In her Open Book Blog Hop, Stevie asks:

What would be the hardest thing for you to give up?

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Okay, Stevie splits her response into a few different strands, so I shall do the same.

On one level, it is my meds. A couple of things with me were known many years before the stroke, but I certainly didn’t take them seriously and neither, I think, did my doctors. And then I had a stroke. I mean, during that “stroke” event, all the meds were overhauled, but also, I’m much more hands-on.

I think we, as patients, need to have a mindset that a doctor will be happy to advise us as best they can, but when all is said and done, they don’t really give a monkey’s. And that is how it must be – we have to be in charge of our own health. But the flip-side is that we can’t afford to think my doctor’s got me covered. Because they don’t.

Okay, more lightweight things. I use my computer pretty much all day, every day. Especially with the internet, it gives me that level of communication that I don’t have in real life – a lot of stroke survivors lead sedentary lives. The other thing, I worked all my life in programming computers, so I got back into that and it helped me get my brain back, sharpen myself up again. Things like actually using the computer have become harder, nuts and bolts like typing and reading the screen, but I get by.

I’m speaking from experience, here, too, because I did have to give up the computer for about six months after the stroke – my eyes weren’t good enough to see the screen properly. Fortunately that improved, although when I started back again I had to use a magnifying-glass program to see everything. Even now, I listen if I can and have worked out several ways of doing that.

So there’s another thing I wouldn’t like to give up.

Lastly, tea, because… who could?

Incidentally, one thing I managed to do with pretty much no problem was to give up the company of people, specifically during Lockdown. You might be surprised how little my day-to-day life has changed since last year. You might also be surprised how many people, particularly the elderly, this applies to. Okay, coming clean, I live with my wife, but she is all the company I need. The longer this goes on, the more I realise that my world is in my head – and in my computer!

Originally tagged: Open Book