Kind of a chilly week here, not as bad a s Texas though! It has kept me in a bit , but i did manage to get out to the green house aa couple of times. I managed to finish the wiring of the right side of that starts shelving i showed in the blog last week. It required a lot of up and down movement and some time down on my knees reaching under the lowest shelf. Normally that kind of motion would have triggered some major dizziness and it didn't 🙂 However it did tire me quickly. my movement is qui
Continuing my e-entry into a more normal life, i have spent every day bar Sunday in the green house transplanting tomatoes into small individual plots. The effort has now filed 16 trays each of 18 pots. That's 288 plants in all.
My stamina is still a little low and a couple of hours work in the green house has me wobbly and heading for my sofa! Still I seem to recover faster and after a little rest I'm ready to go again.
My other project which is not demanding on my muscl
Well this weeks 'big event' was our 20th anniversary. Usually we would go somewhere a bit special , like last year we took a road trip to Roswell and Carlsbad caverns but this year we had to make the best of it at home in isolation. As many here know we are vegan but we still managed to indulge in a couple of meals that were out of the usual. Deb made me a British breakfast with faux meat sausages.
This was a repeat of my birthday breakfast. For dinner we indulged in cheese burger w
This week was about changing focus onto stuff I can now do again or do new. I still caught myself indulging in my rehab mode, where i judge the quality of movement but less so than a year ago.
So I have been creating a second , and bigger warm place to start seeds. Below your working on it.
Just to the right out of view is my existing 'plant house' in which we already have stated tomatoes. These are due for transplanting to bigger pots this week.
In addition to
A recent snow blizzard created some extra work for me. The roof of a horse barn ah to be well ventilated but that means there is space for snow to enter when blown by strong winds.
This resulted in stalls been filled with melting snow and making the horse bedding wet. So one evening we had to dig wet bedding out of two stalls and replace it.
I decided to do the heavy digging work myself and let Deb drive the tractor to dump the stuff onto out compost piles.
The situa
so this week was rather windy and cold so we hid in the house and indulged in several movies. I'm ready for a bit better weather so I can get to work in the garden. I think I may be levelled off on my recovery, or at least its hard to detect any improvements. I am trying to increase my stamina and have increase my treadmill walk 1% of incline to 6%.I still get just a touch of headiness in new balancing situations.
We awoke yesterday to a covering of snow about 2" or 5 cm. Any precipi
Little noticeable progress on the recovery front. Of course i'm 99% mobile now. The weather has been freezing here like 6F when I feed the horses and staying below 0 during the day.
Just maintaining my 20 min treadmill but am ready to increase gradient. I think I need to introduce some sit-ups to strengthen core muscles. I have reduced my snacking but weight is steady at 185 lb.
Our height here in NE Arizona combined with clear skies makes for low temperatures but yesterday a w
This week has been pretty cold we were at 6F yesterday (-15C) and we stayed below freezing all day. Other that wrapping up well to feed the horse at dawn & dusk we have been hiding way in the house all day. Not good for the diet as I'm working off less and tending to snack more! Still stable at 186lbs.
With the weather shutting down my activity I can't say that I have noticed any particular improvement in motion, but I still do my 20mins at 3mph on a 5.5% grade and it certainly d
Now movement is almost back to normal and is more a matter of fatigue, in that as I get more tired i will get a little more wobbly but only slightly and an increase in concentration will often improve the motion. Still waiting on results of MRA.
So a new year , and hopefully a better one than the last. Though its become apparent that this pandemic will take more effort to beat!
Personally i used to avoid new year resolutions as a set up for failure. I had attempted earlier in
So Christmas has just gone by, my second since stroke. I can't claim any noticeable improvements this week but considering I'm running pretty close to normal unless fatigued , I'm not complaining.
As many of you know, I eat vegan due to plaque and trying to keep my cholesterol down. So Deb out did her self this year with help of some products from Plant Based Meats | The Very Good Butchers – The Very Good Butchers US
It was a very good xmas day, starting with a call from my mum
Little report on the recovery side this week. I had to go down to Phoenix for an MRA, an extended type of MRI.
The magnetic resonance angiography (MRA) scan takes very clear, detailed pictures of the blood vessels, including arteries and veins, using a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machine.
3.5 hr drive down, an hour in the tube, and a 3.5 hr drive back. We needed to set off at 6:30am and got up very early with a planed hour just to kick back and not be rushed, Then Deb opened her
Single digit temperature have restricted project I was attempting to get to but been driven inside changed the focus to a traditional activity which has been neglected for a few years: the making of xmas mince pies!
Stroke wise there's not much to tell measuring progress to date as short falls from normal. Which is itself a progress as this time last year i was still wearing an ankle brace for any extended walking and sleeping a great deal to recover from even moderate effort. Still
My early morning walk to the barn to feed our horses has always been a kind of datum line for my recovery. When I first got home this was a challenging limp which I was not allowed to take other than under the direct supervision of my wife and with the aid of hiking sticks. The other day it dropped to 9F (-13C) and I was moving at a slightly elevated rate of work to shorten the time and get back to the warmth of the house. It suddenly struck me as I went thru that regular routine that I was feel
So I clear improvement form last year. I use thanksgiving as an excuse to put up the Christmas decorations and last year i could just manage to climb the step ladder and then my balance was precarious and i had to use a free hand to steady myself. This year was pretty easy tho I did need a nap after I finished. So while I decorate Deb cooks a big vegan meal this time with a roasted faux beef joint.
Mental attitude has shifted also.. after my stroke i was thinking I'd be happy to make anot
Most weeks during Covid are isolation are very uninteresting, so by Tuesday I'm wondering what to write about. My self commitment to the weekly writing of this blog make me review what progress if any I have been making, which is in itself a good thing! So in this weeks contemplations I realized I still tend to watch and grade most motion I make starting with the walk to the barn every day to fed the horses, however it appears my datum has shifted. A year ago I gauged progress from my paralysis
"He puts his pants on like anyone else, one leg at a time" This phrase popped into my head yesterday as I put my pants on. A year a ago putting my pants on was quite an effort as my left leg was virtually incontrollable. A few moths back I actually managed to pull my pants on while standing, although i needed to hold onto the door jam for support. Yesterday I did it free standing! 🙂 Of course this mean i had to balance standing on one leg at a time for a couple of seconds. So it things like this
So live is pretty good and motion is back for the most part and moving without the concentration it used to take 6 months ago. I still get a little light headed when I enter a balancing challenge from a position that I may not have tried since the stroke. I find I work more naturally and actively but then run out of energy. I find after a certain amount of work I will suddenly get fatigued and muscles are harder to control. Or as I tell Deb, I have gone wobbly. I can return to better control wit
So I'm so close to normal movement that identifying improvement is a challenge. I am moving normally unless fatigued but the easier movement leads me to imbalances quite often. However such are recovered quickly and instinctively. I'm steadily taking on more project work and my stamina is slowly increasing. I tend to work mostly in the mornings and still have a nap in the afternoons but not every day, which is a major improvement from 6 months ago when any exertion would need a nap after to rec
Well another week where I thought i'd have no specific improvement to report. Then yesterday i was caught with my hands full in the tack room of the barn, Feed in one hand and a kitty in the other. I had managed to pen the door and go in but now needed to close it .( The cat is closed in the tack room at night due to coyote and owls) With out thinking I flipped my leg back and kicked it close. I then realised what I had done! I had transferred weight onto one leg, a balancing that I would have n
So another week with nothing specific to report. Moving pretty well with jus the odd minor wobbly. Fells a little like driving a car with a worn steering rack, just need a lot of minor corrections along a trip.
These days it seems I have more to report from the garden. Of course a year ago I was writing gardening off. So we have a big cold front coming in on Monday supposedly down to 22F according to forecast and high probability of snow. So all veg in the out side bed have to be harvested
Here we are on the weekly blog, but little to tell. No identifiable improvements but I am to be getting to do more work than at the beginning of the year so I'm hoping that's a sign of increasing stamina. So we are down in the 30s some mornings lately though still 80S afternoon. That kind of highj dessert swing can let an early frost sneak in so we have been harvesting crops that would get damaged. This weeks main target the peppers.
The various wok loads make it hard to gauge but I
So this week I can't claim to have noticed any specific improvement in motion. I'm moving very well now, which in turn makes it pretty hard to identify such improvements. I still get a little wobbly when tired. What has been noticeable is an increase in stamina. I can now apply myself more ardently to a project task until I get tired an then I go off for a cup of tea. ( How British) Last month I would be done for the day. Yesterday I worked pretty hard harvesting potatoes , had the tea, and then
145/83 BP was a pleasant reading this morning, a bit lower than my average 152/88 ( Remember I have prescribed hypertension) my doctor likes higher BP to push thru my constricted veins. So a natural drop in BP suggest a possible clearing of veins.
The push for normal movement continues but I can't claim to have identified any specific improvements.
This weeks specific project is to harvest the marihuana plants. We are lucky that in AZ we have legal marihuana and I 'm far enough away f
A week of working on projects and some heavy stuff, like lifting those fence panels in to place to finish the north stall running pens, and pounding a few T bars into place, left me a bit tight and stiff at the end of the days. I think I probably got it about right as I was ready to go the next days. Trying to notice returning function is harder now as the returns are pretty subtle. Some time its more a realization that some thing has gone. This week I had a feeling of pressure around my occipu
So this week i haven't had any notice improvements. Though perhaps my stamina is still improving. I have kept up my morning run back from the barn today additional incentive to get back quicker as we were down at 42F. I'm still following the morning ride with some project work. This week it was getting the barns north side stalls ready for winter. Our predominant wind is from the south west , so for the with we move the horse to the lee side. To prep the running pens I had to take fencing down,
