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Heather was here

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Ups and downs of Home care Support and government funding

Hi All I haven't blogged for ages, thought it was time for a quick update.   I've been self funded for all my care and therapy since my stroke but with the shutdowns here in early 2020 I was forced into the realisation that I am not as independent as I thought I was.  So I finally applied for government assistance with health, self care and therapy costs through our NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme). It's been a roller coaster over the last 14 months getting all the informati

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heathber in update

Running Group Today - time to unlearn

I've just got back from today's Running Program Session.  This is the second one I've been to since the toe surgery. Last week I had pain after 3 sets of stairs so we had to stick to low impact, low stretch activities.  Today I started with 6 minutes on the cross trainer. followed by 10 sets of stairs with no discomfort at all. Did my total gym left leg squats and some "calf raises" also all fine so then we moved across to the mini tramp.  Once on the tramp Hannah got serious about getting me up

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Holidays and new surgery/therapy - general catch up

Hi All I've been so slack with the blog. I meant to update you all on my holiday over a month ago  But life got crazy busy. So here's a general catch up.   I had a 3 week holiday in July that was more like 4 weeks by the time you add in travel time etc.  ( it's a 22 hour flight with a stop in LA to change plane and you cross the date line so you lose a day coming back, although you gain a day on the way over so I left on 4th July and arrived on 4th July.) On arrival in NY NY we had 10

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Sucess - well that's what I'm calling it

This is tiny update to boast.   I finally did my first "run throughs" at Running Group on Monday.  I've been going to Running group since Dec 2015 so it's taken 18 months to meet this first part of the goal. It's now just over 12 months since the cast came off after my leg surgery. I still can't really get up on my toes, so this was probably not really running which actually needs "flight phase" but it's a good approximation and starting point for improvement. So I'll call it "running"

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Surfing today!!! :)

So today was a surfing day. The one last month got called off because a whale carcass had washed up on a beach a bit close to where the event was scheduled, and the authoraties were being nutty about possible sharks. OK so the risk of a larger shark being in the area was increased but REALLY it had gone from minimal to minimal + a tiny bit. However the local papers were being stupid about it so they cancelled our day. Not because the risk was significant but because the publicity if somethin

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A busy but satisfying weekend

After being reminded that I meant to try to get some more social contacts after a thread from Marcia (Newlease) reminded me. I got onto "meetup" last week and today I went to a creative craft afternoon. "Christmas card collage" It was held at an inner suburban cafe, 8 people I'd never met before sitting at a big table cutting and pasting and chatting just because. Some of the women were incredibly creative and I was much less impressed with my own efforts but I'll certainly do it again. The subj

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Holiday time and status update

Hi all, just a quick status update before I go off on a months holiday. I'm not expecting to have internet for most of it, and where I do it'll be on the smart phone, so not easy to do, I don't expect to be checking in here.   I'm heading off on a 3 week cruise from Sydney to Perth - over the top. Then a week in Perth before I fly home. Jade will be staying at home on her own, with the cat sitter coming in every day. She'll be so cross with me but she'd hate being in the boarding cattery e

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So the leg cast is off

Hi folks, Surgery was done on May 5th, and they took the lower leg cast off this morning, How I'll get through this again but longer if they do the tendon transfer I don't know. 4 weeks nearly sent me demented.   The surgery was planned to be calf lengethen, rec-fem lengthen and tib ant split tendon transfer. But once they started they found that the calf was too tight and while they lengthened as much as they could in the calf, if they do the tendon tranafer on a too tight calf it either

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So Surgery is going to happen

Saw the orthopedic surgeon this morning. He's a very nice man who took over an hour to explain all the things he wants to do and to answer all my "silly" questions.     The result is I am going to go ahead with it and I'm feeling pretty confident that I can manage this, although it's not going to be easy.   He want's to do quite a few things 1. Detach the rectus muscle at the pelvis, it will then pull back into the leg by about 4cms and will grow back and reattach at the normal point, bu

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Just a new years catch up

Hi folks been slack with the Blog updates, so here's a quick update on me for the new year.   I've been going to the Running program at the rehab center for 6 weeks now, and it's a seriously full on session. It must be doing something as my legs ache the next day. I'm sort of glad I can only get enough time off work to do one session a week. The people who manage 2 or 3 sessions a week have my respect. I'm finding it hard enough to do this one session and still keep up my other activities.

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New Specialist after 5 years

Well, I have a new Rehab Specialist. I told my physio I want to learn to run and he said the expert for that is Gavin who was one of his colleagues a while back. Gavin did his Phd on returning Stroke survivors to running. And he's got a program based at a local hospital. So I contacted Gavin and explained my situation. It turns out my private Health insurance, which has been pretty useless so far in my stroke recovery will cover his program and the linked rehab specialist. So I got the ref

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Hanging Rock walk

I did my big test walk yesterday. I promised myself that I would get to the top of Hanging Rock before I left for my holiday. It's a good test of my capabilities and a way to asses the impact of this sort of activity. This is where we went https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanging_Rock,_Victoria   I had 4 support crew in the end, several other friends had to cancel at the last minute.   We got to the Summit in just under 1.5 hours via the "stairs" route. We came back down via the "ramp" path, wh

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Satisfying week - kicking goals and educating others

So it was one of those weeks, I'm a bit tired but feeling very satisfied.   It was a big walking week. I'm getting in practice/training for a mediterainian cruise holiday. I want to be able to make the most of the shore trips, so I've been doing progression walking training for the last 3 months. I pushed too hard early on but we are now getting to the pointy end and I did pretty well with the load this week. And as well as meeting 95% of my walking goals over the week, I did the barbell dea

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