I’m not doing the hokey pokey jut yet but yesterday I went for a walk and was able to hear the crunch of leaves under my feet and feel the crisp air against my face. The best part though? I no longer require a cane. I’ve been going to physical therapy and during the first appointment, he performed the Epley Maneuver. This involves “resetting” the otoliths (tiny “stone” like bodies in the inner ear ). It was not comfortable and left me feeling nauseated that evening-  but- it worked. My dizziness is gone.

Physical therapy to heal your brain is a completely different experience from anything I’m used to. You would not know I had a stroke just by looking at me or having a quick chat. If you hung around me long enough, you’d catch the brain fog, poor short term memory and learn that multitasking and balance are a challenge. So my therapy is a combination of occupational and physical. We work on strength training building up my left side and core. I also work on remembering multiple steps with colors and shapes. It’s sort of like standing on a Twister mat and stepping on various colors, in order. When I step with my left side, I miss the spot and step off-center. So I have to overcompensate to correct this. Retraining my brain is harder than my previous marathon training. It requires intense focus.

The good news is that all of my brain scans came back normal as did my peripheral vision exams. This is really encouraging and gives me hope He said returning to the nursing program next fall is also a realistic goal so that’s what I have my sights set on. My hearing exam is on Halloween. Should I sport fake ears? It could be fun. Especially if one fell off. I”m just saying…

I have bad days. The last couple of weeks were tough mentally and physically. It’s so hard to go from being knee-deep in school and working to just focusing on healing my brain. I wasn’t prepared for how that would feel. Dealing with the mountains of paperwork from insurance and doctors is overwhelming. Fortunately, I have insurance experience so I can assure my claims are processing correctly. With that said, I get overstimulated and overwhelmed very quickly. Recently we went to a small town to visit family and they were having a street fair of sorts. All the music, the crowds etc left me feeling anxious and like I wanted to run away from it as fast as I could. It was too much.

I’m also dealing with migraines again. My last one lasted four days. Fortunately, I now have rescue meds to take and am now tracking them using an app called Migraine Buddy. The next time I meet with my neurologist I’ll be able to print out the data captured (symptoms, precursors, what helped/ what didn’t, etc) in hopes of determining why I continue to get them. I have so much I want to write about but can only do this in short bouts for now. With my hand healing up nicely I should at least be able to do more frequent, consistent posts moving forward.

I’ve been told that recovering from this requires patience and time. It’s one step forward, two steps back. Maybe I need to brush up on moonwalking? One of my best friends who is dealing with a chronic illness of her own, put it so wisely, in a way I hadn’t thought about it before. You feel grief. Grief for what is lost (whether permanent or temporary), grief for what life once was. The emotional aspect of this is just as (if not more) difficult, as the physical challenges. So I’m taking things one day at a time. I celebrate the progress I’m making in PT, the freedom to walk unassisted, knowing this time next year I’ll be in school learning to be a nurse, and having an incredible support network. I have to keep focused but on the days that aren’t so great, I just go with it. Life isn’t perfect and I have plenty of challenges ahead of me.

Humor works wonders so I’m grateful for my husband’s sense of humor. The other day we were at Target in the Halloween section. I was looking at decorations when I hear him call me. I turned around and here he is dressed up like Oscar Mayer. I about lost it. But I love his weirdo silly side. He makes me laugh. My friends send me horrible memes, GIFs, and crass humor my friends give. If there was a way to bottle that funny feeling you get when you laugh, we’d all be a little better off.