Love and Tolerance

It’s been nearly three weeks since I last wrote a post. Have you missed me? I’m sure you have, so I will employ roughly 700 words to describe my life since I’ve been away from the computer.

Hectic. That is an adjective. I use it solely with the following definition from the Merriam-Webster dictionary: Characterized by intense action, excitement, and confused, rapid motion.

Many of you who have been reading the He/She series of posts over the last two months are probably wondering about what’s happening now. Well, don’t worry, everything is going well. In fact, I haven’t been this happy since… maybe ever. It is very probable that I am engaged in the healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in, and I have immersed myself in her life which includes two beautiful girls whom I have begun to spend quite a lot of time with. Things are different, that’s for sure, but I really love spending my thoughts and time on other people: this is my new philosophy on life.

I’ve been spending a lot of time working through step 10 of A.A. which suggests I continue to take personal inventory and continue to set right any new mistakes as we go along. My job is tough, I need to watch out for selfishness, dishonesty, resentment, and fear, and when they crop up—and they will—I need to address them and move on immediately, for my new way of life is love and tolerance of others. I need not worry about mistakes other people make, they can deal with those, the little bit I focus on myself these days is all about cleaning up my side of the road and seeing what good I can put into the stream of life. I forgive, I love, and I pray. These things set me free day to day. It’s a work in progress, and sometimes I dwell on things for too long and I find myself in my head, not able to pay attention so I have to work on this daily. I will never be perfect, and I cannot expect perfection from anybody else.

Kids have a lot of energy. A six-year-old and a two-year-old seem to have a never-ending supply of concentrated Mountain Dew coursing through their veins and it’s a lot to keep up with. I do my best to help out when I’m over at their house which has been about five days per week for a little while. I read a lot of books, cook a lot of food, and go on a few fun trips when we can. It makes me happy to see them happy. This is my life now, more to come.

 

My grandma has been home for a couple weeks now save for a three-day trip to the hospital for some nausea which turned out to be some bleeding on the brain which is normal after a stroke. She still has her three therapies, twice per week, and she is quite mobile now. Here’s the best part: she has regained nearly all of her ability to communicate. She still has some difficulty reading and writing but that will come back with time. We can have complete conversations and she is alert and humorous. She has to wear a heart monitor for 30 days to determine if she has an irregular heartbeat which may have triggered the clot to move from her heart to her brain, only time will tell. For now, everything seems to be ok, and we are finally able to breathe again. It was a tense moment in time, but we made it through as a family. Yesterday I brought my girlfriend over to meet her for the first time. We sat around with some family from out of town and had great conversation for a couple hours, and today she and I will be bringing the girls over to my mother’s house for my birthday celebration where she will meet some more of us.

Winter is coming, but fall is still here. Enjoy this beautiful weather while you can, and take time to notice how beautiful our surroundings are. Take time to forgive somebody, you will never make it out of this world alive so let go of that resentment before it destroys you inside. Take time to tell people you love them—let them feel how much you care. And take time to help somebody that needs you. People are struggling everywhere, and you may know somebody right now that is afraid to ask for help. You could be the change in somebody’s life. You might have the answer in your heart, in your mind, or in your wallet. If you are the one struggling right now, reach out. People will help if you ask them, and not everybody will know your stress unless you open up. Communication is the essence—you can control that.

 I challenge everybody to put something good into the stream of life today, and leave it there. You don’t need to brag or boast, just help. Try to be a good person, even when nobody is looking.

 

It's Just Aphasia She's Going Through (Part 2)

So much has transpired in my life since my last post. Not all of it has been good, to say the least, but I will focus on the subject of my last post and what has changed since I wrote it.

A little over a week ago, my grandmother suffered a stroke. Not a stroke of luck, and not a stroke of genius, but a stroke. This means that the oxygen supply to a certain part of her brain was cut off for too long, and essentially that part no longer works. Unfortunately, the part this effected left her with a condition known as aphasia, which hinders her ability to communicate.

Last week there seemed to be little hope, as the doctor bluntly told us there is no cure, only therapy. She moved to the Courage-Kenney acute therapy center at United Hospital on Friday... I think Friday. I don’t know. Anyhow, that’s where she is now, and she has been undergoing a battery of physical, occupational, and speech therapies. I have been in attendance for a good number of them, and I am happy to report that things—although still a little sketchy—are moving forward at a good pace for a stroke victim.

 

Everything we can do we take for granted. That we can not only see, but interpret what we see into information that we can understand and communicate is something we don’t have to think about doing. When we look at a pen, we know how to hold it and what to do with it. When we look on a loved one, we know who they are. We know our own name and we can certainly write it. When we see food we not only know that we need to eat it to live, we know how to eat it. When we listen, we understand. These were all lost to my grandmother a week ago.

 

Today I was present for her speech therapy where she was able to look at objects, say what they were, and write the names down on paper—not always properly, but she knew when she was making a mistake and figured out how to correct them. Yesterday during physical therapy, she walked over 200 feet with her walker and collected different colored cones that had been placed along the walls, giving her an opportunity to mover her head around while walking: helping to improve her overall balance.  She also went up and down a flight of stairs, and was able to maneuver over some hurdles.

Her basic communication (conversation) skills have vastly improved. She knows names, can engage in productive conversation, and can understand a lot of what is going on around her. She still has some vision troubles especially when her brain has to work hard at recognizing and writing words. She gets what she calls “double vision” and her periphery to the right is blurred, but even she will admit that she can’t properly describe what is happening.

Tomorrow the therapeutic recreation nurse will be bringing in some art supplies to see how her motor skills will function for something she is quite accustomed to. She has been a watercolor painter for as long as I can remember, and I think it would be great if she could get that back, or at least relearn her form.

 

We have great hope, yet we remain cautious to applaud just yet. She has made prodigious strides through hard work, and she has a long way to go. The process of recovering whatever will be recovered after a stroke usually takes about two years, so there is some time, and the largest area of repair happens early on with getting a lot of the speech and motor skills back.

It’s been a tough week seeing her like this. I don’t know if I could do as well as she is doing under these circumstances. Next week she will get to go home—actually to their new home, where she will have assistance around the clock available, and home visits from nurses, doctors, and family. We are all in this for her, and I will be there as much as I can.