Carol,

Beautiful blog. It does seem that our society tends to "judge" or "compare" diseases and illnesses. More though, is being said about stroke awareness. It's about time although still far behind. There is still so much "unknown" territory of the brain. I too sometimes have short term memory isssues when my brain far-s - at least it doesn't smell)

Why not try to keep a daily journal - jotting down everything that happpens - good as well as bad. You might discover more good than bad if you're honest with yourself. Or....increase your blogging if you can.

Good luck, chin up, and (((HUGS)))

Gosh I can really relate to you!

I have two sets of two worlds. My first set is like yours - I have trouble walking and people reply "oh, me too". Really? So it is just normal and not just because my left leg doesn't know what to do? bah!

My second is that 'normals' can't relate to me and 'strokers' can't either - I don't feel welcome in either world. I am too broken for the normal world and too normal for the stroke world. bah!

I can understand because I feel the same way. You said it so elegantly. You are not alone.

Amy

I think there are many of us in the "in between" and have good days and bad. Some days my walking is pretty good, others it is definately worse. I used to call them my "wobbly" days.

There is not much pattern to the days. Fatigue, not sleeping well is a definate factor, I just try to take them as they come..and hope to not have much planned for the wobbly days.

Carol,

I agree totally - we live in a zone that normal people will never understand. Its our reality, but it is literally incomprehensible to the normal.

When people say - that's happens to me too, I want to ask them when they had their stroke - sometimes I truly have to bite my tongue.

By the time I was released from the hospital I was ready to scream at the next medical person who said "you are to young for this to happen to you". If I was too young, then why was I there? Was it just a bad dream and I would wake up and be okay? Another "what not to say" to someone who has just lived through a major event.

I think I finally figured out what it was that I had to accept. I needed to accept that my expectations of what I could do needed to be adjusted to my new reality, with new goals to look forward to. Now, I just have to figure out how to do that...

At the two year point I caved in and started writing to-do lists - I am trying to be realistic about my memory (or lack thereof), yet I am trying to still make it work by doing brain excercises. I just got really tired of beating myself up over forgetting things. On a positive side note to lack of memory - just about every show I watch on tv is new to me - while normal people are watching re-runs on the same channel.

Your entry helped me today, thank you.

Kind regards,

Dickons