Here I am at the beginning of a New Year and just like the end of last year, this new one has come in like a lion.
In December we assisted one of our sons and his wife to prepare for their move to Australia. This entailed packing the contents of their house and getting the house ready to market. A busy time and on Christmas Eve the move cube arrived to collect their goods for shipping. Later, when we had been home for around 3 hours our other son and family arrived to spend Christmas with us and this proved to be a welcome diversion to all that had been going on. Both families met up a few days later for a farewell meal which proved to be both a happy and sad occasion.
Add to this, that around this time, my mother in law fell and broke her hip and has been in two hospitals and is now in residential care it has been pretty much "full on" and probably quite stressful.
It didn't take long before everything caught up with me and on New Year's Eve I succumbed to a flu type virus. This usually happen most years post Stroke, but this time it has been particularly aggressive.
I seem to lose a symptom and gain one but am hopeful that it has virtually "run out". I have experienced lower back pain, hot and cold sweats,tiredness and a cough so bad that it made my ribs hurt! One night I needed the bathroom, but was completely disorientated when I woke up and when I was helped out of bed could not get my legs to move. This was fairly distressing, but a trip to my G.P. reassured me that everything was ok.
It is now taking quite a while to fully recover and as usual it has meant that my progress and sadly the use of the Saeboglove has been put on hold. My hand, arm and fingers have tensed, my walking is currently limited and I'm very lethargic.
Whilst I am now wearing the glove to extend the joints, I cannot realistically undertake any of the set targets to any purposeful outcome. Practice and more practice is required and I currently do not have the stamina. With this in mind I have asked for my next appointment with the neurophysio to be postponed, I am not concerned or "hung up" about this ,more frustrated that it is interfering with my progress. However, I know from previous occasions that once fully recovered it will be like nothing ever happened and I will just pick up the pieces and continue. These days I do accept that there will be blips, some more testing than others and as a Stroke survivor you have to work doubly hard to get over them.
One of the new targets was to hold a fork in my right hand and repeatedly "stab" PlayDoh or bubble wrap as a "target". This will be a pre-cursor to being able to use both my knife and fork, sometimes it is the simple ideas which can be most effective. You do not have to have lots of expensive aids.
I will fully restart as soon as possible and look forward to sharing my progress.
