Stroke

I don’t know that I have ever explained how I came to have a stroke.
For a lot of my life I was getting pins and needles in my right arm.  Occasionally they would be in my face.  Mostly they were there and gone. I just got on with it.
One day I had them all day.  That was unusual.  I told my boss at work about them.  He sent me to the health centre at work.  They suggested I should go to hospital to get it all checked out.  As Merril was a nurse I rang her, and followed her advice.
She took me to the Holy Spirit hospital.  They did various tests there. I think it was an MRI I had.  The specialist thought I was joking about the food.  Fair dinkum, I felt like I was at a fancy restaurant.
The next day I was told the tests had revealed a “mass.”    I honestly did not know what that meant.  I thought I would be in hospital, and then back at work.   It was only when Merril arrived, and I told her, and she burst into tears, that I thought it may be serious.
That was first thing in the morning.  I was told the specialist would come and talk to me about it. About 9pm that night he came.  He showed us the results of the MRI, and recommended a course of action.  As it was not aggressive, he said we should go on holidays, and then have an operation.  We did that.  We went to Couran Cove, and took heaps of pics and had a really great time.
The op was set for early April.  I did not know it, but Merril had been told by a doctor I would never walk again, and purchased a wheel chair.  I went into the op. blissfully unaware.
It turns out that, getting to the mass in my brain they needed to cut an artery.  That is what gave me the stroke.  It all really could have been so much worse.  My speech and balance were effected.  Also my stamina has suffered, but that could be just old age.  Work did not want me back.  Their loss I reckon.  I did wonder where the 14 people to replace me would come from.  I have done various forms of rehab., and seen a bigwig phycologist on the sunshine coast. He was up from Adelaide. 
Maybe I never could, but I cannot sing anymore, and to show I have my priorities right, my table tennis has suffered.  My balance is shot, and I can only now talk for about five minutes, before coughing and sputtering.
I am on a Permanent and Total Disability.  An advantage is, I can use one of them car parks that show a wheel chair.  I have a card that enables that.  Mostly that is an advantage, but in our local shopping centre, the dis-abled car parks are out from under cover and subject to extreme heat – as are the mother with pram cark parks.  Weird.
I could just curl up and say “woe is me.”  Fortunately Merril and I are just not like that.  We are determined to use whatever is available.  Sure it may not be what it was, but it is still heaps.