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Miscellaneous Meanderings


DeanS

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Well, a couple of days have passed and... first i have to say a huge THANK YOU to all of you who left very thoughtful and wise comments. Each of you said something that i really needed to hear and understand. I have always believed that the relationships with the kids and being marathons... not sprints. So i understand that they will understand everything as time goes by and we will reconcile in their time. And that is so okay. I also look at the hundreds (or thousands) of the struggles of others on this board and have to say in some ways, i feel a little sheepish for airing my own problems which seem mild in comparison. Again i feel humbled and grateful for their sharing and experience.

 

Yesterday was a very slow day for me. I woke without much energy but it was okay as i had nothing pressing and no appointments to keep. About all i managed to do was shovel the sidewalk (living in Canada) and that took about all the energy i had. Then i hit the recliner for the balance of my day....

 

For the first time in years being off because of the strokes, i find myself having the time to think about things and often these thought are inevitably about me pre stroke versus post stroke or who a was then versus who i am now. Sometimes these thought create anxieties but more often they don't. I think that i have done a pretty good job of accepting my strokes but i find when i try to do thing that i used to do, like compose a letter or or solve problems quickly i get a little down on myself because i just can't do them as quickly. It takes me multiple amount of time more to accomplish even the simplest of tasks. My short term memory is gone. On the upside, this may be good cause i always have something to talk about... again and again! I am also single-minded now. In other words i can only focus on one task at a time and it feels like it take all of my concentration to keep this focus. The old me often used tasks to deal with multiple things....

 

One of the things that really bothers me is being asked a question or wanting to respond to a statement and it takes me sooo long to form the response and get it out that the other person attempts to answer for me. Very frustrating. Also, if i have an appointment i always have to write down questions or statements that i need to ask or say or i will forget them. The problem is when i think of these things i need to ask or say i tell myself that i should write them down but when i get around to writing them down i've already forgotten what it was! I gotta come up with a workaround for this.

 

Where was i...? Oh yeah..., miscellaneous meanderings....

 

I live alone which has its good points but i was never a terrific house keeper and man the dust bunnies are turning into dust drifts (my dogs don't seem to mind so maybe it isn't a big deal). I don't seem to have the motivation to do the basic things until i basically have to. Laundry used to be once a week... now its as necessary. Same with dishes. I only tend to do things when i'm down to the last clean dish or sock and then out of frustration, i'm forced to do them. On the other hand i could blame it all on my short term memory LOL!

Really, i need to come up with workarounds. Maybe i'll post it in stroke deficiencies....

 

I think about the future a lot... what i won't recover and what i will. Will i be able to work again or not? Somehow i am not particularly distressed by this issue though i hate to think that i won't be productive anymore. I have always based a lot of my sense of myself on my job(s). I suppose that (as has been said before) that time will resolve this problem. I feel fortunate in that i have a lot of experience in a number of areas and my long term memory is good so i still have that going for me....

 

Now i have to go and get groceries before i me energy fades... if i could only remember where i put that darn list...!

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Good evening Dean, thanks for understanding.

  You mentioned another common problem that we share and that is our slowness of speech.  At least we are slow when compared with other that we are around.  I may have a million words in my mind to say but getting them out, past my tongue, is very hard indead.  I'm frustrated by the fact that I can get 2 or 3 words out and other ppl (especially family) squach or talk for us because they think they know what we want to say.  So I just stay quite and thats most of the time.

  Thank you again, take care.  Ed

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