A Typical Few Days

I got an email from someone the other day who'd read this diary and wondered how I was getting on. His father had suffered a bleed from a cavernoma too, in his spine this time, so I hope it's working out OK for him. But it did remind me that I'd not posted much here for a while and that's largely because things haven't changed much. As I say whenever people ask: I have good days and I have bad days.

The pattern is sometimes hard to fathom. For example over the Summer I had a period of five or six weeks when I was very well, but more typically the up and down swings are shorter.

Take the last couple of weeks. It started with a parish council meeting. It was obvious from the agenda that this was going to be an "interesting" meeting. Back in May I resigned as chair of the council as it was becoming very clear to me that when things got stressful at parish council I got ill, and as chair the problems often came outside meetings too, with people expecting you to make decisions, mop up messes, or simply listen to their (often well justified) rant. Since resigning things had been better but by Friday night I was conscious that I was worrying about the meeting and I was suffering the consequences.

Then the new chair revealed that she might not be able to chair the meeting so I, as vice chair, might have to chair it. So I got very little done over the weekend (we're trying to build an enclosure in the garden for two ducks, which is another story). We also had my parents over on Sunday. Nice to see them but more stress. I was worn out after they'd gone.

Come Monday lunchtime the chair phoned to say she would be able to chair the meeting which was kind of her (she knows why I resigned as chair). Despite this it was a stressful meeting. I got angry which I shouldn't do. I felt dire afterwards and considered resigning. I wasn't well again until Wednesday - as a result of which I didn't go to London to see a prospect for a new web site, which I really should have done.

Things then got better and I was relatively well for the second half of last week. We even went to the pub on Friday night and we got quite a lot done on the duck enclosure on Saturday and drove to my sister's on Sunday. That was a 200 mile round trip and I drove half way there and back, which was as far as I've driven since my stroke I think. This was on top of seeing my sister's family, with two small children who, although I love, do usually wear me out. I did have a migraine on the journey home but I was pretty well on Monday which surprised both of us as we expected me to be ill.

On Monday evening I, and later Beth too, spent quite some time struggling to get a new LCD monitor working with my laptop ready for Tuesday ...

Now for some reason or another the gods decided that Tuesday should be a very busy day. First a new prospect in the morning, then lunch at the pub (which meant driving into Cambridge in the midst of the Christmas shopping traffic and back) where I met someone else whose web site I'm working on, then back for a site meeting of parish councillors at the cemetery and allotments and then, to round the day off, my current main customer was going to pop in. The first two of these only appeared in the diary on Monday afternoon. Both rather out of the blue.

Anyway it all went well at first and I was feeling very chipper and enthusiastic at all this activity, most of which was business related which is good as I like earning money even if I have the cushion of my permanent health insurance to fall back on. But by the time I got to the parish council meeting I was start to flag and luckily my main customer didn't show in the end so I was able to doze on the sofa for the rest of the afternoon.

And today? Well today I've been crap. Migraine in the morning, the headache part cured by Maxalt Melt, then the rest of the day feeling intermittently crap which is pretty typical after a migraine. I got some stuff done for customers but spent a lot of the day on the sofa doing very little.

So there you have it: the best part of a couple of weeks with some good days and some bad. The pattern generally seems to be that things I know are going to be stressful make me ill before and/or after and overdoing it mentally and/or physically will sometimes make me ill, especially if it's cumulative. But it's not that predictable.