Let’s think. In 2007, we’ve broken

• one Zojirushi rice cooker (after breaking three Cuisinarts)
• two Dreamer Designs Ditto Manhattan Deluxe stroller frames
• my Timex kids’ watch that has an F-14 for a second hand
• and one brain.

Is that everything?

The rice cooker was replaced with a Miracle Rice Cooker. It is my favorite so far for its sturdy stainless-steel pan. The stroller manufacturer sent us a steel, not aluminum, replacement, so it should last a little longer than a few months. I recently bought a bright blue and lime Timex kids’ watch with two lizards that tick around the face. And the brain is on the mend.

Once, I liked museums.  I could linger for hours, reading all the little cards and looking at everything from every angle.

As part of my TIRR OT therapy, I recently went with a group to the Houston Museum of Natural Science.

After an hour my head spinned and buzzed.  I needed out.  So I went back to the TIRR facility, ate a sandwich, tried to breathe, and slowly drove back home.  At home I threw myself on the bed, and I don’t remember when I woke up.  I know I should have been eating dinner.

Sounds like I have some OT work to do.

Can’t rush recovery.

Stress hurts recovery.

Be prepared to do well before you go back to whatever it is you did pre-stroke.  Set yourself up for the win.

In the ICU, the night before my surgery, I realized I was okay.  I was enough.  I need to remember that.

Things will be different after a stroke.  I will be different.

Why worry about a future I don’t know?

Childcare.  Ouch.  The price hurts.  And the fact that I might have to find it hurts.  Could anybody love them and watch out for them as much as I do?

I’m stressed, and my body knows it.

Hrmm.  People have told my to make my environment more susceptible to recovery.  I don’t have the TV on, I don’t have an office to hide in, I can’t put the kids in another room (what other room?), and my house is organized.

Those googly-eyed exercises in PT actually helped my dizziness.  Wow.

You know what I’m really, really thankful for right now?

Whole Foods.

My local Whole Foods has a free Personal Shopper program.  You send them your grocery list via e-mail, and then a few hours later you swing by the front and pick your goodies up.

Rice Epicurean delivers groceries for $15, but at WF I can get my usual things, including all my favorite fruits and veggies, without the brain fuzz, without forgetting half the things on my list, and without forgetting my wallet and not realizing it until the checkout lane.

I don’t know how many people use the service, but with three or four personal shoppers on staff, I’m guessing this pilot project has been successful.

Now if they could only cook for me, too .  . .

Photo Drought. No pictures lately. I’ve been too busy going to TIRR-Challenge, cleaning up after C&D, and covering my head with a blanket.

TIRR. I like talking to the other patients at TIRR. It’s a safe place. We can laugh and cry at our new deficits, tell war stories from the hospital, and cheer each other on. We can tell each other secrets that other people can only pretend to understand. There aren’t too many of us in the program. We know our old occupations, our date of injury. We make faces at each other from down the hall, and share our meals at lunchtime. We punch each other in the shoulders, and the guys twice my age call me “kid.” I like that.

The therapists tell me things about my injury that I didn’t know. They lean toward me and listen, reading my face and trying to understand what it must feel like to be dizzy, or fuzzy, or discombobulated the way I feel dizzy, or fuzzy, or discombobulated.

The clients are all there to get better, but it feels so safe there that sometimes it’s hard to go home.

Buzzcuts. It’s my new thing. First, because I came home to the hospital with half of my head shaved, and I figured I might as well even out the look. Buzz went the clippers. When my hair grew out again, I decided it was too hard to get all the way out to the Galleria to get my hair cut, where I had been getting my hair cut, and I didn’t know where else to go. I realized, too, I was afraid of the noise, the lights, not being able to carry on a conversation, and then having to sleep for the next two days just because of a dumb haircut. Buzz went the clippers. When my hair grew out again, I wasn’t sure I was done with EEGs and MRIs, and hesitated to spend $50 to get my haircut if I was going to ruin the haircut a couple of weeks later. (The bindi dots from my EEG finally recently went away.) Buzz went the clippers.

My hair dresser never called.

I want new hair clippers, with sharper blades and a stronger motor. I’ll be even quicker. I’ll be able to have a fresh haircut every week, if I want it.

Completed Dec 2007, just after another buzzcut in preparation for my Gamma Knife procedure Dec 19.

I just checked my e-mail. I got an advertisement from Office Max, a request for money from someone in Nigeria, and digests of e-mail lists that I always scan but never read. No e-mail from people.

First, I had twins. Messages became sparse unless they were about projects, or work. Responses were short, clipped, or sometimes absent all together.

Then, I had a stroke, a bleed, an AVM gone angry. Sometimes I feel like I’ve fallen off the face of the earth, like I don’t exist. People who did send me messages are annoyed or bored or something that I took so long to write back (writing now means the moon has to be aligned, it has to be quiet, and I have to have three hours to myself), so they haven’t written back.

I can write to myself, and I can write here, but like talking to myself, it’s not always in the end as satisfying.

Completed Dec 2007, this post delayed for a better time for writing (just like some of my e-mails).