This has been an up and down few days. For some reason my seizures are back. It seems though like I can tell when they are going to come on, even before I feel the affects. Is that weird? It is almost psychic. I
I started a new round of cognitive therapy based upon the findings in my neurophychological testing a couple weeks ago. I really like this therapist. I had her before, she is really on the ball, professional and caring. I have not had any sessions with her since about January of this year and she has called a couple times to see how I'm doing. Also she seems to understand what I want from my therapy. I think the test results helped with this to. I want to develop tools that will allow me m
Our son came over last night. He is becoming quite the traveler. He got home from Mexico last week, he was studying Spanish there. This week he will travel to meet his girlfriend in Iowa than travel with her family to Florida. Her family is having a family reunion and one of her cousins is in the military and going to Iraq. Then he will drive back with them and then back to Denver. He will be here a short time before leaving for school. It is always nice when the kids come over. Sometime
OK when we become strokers we have to get used to a few things. We hear a lot of medical professionals being very objective and conservative telling us we can't do things. Our family and friends are very supportive and sometimes they gently let us know that we are expecting too much of ourselves right now. We take tests that "prove" to us we are not as smart, fast, responsive, strong.... whatever as we were before. We have to learn to take all that in stride as we discover what our "new norm
Well not really but we did a lot of birthday celebrating yesterday. Of course we celebrated the birth of this great and wonderful country as we always do. However, it worked out that we also celebrated the birthdays of both our kids to. Our daughter is 22 and our son is 20. WOW and you know what. We are so proud of them both. They each have their different lives and styles and couldn't be more opposite but I just love being around them, hearing about their lives. They both do so well the
:furious: Well CRAP!! :furious:
:furious: What is the deal? :furious:
:furious: Can't a guy catch a break? :furious:
Last week I went through neuro-psychological testing. My wife and I went into the Dr's office in order to discuss the results. OK one HUGE silver lining is that my language skills are very good. That is why I can still talk and write pretty good (some may not think so). The bad news is that most the other stuff, the stuff I rely on, is not so good. I was tested exha
Well it appears I'm not the only blogger in the family. Our oldest daughter has a blog on MySpace. You can find it here. WARNING it is not for the faint of heart.
Our daughter works for her grandfather on her biological moms side in a catering business. If you check out the website you will see that she lives the Goth Lesbian lifestyle. I'm not sure if that is the correct way to put it but she will let me know if not. Sometimes I think that she thinks there is more conflict between s
The only survivor of a shipwreck was washed up on a small, uninhabited island. He prayed feverishly for God to rescue him. Every day he scanned the horizon for help, but none seemed forthcoming. Exhausted, he eventually managed to build a little hut out of driftwood to protect himself from the elements, and to store his few possessions.
One day, after scavenging for food, he arrived home to find his little hut in flames, with smoke rolling up to the sky. He felt the worst had happened, an
I better stop this or I'm not going to fit any of my clothes. For some reason the last week or so I just can't stop eating. I haven't started a new medicine so that is not the reason. I literally eat all day until my stomach sticks out and hurts. Last night my wife bought two bags of chocolate chip cookies, the soft kind, by 10 AM today I had eaten both bags. I even eat when I'm not hungry. In fact it seems like my will power is less when I'm the fullest. I'll be so full I feel like I'm g
The idea of me becoming what I used to be is looking more and more like a breakout or an escape. It has been over 8 months since my strokes. I'm coming to grips that my cognitive deficits are going to take much much longer than I thought to get back or I maybe not at all. In my life as an engineer I used to do some pretty complex Algebra in my head and translate it to code. I could even do simple Calculus and translate it to code (the telecom geeks really love their math). My wife got me so
Wow I have not been here for a very very long time.
One big peace of news I have is that my doctor took me off coumadin (sp?) :happydance:. I guess he is satisfied the way my artery is healing. If he is happy so am I. Now I'm on Plavix. It is so nice not to go in to the office for the ProTime test and I can eat greens now. You know I never realized how much I liked things like salads until the Dr. said not to eat them. I'll probably go back to taking them for granted now.
Our
I have become something that I can't see how my wife can stand. I'm not technically a real pack rat, saving everything, but I am in I guess an isolated way. There are three places in our house, my chair in our family room, the desk in our computer room and my side of the bed which are sometimes junk piles. It is so wierd. I don't think I notice stuff like that anymore until someone points it out to me. But just look at a place where I spend any time and there are piles of magazines, books,
OK I'd be willing to bet, that do to the title, this blog entry gets more views than any of my others. But this isn't about sexy or revealing pictures this is about incredible science working with medicine.
Last week I had a CT and CTA of my head and neck. Just to check the status of my arteries at six months after my strokes more than anything. After the procedure we asked if we could get a copy of the image. To be honest we thought we would get one image that looked like an xray. Whe
Well it is official. Today, April 22, my wife and I had lunch with the Director of the office I work out of and I am no longer employed. Is this good or is it bad? I guess I have not decided yet. But there is nothing I can do about it. Being still "technically" employed gave me one more normal thing to hold on to. Now I'm not sure how I feel.
One thing is kind of nice. I have known this day was coming for about 5 months. As it got closer and closer it bothered me more. Now this isn
I was just thinking about what I was doing a year ago. Of course I was employed, working as a senior engineering consultant at a big telecom company. I was just entering the prime of my career and the hieght of my earning potential. Which is a fancy way of saying I finally new what I was talking about at work and I could afford a $30 bottle of wine once in a while.
My wife and I would get up early and go for bike rides before work. She was looking forward to the local Bike to Work Day.
What a wierd thing. Ever since the end of January I have been struggling with feeling very very sick. Each day was filled with nausea, headache, dizziness, EXTREME fatigue and on and on. I went from spending two hours on my stationary bike to getting out of breath when I walked up stairs. I would sit in one room and not go get a glass of water because I didn't have the energy. Sometimes if felt like i was having to work to get my chest muscles to breath for me.
Well the day before yest
Last night my wife, me and my sister in law took my mother in law out for her birthday. We went to Outback Steakhouse. I made a complete pig of myself on a slab of rib-eye steak that should have fed a small country. We mostly eat fish and chicken because we watch fat and cholesterol among other things. One thing is for sure though. Since we don't go out to eat that often, when we do I toss the rules out the window.
Hey an update on my ESPN Fantasy Baseball team The Blake Street Bayin
It seems that today I am "updating" past blogs. Then I realize it has been a long time since I blogged at all. We are not sure what is going on but I have been pretty sickly the last couple of weeks. I'm sure it will pass.
Well we got an email from my boss that he would like to meet my wife and I for lunch on the 19th or 20th. That means that he wants to meet us on my 6 months since my stroke date. My company told me when all this started that they will hold my job for 6 months so I'm
Well they are not engaged!! I never did get an answer from our son about the "meaning" of the ring but it is less than I thought it might be. We talked to both our son and his girlfriend on Easter. She actually ASKED to talk to us. That impresses me. When my wife is on the phone I just about die when she puts me on. I'm not a great phone talker. I come from a long line of men who don't talk on the phone.
Easter weekend was sooooooo beutiful here at the foot of the Rockies. I love th
Our son is a sophmore at a Catholic university. He recently sent us an email that he was getting his girlfriend a claddagh ring for Easter. Of course I sent an email back... "What is a claddagh ring?". He repsonded, "something fun for you to look up". So now he is interested in helping me exercise my brain. Anyway I did Google it. From the information I found it is an Irish custom, his girlfiend is Irish. The ring can be anything from friendship to the "traditional Irish wedding ring". S
Oct 18, 2005 was the day I had the first of my 4 or 5 strokes. Oct. 19, 2005 was the first day I missed work because of them. Therefore, April 19, 2006 is the 6th month I will be out of work and the day that my employer will become my former employer. I was a consulting software engineer. I worked mostly with Enterprise Java applications for the telecom industry. It is now obvious to me that I will not be able to be back at work before my 6 month date. It is my employers policy to terminat
Being a computer geek all my life, at least my past life. I have come to know that the "readme" file in an application, utility, file structure etc. can be the most useful file there is. It can save hours of work by offering information that may not be obvious.
This is the readme "file" for my blog.
Everybody please note that I blog a lot... a lot more than can be seen. Many of my posts I leave in draft form (as suggested by somebody here). It could be a long time or never that I f
This is to much so I have to share it.
I have never been a huge baseball fan. However I watched some of the World Baseball Classic. I found that baseball is one of the few sports I can watch because it doesn't move to fast for me to process; forget basketball, hockey and even football.
Anyway yesterday, Tuesday, I did a search on our Tivo for Rockies Baseball. I live in Colorado so the Rockies are our team. I found a game was just starting so I turned it on. They were playing Ariz
I have read some about this on Stroke Network. But I guess as time has gone on it means more to me. What do people mean when they say "You don't look like you had a stroke"? I want to say thank you but I had 4 and maybe 5. For some reason when people hear you had a stroke they expect physical dissabilites. I am so lucky and blessed that I don't really have any. Oh sure I lost about 25% of my visual field, my balance is off and I usually feel like I have the flu. Otherwise though I'm not s
I have never been one to complain about how I feel. Usually in my life when I am sick or injured my nature has been to play it down and not let people on to what has happened or what I feel. I think that goes back to my youth, as it does for a lot of men. When I was young both playing sports around the neighborhood and in organized leagues I was always told to "Shake it off" or "Work it off" or "gut it out" or the ever popular "dig deep". I didn't know where I should have been digging or for
