Yesterday was our children's Christmas Program...

Yesterday our church had its children's Christmas program and our family Christmas. It was a great time of celebration and remembering the true reason for the Christmas time. It was a great celebration, but even more meaningful to me was the fact that I could not be there last year because I was in the hospital. In fact, I could not be at my son's band concert. What is amazing is that I sang a song yesterday...pretty good for a person that was not supposed to walk or talk at all.

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Sometimes my new life stinks...

For the last few weeks I have been experiencing some pretty terrible headaches; not the kind that you can relieve by rubbing your temples or taking Tylenol, but headaches that radiate from the back of my head. It seems as though I have tried several things to relieve them: taking naps, lying down on heating pads, taking Tylenol, turning the lights of, etc. but nothing seems to help. Now, I don't have them all the time, only a few days a week and I can tell that they are more from muscle tightness than anything else. I have been instructed to go the ER if they flare up again, because of my past history of headaches before my stroke, but most likely it is due to the muscles that were cut in the back of my head for the Craniotomy. I would say that most days I do not struggle with headaches at all; but, the days I do have headaches they are a doozy. I don't have blurred vision with them or sensitivity to light or sound; it just hurts. As I look back over the past 3+ years I realize...

Does it get any worse than a stroke? Yes

On December 8, 2008, my life changed forever. I had a double sided cerebellar stroke with 2 brain stem compressions. It was not until December 10, 40 hours after my stroke, that surgery was finally done to relieve the pressure. Dr. Piper, the neuro-surgeon from Iowa Methodist hospital in Des Moines, told my wife that surgery was nothing more than an attempt to save my life, but that it would not erase the deficiencies as a result of the stroke. Although she admits that she did not really understand what Dr. Piper had just said, my wife, Laura, agreed to the surgery and the care team performed a decrompessive craniotomy, to hopefully relieve the pressure and allow my brain to function somewhat normally. For those who have followed my blog for the last 14+ years, the surgery was successful, I returned to the church and I now live a relatively normal life, although I do have some pretty severe, though not always visible, defieciencies. I really thought that life could not get any worse th...

15 years already...It's only been 15 years...such a weird feeling

Today is December 8, 2023 - 15 years since my stroke. Time is deceiving; on one hand, it moves so fast that we can barely imagine that the person we were 15 years ago, and the person we are today are the same person. I have started this post 4 different times in the last few weeks; it is just so hard to put into words what I'm feeling. I feel really good for a dead guy (that is my standard greeting; several doctors have told me that I should had died at least 11 years ago.) But, it is so hard for me to talk about feeling good, considering the path we have been on for the last 2 months. My son was the one who helped me to the car when I could not walk; my son was the one who watched the girls when Laura had to take me to the hospital. My son was the one who bought me the little Christmas tree for my ICU room after my surgery, and it was my son that so often told his mom how worried he was about me when I would show signs of weakness. My son has been such a big part of my recovery,...

a stroke survivor story

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