today is my 3 month anniversary of my 3rd stroke. it was as the other two about 2 years ago mild.

and today I extended my walk for the first time since aug 5th to my friend Donald's home. his house is on my walking route. it is about 1.5 miles from my house and was not overly tired. I am happy with that and the fact that my stamina seems to be improving slightly. is it at the prestroke level. no. but it is getting better.

for the last month my non stroke arm has been in a bit of pain above the elbo. I think I injured it in trying to start my chain saw and it has been a couple of months and it gets a little better, like yesterday, and then I lifted some weight with it and lo and behold back in pain today. either I will learn or die first!(lol)

my rate of having these strokes for the past 2 years has been 1 every 6 months. I am taking my meds now (bp and statin) - had discontinued them about a year ago - and have put a bit of fat in my diet. - my diet had been a low fat vegan diet and now my fat content is about 200 calories -- diet ~2000 cal.

I can hope that this will make a difference but I will also not be terribly surprised if it doesn't(lol)

my legs are definitely not as stable as they were prestroke and when our roads get snow covered my walk is going to have a big challenge. will take that as it comes.

thinking back on my first stroke, I went to the emergency room that nite (stroke previous nite) and they did a cat scan which didn't show anything -too soon, later mri had a small dot) but they did come back with the report that my brain had atrophied. not unusual for 70 year olds. I can't help but feel that I have lost significantly more brain matter in this atrophy than in the combination of all of my 3 strokes.

I have mentioned this I think before but will go into it again as I noticed a vegetarian thread recently. and did not want to post what I will say here there.

for the past 20 years I have followed a low fat vegan diet. (I allow caffeine alcohol and salt.) and I have walked about 3-4 hours per day during this time. and I still had strokes. two possibilities. 1) my living choices caused my strokes, or 2) they kept the strokes mild. (or 3 they had nothing to do with my strokes) I have looked online for either low fat or vegan and strokes. the only thing I could find was a slight increase in bleeding strokes from a fat restricted diet. my strokes were not bleeding so if they did cause the strokes, I am alone in the universe!

I do almost feel like an imposter on this website. there are so many others with such significant alterations to their lives as a result of their strokes that a comparison with my difficulties and theirs is not possible. I can only hope that any support and encouragement I can extend to them will be taken as from one person who although are not where they are can understand and empathize with what they are going through. to those people and to the others I do thank you for allowing me on this web site and for the support that you have given to me in these past months.

david