Lately I have had some changes in my life.
I went from looking like this
To looking like this
Then there was the brand new HP Pavilion Laptop I got as a birthday gift in August, which just lost its 4th hard drive in 6 short months of ownership, is now a paperweight and has been replaced by a Dell Inspiron that cost less and runs with a faster processor. It has been a lot of work to get all of my software loaded and re-licensed, but I have been getting reacquainted with windows 7 and re-learning the interface and I remembered how much I love computers.
For Christmas I got a copy of Rosetta Stone and I am learning to parle vous francais.
Recently, my daughter shared on her Facebook page that she had just completed three years clean and sober living. This is something I have not spoken about before now because I was not sure my daughter was making it public knowledge. But since she shared it, now I am also. We went with her as she progressed through detox as a beautiful young teenager caught in the throes of alcohol addiction, and her progress through AA to today. I am so very proud of her for recognizing and admitting she had a problem, taking responsibility for it and then taking and completing the steps to correct the problem. She has a lot of friends from that side of the world, and they all support her as much as she supports them.
Most recently I was graduated from the physical therapy department. I used the word graduated rather than dropped despite the latter being more accurate. I wrote about that in a previous blog titled Plateaus. An update on that situation; having been out of physical therapy for a month now I have seen some changes for the worse. And fear has crept back into my life in the form of regression. regressing from being able to get up in the morning and get in my wheelchair to either go to the VA for occupational therapy or to go to a movie at the local Regal Cinema, or to visit the bikes and bikers at San Diego Harley Davidson, or just to sit in front of the television and watch SpongeBob
Squarepants. To some people the opportunity to lay in bed all day long, everyday for 4 years may sound like prayer answered. Well I already did my 4 years in bed without getting up and it was more like HELL ON EARTH than heaven answered prayer. And the thought of spending a single day, much less the rest of my life, in bed brings tears to my eyes. I did it once, I don't want to do it again.
Also I have recently noticed that the progress I was making in gaining hand strength has changed and although my hands still measure at the new levels of strength, I am loosing flexibility in my fingers particularly and my hands now have low level pain during the night. This is reminiscent of the 2 years it took from the time I came out of my coma and was paralyzed from my neck down and struggled to regain strength and range of motion enough to reach up and scratch my nose. I try to remain calm and let my God be in charge, something I'm not always skilled at doing. But on occasion I do begin to get scared and think about how terrible it would be to live like that again. So I spoke to my OT about my concerns and she agreed that we will start work on exercises to strengthen the flexing muscles in my hands to try and regain range and flexibility in my fingers. As to the pain, I'm not looking to go back to opiates again, been there done that too. Maybe the new exercises will relieve the pain also.
On the brighter side
I have been going to the movies a lot lately. I have seen all the Action flicks and 6 of the 9 films nominated for an Oscar this year. The 3 I missed were Les Miserables, The Life of Pi and the winner Argo. I was sure that Lincoln would win (yes I do watch the Academy Awards show) and was quite surprised that anything with Ben Affleck would win after he made Gigli. And just today the Times of India reports that the dumbass leader of Iran believes that Washington DC forced Affleck to make the movie just to embarrass Iran... So maybe you should all go see Bruce Willis' new movie to stay on top of developments in Russia, cause you never do know.
Thanks for dropping in and feel free to leave a comment.
Oh one minor change on my blog... I am no longer allowing anonymous comments. There was just too much spam
