A couple things that have to be told at this point, because as much as I love trying to keep a lighter side of things, after having 2 strokes in such a short timeframe, it sometimes has to be a little serious. Number one, I feel like I'm falling into a depression of sorts and I don't know how to get out of it. I have little motivation to read, play with Shadow or pretty much any of the things that I had been doing on a regular basis. I am not sleeping well so I'm constantly tired. My brain has started running in overdrive all the waking time again and even attempting to read or do a singular activity is not calming it down. I'm attempting to create things but I get angry (which is truly the only word that I can think of to properly fit the feeling) when I can't do everything to the project that I want to do or could used to do and it takes me much much longer than ever before to do the simplest of tasks.
Number two, I am scared most of the time. I know, hard to believe that I'm afraid or scared of anything, but at this point, I am. I am afraid of having a third stroke, especially since they don't know what is causing them. I'm afraid if I was to have a third stroke that it would be even worse than this one. I'm afraid that all the kinks in my body and brain wont get worked out completely so I wont ever return back to the person that I was (or a resemblance of that person). I am afraid that my business is taking a fatal blow that it will not be able to rebound from after having been closed for so long. I know that all of these things are crazy to be afraid of, but it's what is in my heart. I am trying each day to thank God for the day and the small victories (because there are truly a lot of those) and trust that He will take care of everything and make me into what the new me is supposed to be. But lets face it. How many of us, especially women, have handed stuff to God first thing in the morning and then by noon said, "Ya know what God, I'm just gonna take this one little thing out of your inbox because I see how busy you are and I will just deal with it so you don't have to." I've caught myself doing this on a regular basis. I need to quit doing it, but its so hard.
My super awesome Warden husband has taken the brunt of all of this and kept on smiling. For that I feel horrible. He shouldn't have to deal with all of this too. He has so much on his plate already that dealing with my crappy attitude and insecurities should not have to be a focus of his right now.
And then there is always PT and Speech Therapy....
I saw Ace again a few days later. The first activity she had me do was look at a piece of paper, like a quiz or worksheet that an elementary child would be given, maybe 3rd or 4th grade. There were about 20 to 25 lines on it. A descriptive phrase was written on the left side of the paper and then on the right side of the paper was a fill in the blank. But all of the blanks had two letters already filled in. The answers all had the letters I and T in it somewhere. I should be able to cruise through this I thought. Examples were things like, "an inhabitant of Italy" and the fill in had an I T and then 5 blank lines so I could spell out Italian. I was okay for most of them and got them relatively quickly. Except 2 or 3. One of them, I could not for the life of me figure out and it was making me angry looking at the paper. It was "a worthy quality; virtue" with blanks of __ ___ ___ I T. I was lost. Not a clue. The second one that I kept looking at over and over again...and even read out loud (which is where I realized my big mistake was) said this, "a garment worn on the hand" with blanks of ___ I T ___ ___ ____. But when I read it, 5 or 6 times, mind you, I read it as "a garment worn on the head". And that's how I read it out loud. For whatever reason I could not figure it out. I was thinking of hats, scarves, trying to figure out if a foreign hat of some kind was called something with an I and T in it. Then Ace asked me to read it to her again, slowly. That's when we all realized I was exchanging the word head for hand. Not sure why my brain did that flipflop. I got the answer immediately after I realized the mistaken word. Man, that made me feel dumb. I kept asking myself (in my head) how on earth I could have gotten those two words mixed up. I mean, I KNOW the difference in the words. I can spell. Why do strokes cause things like that?
Then because my Mastiff characteristics still had not totally subsided and I was like a teething toddler, Ace showed the Warden and I some exercises to do with my cheeks and mouth to help strengthen the area so it could regain strength and muscle and full use. I felt like a perverted version of Jim Carey's Pet Detective. Just put the mask on me and watch my face twitch and twist! I've never had so many tongue depressers/wooden sticks in my mouth in a single day. Now, if they only had popsicles on the other end, I would have been a much happier patient (and messier because I can only imagine the mess I would have made with them).
After working with Ace, it was off to see Mama and the Rabbi. I had been regularly walking the Rabbi and moving the Duck around the room. I had gotten proficient at the ladder and a small version of foursquare (reminded me of square dancing in the fifth grade) and the hurdles. Today, though, they had a new task for me. The Bungee. Imagine if you will, a big 4 inch thick heavily padded belt wrapped around your waist. Then, realize that it is hooked to an industrial strength bungee cord that weighs several pounds and is hooked to an 8 foot long board with eye hooks coming out of the wall. The goal: to walk as far forward as you can possibly go in a controlled manner and once you are there, slowly walk backwards in a controlled manner. The walking forward part is easy to a point and then when you start feeling the resistance it becomes harder and harder. Mama told me to keep going until I couldn't possibly go any further. I pulled the bungee probably about 20 feet from the wall, give or take. The backwards part...not so easy. Because by the time I had so much tension in the bungee, if I was to let it, it would have immediately pulled me backwards and flat on my butt. This was so much harder than it looked. The Warden commented on how it looked fun. I asked Mama if Tommy could try it out. He had been a good sport to this point and was willing to try all of the tasks that I was given so that he'd understand at least a small portion of what I was doing. The Rabbi hooked him up to the bungee when I was done and he was off. He thought the going forward was harder than the going backward. I guess the Bungee was a good stopping point for the day because it was a perfect analogy to keep going forward and fight the urge to be thrown backwards. But I was getting ready to travel a million light years away from where I was, I just didn't know it yet.
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