Making Progress

Well, it's been almost exactly two months since I had my stroke, and I'm feeling a lot better.

About half the days I don't nap anymore, but I still sleep at least eight or nine hours each night. I'm going to the Whitby Hospital for therapy once a week and making progress there, too. Mostly we work on problem-solving such as math or "executive-decision making". That's all about planning and organizing activities.

Two weeks ago, I had a very busy week: I saw six doctors in four days. I was pretty tired for several days afterwards. But what I found out was that (probably) the reason for my stroke was "atrial fibrillation". That means that, instead of pumping blood, the top two chambers in my heart were mixing it around, but only occasionally. This can lead to the formation of strokes. We discovered this in my cardiologist's office. He put me on a blood thinner right away. A neurologist that I saw in Toronto the following week confirmed this.

I still have to go for an MRI, and that's on August 10. Then it's back to my original neurologist in Oshawa the first week of September for a reading of it. But if everything is clear, I should be well on the mend by then.

One sad thing that I learned in all of my visits to the doctors was that I can no longer drive. This, believe it or not, is a result of the stroke that I had four and a half years ago. That one affected my vision and my eye doctor told me about it only then. He thought someone else would have mentioned it before now! So, he says, from now on, I'm a passenger.

But, I'm alive and well, and that's the main thing right now.

Follow me on Twitter: @AeneasLane