The Dance

Stroke recovery is a dance of moving forward and then back to a silent rhythm that seems to make no sense. I just had three and a half great days. I was walking very well and my vision would sometimes let me read without squinting or increasing the font. Yesterday afternoon I could feel the shift coming, similar, I guess, to how someone with arthritis knows the weather is going to change. It can’t be seen and there is no real evidence of the change, but you know for a fact it is coming.

Last night when I went to bed, I had that strange yet familiar feeling that I was falling and floating and I could feel the dizziness takeover my body. I woke up this morning and discovered that the game of recovery had sent me back three spaces. As I type this, with the view in Word set to 500% and my face about  a foot or so from the screen, I have to strain to make out the letters and see my words. Watching YV today is somewhat nauseating if I use both eyes. My balance is way out of whack and instead of doing a bit of work today, I am on the sofa waiting for the room to stop spinning.

On my good days, I forget that a not so good day is coming. There isn’t really anything I can do to avoid it, it is just the way the brain works and the way recovery goes. I wish there as something I could do like eat more fruit or sugar, have more water or even meditate, but nothing but patience seems to work.

While it is frustrating, I am doing my best to stay positive, knowing that the change to feeling better again is on the way. Maybe today, maybe not, but it is coming and so I will wait for it like people wait for a late train or bus. Sooner or later, it will arrive. The process reminds me of a saying I read and fell in love with in the Lotus Temple in New Delhi. I don’t know it exactly, but it reads something like “If things are good, so not rejoice too loudly and if things are bad, so not mourn too deeply. They both shall pass.”

One thing I have learned, is that each time I am having a good period, it is better than the previous good period, so even though I know it might look and feel as though I am moving backwards, I know that really I am moving ahead.