My stroke anniversary day is nov 11. I really feel like year number 2 was the year that made a lot of the nuisances of this stroke had started becoming minimal or i've just gotten that other things have taken precedence. Some anxieties have gotten more embedded and others have gotten where I'm more likely to roll with it.

Just got back from Door Cty (came home with a virus, lovely but not real bad) and we had to drive thru the expressway of Milwaukee. I was worse about the height than ever. Closing my eyes and feeling the car swaying (at 65mph, everyone drives so fast! to me now)with the curves was scarier than keeping my eyes open but fixated on my lap, helped me get thru plus my DH keeping his mouth shut with his mantra of 'mind over matter'. Which I shoot back with 'I mind SO IT DOES MATTER". The damn vertigo and not choking up when I discuss something that touches me are MY final frontiers. I do not care how he thinks- if something really scares/terrifies you, it is the most difficult thing to get a handle on..

Every night when I swallow that Plavix and Lipitor, makes me sick that I'm told this will be with me my whole life. Makes me wonder what the drugs will cost by the time I'm 75 considering I'm 44 now.

Feel like I've slowly gotten more involved in real life like I used to know. Today I have to delay the grocery shopping till tomorrow, figure out some other plan for dinner, balance a possible trip for da one kid to the dr., two dental appointments for each kid, make a flute lesson, get them doing their homework and still make youth group by 6:15. Whew makes me pooped thinking about this.

I've gotten to be friends with a gal who is the mom of our daughters new bestest friend this year. She lost her dad to strokes after a few years between them, so I think it makes her feel better to know a survivor and she seems to act fine (to me treats me normal)towards me. We've both had people at school who we tried to reach out toward and who do not reciprocate the gesture and we've both gotten like "whatever" and stopped our stinky thinking of its us and not something going on in their own lives. For whatever reason they don't return whatever gesture is probably for some reason we haven't even thought of like time contraints..so its like some people we reach out to and they reach back in turn and some others not..

I've had lots of little stuff come up over the last few months, like projects and school supplies and clothes to buy, broken washers, broken heating elements on stove the day I'm up to my ying yang with pumpkin bread and blueberry bread(and wow I didn't flip, I just called a friend and asked if she could finish them off for me by cooking them for me, I was actually hosting a coffee of school moms the next day which didn't go as perfect as I wanted but seemed ok anyway inspite little kids visiting who were a pain, a sick son home and constant phone calls), a kid coming down with all the symptoms of lyme disease a month ago, (I felt really good about myself that I had actually remembered without help to keep an eye on a tick bite and it hadn't healed in 10 days and called the ped with his developing symptoms, (symptoms disappeer after 2 weeks and then reappear 6mo lator way worse), so that was like the old days to me, being on top of something. Even a couple of trips to ER for broken fingers due to a football playing boy here. Almost feels like a routine anymore with that kid...First time I had to do this was only a couple months post stroke and felt really weird to me because I remembered how bad of shape I was in when i came into ER in a wheelchair cause my one leg just gave out on me. Really felt deceived by my own body back then.. now I feel like i know the "routine' with this kid better as well as the admitting person!

So its still bothers me a bit to not have it out with the person who caused this for me to have to go thru and letting my anniversary day go by and know that i've let go of my chance at reprise against him, I believe in karma, what goes around comes around. I do not wish ill on him but since he now knows what happened to me, its his to live with...he'll never see me again, and considering that we went to grade school together, his thing to deal with him and his God, I figure...let him wonder how I fared......I'm content with the recovery I've made..so as i can now feel like I'm there for other people..sorry for being so long.. Hope everyone is doing good..