfectly understandable. Your husband seems miserably unhappy and severely depressed. I think he wants to die rather than continue in his present state. I understand that, too. I might even feel the same were I in his situation. I wish I could tell you how to get your mind around all of this. I believe it starts by focusing more on Dan and less on your reaction to his situation and his behavior. Again, easier said than done. I get that. But the more you look the more you nurture empathy and understanding, which might make it easier to put up with Dan's behavior. I hope you are not totally alone as you fight through all of this. I believe you have adult children. I hope they are providing you steady support. Maybe you are spending too much time with Dan. Your regular visits seem to leave you feeling miserable. So why not limit them a bit? Maybe your kids could fill the void. Maybe Dan doesn't really want a lot of visitation. Have you discussed this with him? Sometimes folks just want to be left alone in their darkest hours. I'm like that. Maybe your husband is too. In any event I wish you the best in a bad situation. You've been through a lot as has your husband. Life gave him a cruel blow and I'm sure he didn't deserve it. I'm sure you didn't either. Good luck, Nancy. You are not as alone as you may think.
  12. RonA

    An Unexpected Improvement

    Sometimes you get a lot more out of a product than you expected. My wife and I recently purchase one of those lightweight, fold-up, power travel wheelchairs and it has turned out to be a real blessing. Although I am a relentless consumer of information about things that could help people such as my wife, who have had strokes, I had never heard of this particular product until a blogger from this site, who writes under the name Strokewife, told me about it. She had bought one for her husband and assured me that it was a godsend for them and allowed them to take a much-needed cruise together. With that information, I set out to research the product quite a bit. I finally found a chair slightly more expensive than the one Strokewife bought and decided to buy it. The reason was that it has a footrest that can fold back out of the way, thus enabling the user to get closer before sitting down. This particular chair, made in Malaysia, also impressed me with its quality and with various reviews I read. The chair is made out of lightweight aircraft aluminum and folds up to the size of carry-on luggage. Indeed, that makes it ideal of air travel, though some airlines apparently require you to check it rather than store it in the cabin. Although the chair's weight is not a lot lower than the weight of the manual chair we had been using, it is far quicker and easier to use and requires no assembly to set up once you pull it out of your vehicle. Five days after I ordered the chair it arrived from Malaysia, fully charged and ready to go. We took a few days for Dorothy to become acquainted with it inside the house before taking it out. We started in an uncrowded grocery store before progressing through a slightly crowded Costco and then to one of our favorite restaurants. It was wonderful. Let me tell you why. I never minded pushing Dorothy and her manual chair anywhere she wanted to go but she did, at least some. She said she never felt independent when she had to be pushed through stores, restaurants or what have you. As for me, the problem with the manual chair was that I always had to stop for doors that don't open automatically. If no one held the door open for us, I would have to open the door myself and awkwardly push Dorothy and the chair on through it while she did her best to help with the one good leg she has and I held the door open until she got through it. Once inside I had to go everyplace she went, of course. Furthermore, I couldn't use a shopping cart because I couldn't push one of those and the wheelchair too. It was all do-able but somewhat inconvenient. With the power chair, once I have it outside of our SUV and unfolded, Dorothy can get in and go anywhere she wishes. If she wants to browse one part of Costco while I browse another area, she can do so. If I lose sight of her I can call her on her cell phone or she can call me. And of course I can use a cart to put items in just like we did pre-stroke. It may sound simple and even trite but it makes a huge difference for use. We go out more often because it is easier and more enjoyable. In short, this chair is wonderful and well worth the $2,500 price. Everywhere we go people take notice of the chair. Not many have seen one for some reason even though they been around for several years. I'm not sure why except that they are travel chairs and I don't think insurance usually pays for them. To me they are a great, mostly undiscovered treasure and I am forever indebted to Strokewife for telling me about them. The chairs even look good and are far more compact than a manual chair. Dorothy has a regular power chair, by the way, but it weighs more than 200 pounds and thus cannot be transported without installing one of those lifts on the back of our vehicle. While we could do that, it would be less than ideal in that we would still have to get the chair from inside our house to the garage, which requires use of a portable ramp. Once again, it is do-able but not convenient and thus discourages usage. Another option would be one of those full-size power travel chairs that can be disassembled into three pieces so as to be stored in the back of a car or SUV. That would work but assembling and disassembling a full-size power wheelchair is not exactly convenient. With the foldable chair that we bought, you just pull it out of the vehicle and open it. No leg rests to install, no parts to assemble, no nothing. The battery is lightweight and is based on the technology long used by the computer industry. The 45-pound total weight of the chair is a bit heavier than you might think but I can handle it fine and I am 73 years old. Women my age might have more trouble, so everyone should keep that in mind. Then again, anyone who manages to load and unload a manual chair could certainly handle this one. I'm telling you folks all of this because this kind of wheelchair might do as much to improve the quality of your lives as it has done for ours. I can't overstate what a difference it makes. Going out and getting around is so much simpler and easier than it was prior to our purchase of this chair. It has literally been a life changer for us just as it was for my friend Strokewife and her husband. We leave it in the back of our SUV so it is always loaded and ready to go. There are several brands of these chairs on the market and I have no way of comparing them. Ours is called Foldawheel and it is sold on the manufacturer's website, Wheelchair88.com, as well as on Amazon. We bought the smaller chair in the series because my wife is not large. It's plenty big for her and can even transport me a test drive showed. All I can tell you is that we have found no problems with the chair or the company in the 3 months since our purchase. The company has been easy to reach and responsive when we've had questions. And their shipping was flawless and fast. I can't vouch for the other manufacturers but I have no reason to think they wouldn't be fine too. So there, I've said it. You all know what I know and if you think this kind of chair would be as good for you as it has been for my wife and me, I wish you the very best. Add Blog Entry Manage Blog SORT BY
  13. Your marriage probably had problems before your health issues arose and now those issues are magnified by those problems. Both you and your wife are afraid, you because of the anxiety of health problems and she because of the stress of losing her dad and now having her husband's health in doubt early into marriage. I think therapy is a very good idea and I hope it works. But I also hope you attend to your health problems. Your strokes were very recent and seem to get worse each time. If you have another one you could wind up permanently disabled. Then your wife, who is already struggling tp cope with your health and her own issues, would have to provide constant care and/or assistance for you. If your relationship is still weak it might well be destroyed at that point. After all, you've only been married four years, right? Presumably this is not the first marriage for either of you so you already face an uphill battle for marital success. I know that in my case the fact that my wife and I have been married for more than 50 years and had a very good marriage before she had a stroke has made it much easier for me to be her caregiver/assistant for more than three years now. I never resent having to do that, never have an urge to escape, never feel cheated. Instead I feel very fortunate that the stroke that significantly disabled her physically wasn't worse and better yet that I still have her in my life with her speech and mind intact. My guess is that your wife would have a great deal of difficulty performing the same role in your life that I perform in my wife's. I hope you are able to discuss that with her. But I also hope that danger will make your committed to taking the very best care of yourself so that you don't have another stroke. First, find out with certainty what caused your strokes and then work like the dickens to prevent yet another one. A common cause is atrial fibrillation, which I assume was one reason your doctor had you wear a Holter monitor for two days. Be advised that my wife wore such a monitor too and no Afib showed up but then we went to a university medical center and saw a stroke expert who prescribed the monitor for a full month. It took only 8 days for Afib to show up. My wife now takes the anticoagulant Xarelto to lower the odds of her having another stroke. There are no guarantees but at least we are playing defense now that we know the culprit. Not knowing the cause of her stroke was very stressful for both of us. We felt as if we were going around with a loaded pistol cocked and pointed at her head. I'm not quite sure if any of our experience has any implications for you and your wife. I am not even sure what kind of stroke you had, the bleed kind or the clot kind. But I do know that you need to seek the very best medical care that you can find in order to lower the odds of having another stroke. By the way, I'm not sure you were wise to quit taking statin drugs altogether. There are many different kinds of those drugs and if you keep trying them you may well find one you can tolerate. I did and the one I take now causes no problems whatsoever. Your cholesterol seems quite good now but, remember, what matters are ratios, not raw numbers, so just because LDL (bad cholesterol) is low doesn't mean your overall heart health is good. Listen to your cardiologist. If you don't think he is trustworthy, find a new one. Good luck with all that confronts you. You have a lot on your plate for sure. But with thought and hard work I feel confident that you can navigate it all successfully. A powerful step in the right direction would be to get your marriage squared away.
  14. RonA

    October 18

    It may sound trite but it is good advice nonetheless: Don't focus on what you lost, focus on what you still have. Take care. --Ron Alridge
  15. Sue, many thanks for caring not just for your late husband but for others affected by stroke who flock to this web site. I truly wish you the best of everything as you move on to the next chapters of your life. Just be sure you live it to the fullest. Take care. --Ron Alridge