In the 17 years since Ray's first stroke and the eight years since his major strokes in 1999 I have experienced a wide range of events. Some of them have been good, some of them not so good. All of them have had a lesson for me to learn. However much at times I have resented the changes I know that I CAN change and eventually do. A large Sydney store chain had the motto: "As I change I grow." and there is a certain amount of sense in that. Change does bring about growth and a new steadiness and strength of character. That is why people think as they come to acceptance that they have GAINED something from a bad experience.

In the last few months I have been reluctant to post comments on some threads. As a caregiver for over eight years now I am WAY past some of the emotions that are hot and strong when your survivor first strokes. That first flush of anger, those flares of resentment, those screams of frustration and cries of "why me, why him?" are mere echoes now. As each critical event occurs though I go through the anger, denial, plea bargaining, researching, arguing, negotiating and eventual acceptance. Each time maybe it has a little less impact, as I am a little more cynical or resigned or whatever to the fact that life does not always go the way I want it to.

Yesterday I took Ray to his Scallywags BBQ. I had agreed to go with one of the other survivors wives to do lunch. I don't know this lady well but thought it would be okay. And it was. But she talked probably for four hours straight. I think a dam of words were released in that time, some of the things from early in her life, others since her husband stroked in 2002. The post-stroke events echoed some of ours but I was interested that she had chosen an entirely different way of dealing with stroke to what I had done.

When Ray stroked in 1990, he had six days in hospital, six months of rehabilitation and went back to work, I did some retraining and about a year later went back to work too. But Ray had huge fatigue issues so although he worked I took over most of the things he had done at home. This allowed him to sleep a lot and we still had a fairly good life. I worked full-time for a while and then part-time. He worked full-time so we had enough money for a few holidays, a couple of them trips to England and Europe. So we had a few of the years that we had dreamed would happen once we had raised our kids. Then he had the 1999 strokes and you know the story from there.

My friend from yesterday when asked if she would be leaving work to look after her husband said she wouldn't and has used various ways of supervising his rehabilitation and recovery and looking after his welfare since. She talked to me a lot about the frustrations of trying to keep up a high pressure job and knowing that while she is doing this any number of things could be happening at home. I can see that would be so. It is hard to work and worry and that is what she is doing.

She has also volunteered with our main stroke group and I think looking at her few people would see the difficulty of what she is trying to balance in life, the full-time work that pays off the mortgage, the role of caregiver, wife, mother and daughter that she feels she is failing in. It certainly is a juggling act and I really admire her for it. But I can also see that sometimes because she seems to be coping so well people fail to see that she has any problems at all.

We need to be more truthful, upfront and honest in our words and actions so sometimes the people who should be caring about us can realise the price we pay for trying to do so much. Particularly the siblings of the survivor and his/our children. We should not appear to be doing so well that they can withhold the help and support we sometimes so desperately need. Thanks to her I now feel I have a better grip on the plight of the working caregiver and the added frustration that that brings to the caregiving equation. I don't think I would have had the option to leave Ray at home with his deficits so I didn't have to make that choice.

Last week our northern family were attending a conference at a city called Mackay about eight hours drive south of where they live in Cairns. On Friday morning's news were reports that Mackay was flooded after receiving eight inches of rain in a five hour period! Boy was that a deluge or what? So about 8am I rang Shirley on her mobile phone and she told me that luckily they had left the previous afternoon and journeyed six hours before stopping for the night so they were well out of the flood area. I was so thankful and with my mind at ease went about my days work.

But her mother-in-law didn't ring and spent all day worrying about where they were, how they were getting on etc. By the time they got home and she was able to contact them she was in a real state. Kind of reminds me of what we all do when we don't get the information we need to make right decisions -- go into panic mode. The fact that she is still in the grieving process for Craig's Dad, her beloved Don who died only last November probably added to the panic she felt too. It is hard to be rational sometiimes when a little voice in your head is saying: "What is going wrong now? Why is this happening to me?"

There will always be some little things going wrong in our lives, sometimes a series of them that contrive to push us over the edge into insanity. But we must remember we are strong, made so by the mountains we have climbed over on the way to where we are now.