New Beginnings

I have a lot of friends and family who are texting, emailing, and inquiring often about how my husband Rich is doing after his stroke.

I was told that if Rich didn't have someone with him 24/7 that he would have to go to 'rehab' until he was able to function at a certain level. Well that was a no brainer for me. He could go to a rehab center for a small amount of time if it was really necessary, but if I was home for him...

Well, I went to my part time job and told them that I couldn't come back. Of course they wanted to talk me out of that. They wanted me to do FMLA. I reminded them that I didn't qualify when he had cancer and I didn't qualify at the current time.

Besides he'd had a severe TIA 2 years ago and now experienced a very serious stroke. If I had left for a shift at 2:30 in the morning, I would have missed the early signs and his stroke would have left him perhaps on the floor for up to 14 hrs, until I returned from work. I don't care to think about what that scenario may have played out like.

Our days ahead will be full of challenges. 

I can conclude that I am married to a most amazing person. I considered moving the details and stories of this to The Long Road, which was the blog I used to detail our experiences with Throat Cancer. 

However everything that we are now doing effects our farm, the animals, our way of everyday life in a rural area. It has in one moment changed my life for a long time.

I am not complaining.

So I will continue mixing up my blog with whatever interests me for the day.

Currently I am now no longer employed. I had been thinking about leaving that job within the next year anyway. The hours were all over the map which were becoming difficult for me to handle. I was sure that having no patterns of good sleep would begin to affect my health.

Not having bizarre hours has already shown me that I can handle being more patient with MY patient and husband. I don't need to get a large list of things done in a very specific amount of time so that I can rush off to work.
When Rich wanted to have breakfast, or he wanted to go over what day it was, I had to stop what I was doing and sit down with him. Communication on one subject may take us 45 minutes to resolve. 

I can see that I am going to have to pick up a white board today to help with our talks. 
We have worked out that he wants to talk to people on the phone but didn't want to risk sounding stupid because of his language issues.

We came up with a simple solution. Phone calls are made with the handset on speaker phone. When he gets stuck on a word, he can look to me for help. That experiment worked out wonderfully yesterday.

He talked to his mom, his daughter, and in the evening, we called my son Ed and his wife.
Something as simple as a phone conversation helped him immensely with his attitude and self confidence.

Yesterday afternoon he got into his skid steer and drove it around. He stuck to some basic things like offloading some round bales. These are things he has done for years and I think the muscle memory is there. 

I didn't want him to do it, but he was able to get in safely and out safely. His balance seems to be pretty good.

When he went into the sloppy muddy calf pen and decided to climb out of the skid steer and move the hay feeder, I about lost my mind. The doctors and nurses had said NO heavy lifting, and to TAKE it easy for at least a week or so...
I climbed the gates and slopped through the muck which tried to pull of my boots and lost my temper. He looked straight at me and waved me off like a pest.

Last night we had a discussion about what he had done. He still forgets that he had brain surgery. 

However. Let me say that our quiet moments sitting together on the porch were nice. He called Morris over and petted him and fussed over him. We watched the sun begin to set and held hands.

And so ended our first day home together.