(Originally posted May 17, 2009)

Since the stroke, I have several distinct lives that I'm struggling to integrate. There's Erin the mother, Erin the wife, Erin the friend, Erin the worker, Erin the stroke wife (which encompasses the role of Erin the advocate), Erin the author and Erin the nonprofit founder. Not to mention Erin the photography business owner, which has totally been pushed to the background. Aside from a few shots of the kids, I haven't taken any photos at all since J.J.'s stroke.

All of the above means that Erin is exhausted and has absolutely no free time. Zilch. Zero. Nada. But what do I do? There isn't any give room. And often there are conflicts between the different aspects of my life, like right now when I should be at Eli's tae kwon do championship and instead have spent the last 30 minutes drafting an email to convince a language researcher in Virginia to accept J.J. into her clinical study, which would give J.J. more speech therapy.

In other news, J.J.'s latest round of blood work came back with everything important looking perfect. Glucose, thyroid function, iron all awesome. Only things that were outside of ranges were just a smidge low and can either be explained by his medication (calcium) or don't really indicate a problem (creatinine and liver enzymes).

We have discovered that J.J.'s recall of the last two or three years has some holes. The biggest gaps we've found are new songs (he doesn't remember having heard them before) and facial recognition of people he's met recently. If given a name, he knows who the person is and what relationship he has with them, but he can't remember what they look like. The exception to this rule appears to be if the person has a unique feature. For instance, J.J. says he can remember his coworker Kevin because of his red hair. But for the rest of you, if J.J. looks bewildered, please introduce yourself. Once he hears your name he'll know who you are.

J.J.'s making noise about not having his surgery. He's afraid to go off his blood thinners for the few days necessary, since he's afraid he'll have another stroke. I've reminded him that it practically required an act of Congress to set up this surgery and everyone from his neurologist and cardiologist to his family doctor, etc. have all agreed the benefits outweigh the risks, but he's still reticent. He's scheduled to go in for his weekly blood pressure check at our family doctor's office tomorrow, so I've asked him to bring up the subject so he can get a little extra reassurance. Ultimately I can't make him have the surgery, but with him only being 33 he's probably going to need that knee in the future. So we'll see what happens.

Alright, enough. I must get out the door to see my boy compete. He's determined to take first place in sparring today. Keep your fingers crossed!