Almost four years...

Re-learning to climb stairs in rehab

On October 5th this fall, it will be the fourth anniversary of my life-changing stroke.

I had to relearn how to walk, how to talk, how to balance on a bicycle, basically to do all the things we find "cute" in a toddler, but frustrating for an adult.

There are still a couple of things I cannot do ... swim and run. Swimming fell under the "ambivalent" category for me, so as long as I'm wearing a life jacket when on the water, it's really no big deal. Same thing for skiing (I can ski, but it hurts and I get tired really quickly).

Running, however, is a disappointment. I used to run all the time, and found it relaxing and therapeutic. So not doing it leaves an empty space in my life.

But that's not what this post is about. It's about encouragement. The "experts" say that most stroke improvement happens in the first few months. That's true, but I've noticed a very slow, very long term improvement in a couple of key areas.

The first is speech, which is very cyclical in terms of clarity, but is getting slowly better. Cadence of speech has improved almost since day one, and the amount of time it takes for my talking to get "nasally" has gone from a few minutes to more than an hour. The more comfortable with the audience I am, the better my speech is, and in social settings, I can talk all night.

The second is strength. There's a very long hill (for those of you local, Wellington) that I used to ride my bike up for street hockey on Sundays. I did that hill in second gear on my bike, and be exhausted at the end. I can now do the same hill in third gear, and have energy left in the tank when I get to the top.

When I get home, for the last few months I've barely had the strength to roll my bike up the sidewalk and stairs to our place. The last few days I've picked the bike up and easily carried it up the stairs.

I wonder how much of this is me just discovering what I could do all along, and how much is really new?

I know that if I slow down and focus I can do a better job of almost everything...but maybe the same goes for all of us....

* Note that in the photo, the woman teaching me how to go up the stairs is Ruth. She died of cancer within months of me leaving the hospital. Another reason I don't believe in god.