It was a year ago today that a little part of my brain died, taking some control systems down with it.
In the ensuing year, there have been little signs that life will never be the same again. I get twinges in my head which feel like the onset of a headache; they are signals that I need to stop what I am doing and rest. Typically a thirty minute nap is sufficient to feel almost back to normal, but sometimes it isn't enough. The odd feeling is not affected by the ingestion of analgesics or NSAIDs or even antihistamines. It's just my brain saying, "Stop. I've had enough. I need to spend some time getting rid of the junk floating around up here in the cerebrospinal fluid and I can't do it with all this consciousness going on!"
My day now requires, at some point, a nap. Not a long nap, but a nap nonetheless. This isn't a bad thing since I'm working from home, but it would be quite difficult were I required to work a full-time desk job at some office. I'm not sure what this means for the future.
Cheryl has been looking into the possibility of my retirement, but we don't have quite enough money for that. We don't own our house yet, and it's difficult to see how that is going to happen anytime in the near future given our current situation. From what we can figure, I need to keep working until at least the age of 70, but I seriously doubt that's going to happen. My body just isn't up for it.
When I wake up in the morning these days, I'm always waiting for the next shoe to drop ... on my head.
2 comments:
I'm so glad you are still here! I'm wondering if you could talk to your doctor about recommending you for SSI or SSDI benefits? Working to 70 after a stroke at 59 doesn't sound reasonable.
Working to 70 after a stroke at 59 is insane. Working to 60 after as stroke is also insane. Laying on the beach at Nag's Head and watching the sunset while holding a tall, cold glass of frothy root beer (with a scoop of vanilla ice cream) is the proper recovery prescription.
We're looking into the retirement/SSI/SSDI options. I'd really prefer to just focus on my writing (which has been out-prioritized for the last decade or so, as you can tell by the woeful state of the blog) and the music (my guitar callouses are long-gone) and the grandkids (which we've started working on).
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