foot/knee control on the bike

Patricia and I just got home after a workout at the Y. It was the first time that, riding a stationary bike, I've kept my foot on the pedal without strapping it on - I didn't strap it on because I couldn't find the strap that's usually there; Patricia got a rope from the stretching room, but I was already on and pedaling when she got back to the bike. I kept my foot on and my knee out - not flopping toward my right side, as it insisted on doing. It was only three-quarters of a mile before my foot slid off, but I kept it on for that entire distance.

It happened again!

Today was my first solo trip to the grocery store. We didn't need much, but Millie wanted something for lunches and snacks at work so that she doesn't have to spend money on food every day. Although I have pushed around a shopping cart around the store, I have not ever pushed it in the parking lot. That turned out to be the hardest part, and the highlight of my trip, too. As I was wrestling the cart along to keep it away from parked cars, a stranger coming out of the store approached and asked if I needed help; after I said yes, he rolled it into the store, then returned to tell me where he had left it. Obviously, I thanked him over and over. His response was,"It's nothing. Have a good day." Once again, a stranger was kinder than some acquaintances. While shopping, I found that walking along beside the cart gave me more control over it and gave me more stability than pushing it from behind. On the way out, after filling 4 reusable bags, the struggle started again. The problem was that the parking lot had cracks and patches and strewn gravel, unlike the linoleum floor inside. Plus the wind, which blew against the bags and my coat, gave me yet another thing to fight against - as though I didn't have enough already. Back at the car, I loaded the bags into the trunk and then returned the shopping cart to the cart stand, despite the struggle. I felt pleased with myself for putting it where it should go rather than abandoning it in the parking lot.

mementos and memory

I know I've blogged before about how the experience of my memories has changed since the stroke: Instead of watching analytically from a distance, I am back in the situation - up close and feeling everything as a blast from the past rising like water around me. The result is that I try not to think back about several batches of experiences - those I associate with bad memories. Some I can't avoid, though: whenever I walk into the gray marble bathroom next to the kitchen, I flash back to the morning I had the stroke. There I am, confused about why my ankle kept giving out, why Tom was acting so concerned - and then there's the damn toilet paper roll empty on its holder. Confusion, denial and a rising anger - I feel it all - instead of just an urgency to pee, which is why I just ventured into the bathroom in the first place. You ask why I don't just use the other first-floor bathroom. Answer: well, it's on the other side of the house, down 4 steps and just is nowhere near as pretty as the "Ansel Adams" bathroom. The memory dunking happened again this morning as I was sitting in bed drinking coffee. Hanging from a window latch on the bay window with window seat is a thole pin from a gig boat (correction: a thole pin for a gig boat - it has never been used in a gig boat). It hangs on a long black cord with a small card attached. This morning, the sight of it took me back to my bed in Spaulding one afternoon when a group - about 4 or 5 - of rowers visited me. I was pleased to see them, as I was to see every visitor. That day, though, one of the rowers - with white hair and chocolate-colored eyes - stood awkwardly (which I thought was odd and troubled me) between me and my window. He held a crimson gift bag. As I remember it this morning, I again see his awkwardness and feel my own discomfort about it.) To elicit a smile, I joked,"I hope that's a beer, Chip." He shook his head and held it out. "No beer. This is from the rowers." In the bag was the thole pin that now hangs in my window - sanded and stained, with a small red card attached, a card that has faded to white in its south-facing home. It read: "This is a magic thole pin. If you are ever feeling down, you tap it three times and you will envision your rowing mates cheering you on toward the shore. We are all on board with you and your family. We love you, Gloucester Gig Rowers." It made me tear up then and now. Anyone wonder why I'm so focused on rowing again?

"my sense of security"

I enjoy discovering new stroke survivor blogs ... In some cases I encounter someone in far better shape than I'm in recovery-wise, but sometimes worse. Both situations enlighten me: the ones who are bad-off, but have a sunny perspective and the ones who are thrilled about taking small steps to get back to their lives and act as encouragers to the rest of us - both enrich my life. Today, I found one written by "Andrea." In it, she said something that was just for me: "I know the stroke played havoc with my sense of security." Bingo! Pre-stroke, I was confident, and I trusted my body and mind completely. Once my body and brain failed me, I lost that confidence and now live my life timidly, not boldly. I work hard, and I try my best to do my best, but sometimes I'm horrified by how short I fall. If my body and brain could do this to me, how can I trust them to get me through anything challenging in the future? And yet, here I am, depending on them to recover enough that my future will be better than today. Not that today is terrible, just uncertain. I drove my son to the train station without incident this morning, and was surprisingly relieved to make it home safe and sound. I have never been much of a risk-taker. Before the stroke, my husband used to tease me about how I should have worked in the insurance industry because I can - and will - imagine everything possible going wrong and work to make the best of it - BEFORE IT EVER HAPPENS. Now, I try to wing it and hope for the best, something foreign to me - the "winging it," I mean. Taking the train to Boston, I am usually nervous about having the right bills for my cab rides, etc. Tom always gets exasperated and tells me I can use a credit card for everything/anything I want. But the thought of using it in a cab worried me; so, one day when I had the correct bills for the cab, I paid with my credit card - as practice. In fact, I bought my train ticket home that way too. I needed two bucks, though, to buy the bottle of water I always get in North Station. Of course, the credit card machine in the cab didn't work right - or I'll bet I didn't use it correctly, which is more likely. Before I tried to use it, I told the driver I had never used one before and asked him to be patient. When I had trouble, he climbed into the back seat with me and tapped the buttons for me. Is it just me or does everyone tip a lot more when having the service worker enter the tip amount?

hamstrung

My PT is known for being tough and demanding. She's very good at what she does with me, but is the kind who cajoles you into doing "just 10 more," and when you finish, she tells you to do 10 more. TWICE. She loves what my L300 is doing for me. She asked me last week to bring my EMPI eStim unit with me this week, and this morning,I remembered, which made her happy - and that's not easy. She attached the eStim to my hamstring and cranked the power way up; she uses the technique of turning it up way past, "I feel it," to "OUCH," then a louder "What's wrong with you?" That also made her happy. She had me sit on the edge of the matt table and, when the buzz (physical, not audio) was on, extend my leg in front of me, then pull it back and under the table as far as I could. Repeat 10 times, rest, 10 times, rest. Then eStim off and L300 on, and I walked the tape line on the floor. Even I could tell how much better I could control my knee, even lifting it in front of me almost the way my right leg works. It felt easy and peculiar together. The carryover effect lasted while I walked about 30 feet back to the table, another 30 to get my coat, and I think even out to the parking lot. She had told me that as I used it,the carry-over effect would last longer and longer until I eventually can do it all myself. And THAT makes ME happy.

attachments

My L300 has a little blinking and beeping controller with a short strap, long enough to slip around a wrist; the controller must remain near the gizmo lashed below my knee or its beeping intensifies to the point of panic and the strap beneath my knee shuts off. I tend to wear pants and sweaters with pockets, so I slide the controller in one of those. The L300 also came with a small holster to attach the controller to my belt (but I don't ever wear one) or the waistband of my pants. While the whole L300 gadget can be donned one-handed, the holster was a mistake because the clip that the fabric slides into is far too tight to attach it one-handed. When I don't have a pocket, carrying the controller becomes a little more creative - the training rep from Bioness suggested carrying it in my purse. Well, guess what? I have not been able to carry a purse: my left shoulder slumps too much to keep the strap over my shoulder; my right shoulder can handle it, but the purse gets in the way of my cane; shoulder straps that go over my left shoulder, then diagonally across my chest so that the purse rests on my right hip are problematic when they decide to slip down the length of my body and lasso my feet. It happened once in a grocery store and once at the top of a flight of stairs. Messenger bags are much better because they stay around behind or can be cradled in front. Getting money or a credit card out of them is challenging, though, so I've opted for a fanny pack, which looks ridiculous, but lets me keep my wallet upright inside while I unzip it to retrieve money. I rarely wear my fanny pack - for reasons of ridiculousness - so it is not a reliable option for carrying my controller. Instead, I tend to slip the wrist strap through a belt loop on my jeans and pull the controller through the looped strap so that the controller dangles; I was very pleased when I discovered I could do that one-handed. Today, though, I was going to the gym and had no pockets and no belt loops. What I had was a cord hanging from the waistband of my sweatpants. I don't know how I did it - or even if it's a real knot - but I managed to tie the cord to the strap well enough that it has held on all day. Maybe my next accomplishment will be tying shoelaces! I don't mind elastic coily shoelaces, though, because I've always tended to slip shoes on and off without untying them, so they just make that easier. I'll bet the title of this entry made you think it would be about some other kind of attachment, right? Something more bittersweet and emotional - am I right?

by the book

Like many bloggers, I am a writer, and writing blog entries is the best way for me to respond to what has happened to me. If I were an artist, my coping would probably involve creating artwork; a football player, I'd be bulking back up; if a bus driver, getting my license back.

In my 30 years as a writer - both studying and practicing - I have written 4 novels that were never published. Part of that is because they suck. I gave up fiction-writing when I realized I was getting to the point of being pathetic. Giving up is not one of my deep-inside characteristics; in fact, I am the opposite - I tend to stay the course through every storm, promising myself that I will hold out through whatever the trouble is. I compromised, though, by considering John Updike's point of view. As both a writer and an editor, Updike saw writing as sailing on the open ocean, while editing is "hugging the shore." So, I became an editor. It wasn't that clear-cut at the time: the newspaper that employed me as a reporter needed an editor and selected me: I was reliable, a solid writer, met every deadline, and, after a bit of feedback, could successfully edit my own articles, which I have found to be the most challenging editing task because I am attached to each phrase I write and I know exactly what I mean by it.

"Giving up" was something everyone advised me to not do. Friends and family members encouraged me to be persistent and not give up writing fiction; they told me the story of Theodor Seuss Geisel having a book rejected hundreds of times - as the legend goes, while Wikipedia claims it to have been 27 times - before one publisher took a chance and published "To Think I saw it on Mulberry Street," one of the Seuss books I did not memorize as a child. I memorized others to prove that I could read, on which there was pressure to do early in our family. As proof, I would sit on the floor of the bedroom I shared with my sister with a book in my lap and recite the story, keeping my eyes focussed on each page. And I thought it was even more convincing to turn the page at the correct spot in the text, so I figured that out too. Agreed, I was a self-confident show-off at a young age.

Back to giving up my fiction-writing career. If it wasn't pathetic to have 4 rejected books, how many would I have to write to hit "pathetic?" 10? 27? 100? The thought of going through rejection letters for 100 books was unbearable. As it was, my agent stopped sending me rejection letters that contained no constructive criticism because all I ever wanted to know was "Why?" She couldn't answer herself - she had told me that she could sell the 2 mysteries.

How does this relate to my recovery?

I am currently writing a book about my recovery; it will comprise many of my blog entries. (Yes, that is the correct use of "comprise;" it means "include," and should not be used as "something is comprised of." Look it up.) Its title is "Stroke After Stroke." It begins the day the stroke occurred and will end with the first day I row - for real, not with help -again. And I WILL finish it; this time I will not give up. Forget about convincing someone else to publish it; I will publish it myself - digitally and in soft-cover. It's something my dear son, Brian, knows how to do. For Christmas, he gave me a hard-cover volume containing the first mystery novel I wrote. Of course, the gesture made me cry, but the author blurb he wrote for the inside of the jacket was even more touching.