Wednesday, April 08, 2009
I have found out that most people don't understand what I can and can't do. Things have changed gradually and haven't seemed remarkable enough to report.
First, the good news. I drive and take care of myself completely. I make all my own decisions. (For several months, my children took care of everything, including my finances.) Julia still goes with me to my medical appointments and is invaluable to me.
On the other side, I am weak. I have lost a lot of weight, more than 30 pounds. You would not notice that if you saw me because my torso is still large and my neck is larger, making my face look fat. Most of the weight lost was muscle, my arms and legs are tiny.
My sister Janice teaches PE. She has an exercise room at her house with various machines. She is thinking on an exercise program for me that would start out very slowly. I can go up there during the day when they are not home and use her equipment.
Mentally I am much sharper than I was last fall, but still not as smart as I used to be. I have started a project to read all the books in my library that I have not read before. If I don't want to read it, I throw it away. Yesterday I picked out Everyone Else Must Fail, a biography of Larry Ellington, founder of Oracle. His motto is that success is not just that he succeeds but that everyone else must fail. So I open it and see that I noted on the inside cover that I read it last year. I had no memory of that. After flipping through the book, I remembered a lot but I can't believe that I thought I had never read it.
I am paying to have all my outside work done this year. Julia's fiance and his son are picking up sticks and leaves, power washing my deck, moving some dirt, etc.
I have little energy and drive.
I still have pain in my jaw which worries me.
But all in all, I don't have a bad life.
First, the good news. I drive and take care of myself completely. I make all my own decisions. (For several months, my children took care of everything, including my finances.) Julia still goes with me to my medical appointments and is invaluable to me.
On the other side, I am weak. I have lost a lot of weight, more than 30 pounds. You would not notice that if you saw me because my torso is still large and my neck is larger, making my face look fat. Most of the weight lost was muscle, my arms and legs are tiny.
My sister Janice teaches PE. She has an exercise room at her house with various machines. She is thinking on an exercise program for me that would start out very slowly. I can go up there during the day when they are not home and use her equipment.
Mentally I am much sharper than I was last fall, but still not as smart as I used to be. I have started a project to read all the books in my library that I have not read before. If I don't want to read it, I throw it away. Yesterday I picked out Everyone Else Must Fail, a biography of Larry Ellington, founder of Oracle. His motto is that success is not just that he succeeds but that everyone else must fail. So I open it and see that I noted on the inside cover that I read it last year. I had no memory of that. After flipping through the book, I remembered a lot but I can't believe that I thought I had never read it.
I am paying to have all my outside work done this year. Julia's fiance and his son are picking up sticks and leaves, power washing my deck, moving some dirt, etc.
I have little energy and drive.
I still have pain in my jaw which worries me.
But all in all, I don't have a bad life.
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