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About this blog

Stoke June 23 2019: Blog to track my recovery

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Balance

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

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Re-pot

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

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Anniversary

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

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New Days

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

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A Little Snow

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

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Freezing

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

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Cold but Dry

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

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new Year , New day

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

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Mince Pies

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

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Starts

"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

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British Breakfast

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

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Broccoli

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

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Peppers

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

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Digging

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

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a Matter of Concentration.

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

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Fences

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,

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