What Truely Sucks?

My last post had nothing to do with what was really on my mind. It was also the first post I ever wrote in part on my iPhone, a distinction that went unnoticed as I was writing from my hospital bed and had things on my mind. I was frankly happy that I could write anything at all, even though spell check and auto suggest was doing a lot of work for me. I was in the hospital (twice) for good reason. Late last Friday night all the work stress (and i do mean STRESS with a capital S) and bad eating habits caught up to me. I suffered a mild stroke. At first it was thought to be a TIA (transient ischemic attack, a precursor), but after the extent of damage and the MRI came to light, it was reclassified as a stroke.

Obviously i can type, and even talk fairly decently. at times. It takes some effort and i have retype stuff, shorter comments are better which why no one could tell in my comments. The major effects were limited to my left brain; I’ve suffered some minor loss of sensitivty in the right side and fine motor control, but I can eat and drink normally. (Update: I find that I drool a bit, unfortunately) But thats also the section where language is located and I’ve discovered it’s heavily affected by even the slightest amount of stress. Nag me about eating or taking my medicine (which my family is doing non stop) and become unable to talk and even typing goes to hell. From what I’ve researched (not even the neurologist tells me much), it seems similar to agrammatic aphasia

Get away from them, chlll out with a book or even playing Magic the Gathering, and about the only thing you’ll notice is that i hold my cards in my left hand instead of my right… i tend to drop things and not even realize i’ve done it. I can even shuffle cards…though i have to watch what I’m doing thanks not being able to feel them properly.

There is hope of recovery over six months to a year, but I don’t know about therapy yet. Trying to edit this into sense is starting to throw me so I’m going to post it and come back later to update it after I’ve settled down a bit and don’t have to type some words three or four times or rely on spell check so much. .

Update: thank you all for your well-wishes. Definitely not as bad as it could have been. I’m off to see the doctor about therapy and whether or not I can return to work. Since I can only type in short bursts before things start to go to hell, and I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to hold a discussion on the phone or even in person, I’m going to be somewhat limited, seeing as anal ysis and communication are my job. Now if I can just survive the side-effects of my medicine — Something set my heart to racing the other night and very nearly resulted in another trip to the hospital before it settled down.

For the time being, blogging will be liight and short. Heh

Update 2: My doctor has spoken, no return to work until mid July, given that work stress played a big part. For once, I’m not tempted to come back early. 40% of stroke victims suffer a second stroke soon thereafter — and I’m not interested in being in that group. I’m going to take it easy and look into speech therapy. Hell of it is, I hardly need it if I’m relaxed and/or having fun. I sound like I’m drawling or stuttering a bit most of the time. We have a supervisor with a much worse speech defect. But if I tense up in the slightest, I can’t type or talk, and unlike the supervisor, my job requires good communications skill.