recovery from stroke or inch worm
Entry posted by lharrison
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hi there as you know i have experiance a stroke, and it has been about 8 years going on 9 yearsm the reason that i am telling you this is so that i can demostrate how slow recovery really is , but it does happen, and i know that i will have the room to tell you this as oppose to a post, anyway day one march 19th 2001 major change in my life went to the hospital came home , in a wheel chair, and having difficulties bathing myself and dressing my self foot would not cooperate so fi find that it is easier for me just to sleep with my shoes on, after many agonizing soent wondering what am i going to do now, i use to be a cook before my stroke now i am lucky just to be able to feed myself so my caregiver would cut the food that i am going to be eating, how humiliated is this , i use to be a marothon runner i have run two marathon, now i have to be push in a wheel chair if i want to go any ehere, how humiliated is this?the only thing that i have going for me is the fact that i am right hanbded and i had a left side stroke, and then i started to think hey thats not to bad at least i can do what i always could do as long as i did it with my right handed and then comes the time that i dreaded, time to take a shower so i had grabrails installed in my house and i had a large shower installed and i put a bench on the floor to sit and then i installed a shower handle that will just hang there so i could hold it with my right hand while i shower my self and hey i did it and then comes the disfficuty dressing my self and not wearing my shoes to bed and being able to put my shoes back on wow!a land mark i learn how to shower i am learning how to fress my self and i did it now for my next goal learning how to walk so i thought well i love to run, so i will just try to walk not run, and not far only about 1 kilometer, but i did it it was so hard for me but with doing it every day day in and day out it was getting easy, and it was then that i decided to try it with out a cane wow!can you believe it a guy who couldn"t dress himself was hauled all over the place in a wheel chair was actually thinking about going for a walk, WITHOUTa cane wow!its not that humiliated now, and i did start to notice little things like when i sit down, or stand up i am staeting to do it straighter up and straighter down, i seem to remember having to struggling to get up or sit down, but not so munch now, and hey it just dawned on me my left foot doesn"t turn in so munch like it use to and i don"t have to wear a brace to keep it from turning over , and then i am thinking hum i guess i am getting better but boy is it slow like an inch worm, and then i was ask if i would like to be a stroke mentor, they tol;d me that i would have to go to class to learn how to do it and to get it right so i did that and i graduated in order to be a stroke mentor me at 50 years old imagine that hey i am not doing to bad after all and now i got my first stroke survicer to actully be a manto and so we went out and just talk about life have a cup of coffie go for walk and just talk about how we feel and then he would staart to ask me questions about what i did to overcome that so i would tell him and before you know it we wre walking alot more than a kilometer and just not really thinking about munch and then i started torealize that hey only like 5 years i was in a wheel chair was sleeping with my shoes on because i couldn"t get my shoes back on now i am dressing and i don"t even think about it and getting quicker, not that it is importantjust to let you know that i am getting better, and yes i have been working very hard but it is worth it i have a great cargiver a wonderful wife and 2 fantastic kids, and 1 grandson, and finally i am thinking yes life did throw me a bid curve, and no i didn"t like that at all but i o have one thing to say about recovery from a stroke, it does happen it can happen but unfortunitly not as fast as you would like it to be , the struggles there are many , but it is actually a nice feeling because what i have learned from being a stroke surviver is don"t be hard on yourself just do the best that you can , and i am sure that if you look at what you once were you will find that you to have vome a long way and you have only just begun , and this is my journey and i am sure that you will have other stories of your own, i like to think it is like peeling an onion on your recovery , i just wish that i copuld wave a majic wand and make it all better for you, but i can"t you will have to make this journey on your own, and day by day month by month year bt year you will finf that it all adds up and then it won"t be that humiliated oir that bad i am writing this to let you know that we are all struguling and that you are not alone it just takes so long that you forgot hust how far you have come .
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