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| Barb Polan Barb’s Recovery |
As it turned out, today ended up being my first day truly home alone - no houseguest to help me in the morning, no brother showing up to work on the house and tend the fire. It was definitely a milestone - also because it was the three-month anniversary of when I had the stroke. In Julie Fox Garrison's book, she makes a big deal of anniversaries, throwing a big "homage to my hemmorrhage" party on the one-year anniversary of her hemmorrhagic stroke. When I read about it, it seemed like a bad idea to "celebrate" something so awful; I,on the other hand, like the idea of honoring the anniversary, not as a celebration of the onset of the ordeal, but as a way of celebrating the successes that have occurred since the challenge began: a celebration of life and of progress. Since that morning three months ago, I am in awe of what my body and mind used to accomplish so nimbly, so effortlessly:not only was my left hand adept at a few small tasks, but my mind could handle being bombarded by problems to solve, numbers to crunch, words to re-arrange to create clarity, and so on. Now I'm often in a muddle, with understanding and clarity a distant memory. I know that every day three months ago, I completed the puzzles in the daily paper: a crossword, a jumble, Sudoku and a Cryptoquote (this was always the most challenging of the puzzles, but I used to solve it every day). Not any more, although the crosswords are easy enough now.
Being home alone today was quite rewarding - when tempted to wander off plan, I did what my OT suggested and thought about whether there was another way to satisfy my desire and whether the risk was worth it - and once it was not worth it and once it was: when the dog ran around the house whimpering and I considered letting him outside, I decided that having the dog running loose outside with me trying to catch him could not turn out well, not with our son, the dog's owner, due to arrive tonight;and carrying a Tupperware container of chicken soup across the kitchen to the stove, which meant walking caneless for a short distance, was worth it because it meant I could have dinner ready when Tom arrived home. And the soup I was carrying was room-temperature, not hot, so the risk if I fell was just losing the soup, not burning me or the dog. Plus, after all the balancing exercises I do, I was quite confident that I could walk the ten feet without my cane- and I did! I carried the container out of the pantry over to the stove, put it down, then pushed my luck by fetching three soup bowls from the pantry and putting them next to the soup on the stove. Success!!! Another thing that would have gotten me in trouble at the rehab hospital, another bit of evidence that I'm impulsive. Pretty high-risk behavior, right? Not bad for someone who had a stroke three months ago and went home two months ago confined to a wheelchair, right? That's progress.
In my first day home alone, I did have company for about ten minutes when a neighbor stopped by with soup - the soup that resulted in me breaking the rules - she stayed and told me about her upcoming ski weekend with her two sons. At this point, I can't even imagine ever skiing again - although I haven't done any but cross-country in something like 20 years. It would be wonderful to someday be able to cross-country ski again. Heck, I'll be happy to be able to shovel snow someday - I've always loved that - making neat, straight-sided paths through a foot or so of snow, keeping up with it as it snows. Yes, among many other things, I miss even shoveling!
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