This will be another stroke update, and I have to say that I'm tired of giving them. It will be seventeen months ago in a few days, and it seems like a lifetime. I decided today to start assembling all the heart and stroke related blog posts over the last five years into a single document. I couldn't help but read what I had written so long ago; when you take it all in at once it's overwhelming.
This month marks another anniversary of sorts - the retrial/pretrial of Robert Deer and Mohamed Ali Karim for Jack Beauchamp's murder (Debra, his wife, is my cousin). They had their first court appearance on February 25th - where absolutely nothing was decided except to reconvene on March 11th. Jack's murder was one of the big reasons Laura and I decided to sell the house, take a leave of absence, and tour around the country in the summer of 2006. Turns out that we had to postpone the trip a couple of months due to my heart surgery, but we did manage to get away that fall for a few months.
Our second big opportunity to check out for a while came in the fall of 2009. I had been let go at Agilent Technologies (at my request) and were about to attend Debra's daughter's wedding in Calgary and then start touring south again for a few months. We're still waiting. My stroke happened before the wedding, and has basically put our plans on hold till now - actually, till this coming autumn. Life gets in the way of big plans, and we've certainly had our share of "life" thrown at us.
So, on to the stroke update. There's been considerable progress on a couple of fronts since Christmas. I've now been asked a number of times what my accent is - they're listening to my voice and figure that English must be my second language. I've thanked the people who've said this to me - being mistaken for ESL is a huge step for me. Walking has also improved quite a bit. At Christmas time, I seemed to be stuck at about the 3km distance - but lately I've been able to push it to almost 7km (at which point, I just can't walk anymore). The progress is slow, but it appears to be steady.
On the sleep front, tonight will be a big night for me. I've finally weaned down the Ativan to the point where I'll be alternating .25mg - 0mg for a couple of weeks, before finally being rid of this nasty stuff forever. Tonight is the first night at 0mg. I probably won't sleep, but I know that getting off this drug is a gigantic step. Once the Ativan is gone forever, I'm hopeful that sleep returns (likely masked by rebound insomnia from Ativan withdrawal), speech improves, and life gets back to normal.
No comments:
Post a Comment