a stroke survivor story

Ok, to be fair, he is closer to 3 than he is 2, but either way, shouldn't I be the one teaching him lessons instead of the other way around? I'm talking, of course, about our grandson, Theo. He came to stay with grandma and grandpa last night, and let's just say that he seemingly never gets tired! As tired as we get, we absolutely adore our only (for now) grandbaby. This morning, is when I learned a very valuable lesson from Theo, both as it applies to life after my stroke, and my life after the loss of my only son, Brendan. Picture it, Sicily, 1924...wait, where did the Golden Girls reference come from? Maybe I should just go back and erase it, but, I probably won't. In fact, the fact you are reading this means I did not...Anyway, picture it, we are oustide this morning; it is a pretty chilly morning, there is some frost on the car windows, we can see our breath, and Theo is watching the dogs play in our backyard. And then he spots it: his "bike." He runs ov

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