When I was released from the stroke rehabilitation center, my capabilities were extremely impaired. Simple things that used to be a normal part of my life, were now major challenges. Trying to make my way from the sofa to the bathroom, or navigating a few stair steps on my own were suddenly major challenges.
I suppose my motivation for creating a mantra for myself was part anger and part stubborn determination. Damn it, I wanted my life back, and I wasn’t going to rely on Joyce for any more than I had to, if it was at all possible. Eventually I made good progress, to where I am today by constantly reciting my personal mantra.
I repeat this mantra every day and try to live by it.
It simply states my goals in very clear terms towards my recovery and there’s hardly a day that goes by where I don’t remind myself of them. I find it is incredibly important to remember that my journey back is getting closer, but still far from over to get back to my old life.
Please feel free to use this for yourself, or develop your own mantra that is more in tune with your strengths and determination. My daily mantra is:
I will do whatever I am able,
Whenever I am able,
For as long as I am able
It is very simple and easy to remember, especially when I am presented with a challenge to my current abilities. Fortunately those challenges are becoming fewer and fewer as time moves forward.
10: Keeping Score
One of the best ways I found of keeping my head on straight was creating small goals for myself. After my initial accident, I didn’t really realize it at the time, but I was entering a completely new phase of my life and it was nothing like I could ever have imagined.
I needed a major attitude adjustment and a serious talk with myself to accept my new reality. This was a very hard pill to swallow.
I went from having a successful and rewarding business in which we were able to travel around the world, then in a flash, I was unable to do the simplest of tasks like putting on a shirt or a pair of shoes. It was quite a comedown.
In the past, my biggest challenges might have been increasing my sales, or introducing new products for my business. Then all of a sudden I was faced with major challenges like learning to walk again, or take a shower.
So my goals became challenging the number of stair steps I could manage, or walking all the way to the end of my 40 foot long driveway? Maybe it was as simple as picking up a towel from the floor, or lifting a jar of peanut butter off the second shelf. To most people, those are very simplistic tasks, but to me, they were real struggles. I became very focused on meeting and mastering my goals and was proud of how I progressed.
Setting goals and marking achievements was my way of keeping score. Who was going to win today? Was it me, or was it that jar of peanut butter?
11: Standing Up To My Fears
I have had many times when I was very afraid of a procedure I had to go through. I think it is only natural when doctors are slicing and dicing your body to be worried about what could go wrong.
There were times when I had to suck it up and face my fears and get on with it. This can be extremely difficult to do sometimes, but having the information you need to make decisions means I was in a better place to do that.
However, many times the decision was out of my hands. For example, when I had to undergo an emergency procedure.
This happened to me numerous times. Honestly, I maintain a high degree of confidence in the medical professionals that I have come into contact with and I simply have to put my faith in them. Yes, it can be a gamble at times, but what else can I do other than to try to screw up my courage and face my fears head on, and quite honestly, hope for the best.
12: Staying Distracted
It is very important for me to find distractions to keep my mind off my pain and stress whenever possible. I’m not a big TV watcher, so that idea was out.
I get a lot of value out of writing about just anything at all. Most of the time, I’ll write something and then just toss it away. This is partly because my stroke left my sense of concentration and memory severely impacted. I’ll spend hours writing something and when I go back and review it, I’ll think to myself, this sounds very familiar. Well of course it sounded familiar because I wrote the same thing yesterday and completely forgot that I did!
So staying distracted and concentrating has been a real challenge for me. Fortunately Joyce came up with the perfect solution - Scrabble! We play everyday at 10:30 in the morning and I have to admit I was terrible at the game when we first started, I have come a long way since.
I have to give her the credit she deserves, she is the de facto champion of the Scrabble Olympics in our home. However we have come close to turning it into a full contact sport at times when there’s a dispute about whether a word is legal or not.
But to give myself a bit of credit, when I first started to play, I would maybe manage to win one out of every fifty games (or was she just feeling sorry for me and let me win?), but I have elevated my skill set to winning two or three out of fifty games! Mathematically, that’s up to a 300% increase!
The game certainly is a distraction for me, keeping my mind occupied and away from any negative thoughts. It also helps with my memory in recalling words and how to spell them.
Scrabble, writing, or anything else I can do that gets my mind off my issues and thinking positive is a good thing.
13: Beware The Messenger
Fear of the unknown can be debilitating. Well it certainly was for me not knowing what type of things my doctors were going to do to me, or have me do to myself. I will not lie to you, I have been terrified at times of what was coming next.
For example, my urologist said that she was going to schedule my first (of many) Cystoscopy. I was told that she was going to insert a camera into my bladder to see how it was healing weeks after the emergency surgery.
I imagined that the bladder was like a water balloon, and it had basically exploded inside me during my initial trip and fall accident.
Fair enough I thought, a simple look and see type follow up.
Unfortunately, I mistakenly assumed that the big scar on the lower half of my belly would also be the entry route she would take to enter the bladder. I was clueless about the procedure. I asked her to confirm that my assessment of the procedure was correct, and to my horror, she set me straight. She would push a small camera into my bladder alright, but not through my belly. She was going to push it up where urine normally comes out!
Now you might think that after going through emergency surgery on my personal plumbing system, I would be used to the attention I was about to receive. Not so much, as everything performed on me during the operation was while I was knocked out under general anesthesia.
When she told me how and where the camera would travel inside me, I was to put it mildly, terrified!
I have to admit I do have a tendency to overthink things, which brings out the worst in me. I have come to learn to listen to trained professionals who know what they're talking about, and not some of the so-called self-proclaimed experts on the internet chat groups.
Unfortunately, some of my “research” came from posts on Facebook and just made my fears even worse. I read a number of horror stories about cystoscopies but there’s a huge difference between credible professional advice and everyday opinions on the internet.
So now I try to always get my information from the experts. Once armed with the facts, it is much easier for me to make informed decisions.
If you want a chuckle about my first cystoscopy, check out a my piece I wrote called “You Want to Put WHAT, UP WHERE? in the "A Funny Thing Happened Section"
16: Don’t Quit!
This may be one of the most important tips I can pass along. As the old adage states, “You’re not beat until you quit, so don’t quit”.
Now this sounds a lot easier said than done, and it is. I’ve been through no shortage of dark times, but rightly or not, I had to keep looking for the light at the end of the proverbial tunnel.
I witnessed a strange lesson in stick-to-itiveness from the most unlikely of events of places.
I have two bushes in front of my porch and there is a spider that is relentless in building large webs that cover the entire bushes making the web look like a bride’s wedding veil.
I have taken a broom and cleared those webs off every day for weeks and yet every morning when I sit out on the porch and have my coffee, I look at those bushes, they are covered with webs! No matter how many times I destroy that spider’s work, it builds new webs every single day. That is determination!
As much as I don’t like the webs, I have developed a level of respect for the amount of fortitude that one little spider has. That is the sort of thing that gives me the willpower to keep going, no matter how many times I get knocked down!
I will admit that there are times when the thought of giving up was very tempting, but when I think about my wife and what her life would be like if I did give up, I knew I couldn’t quit. I know I won’t be around forever, but it is my responsibility to at least give it my best shot at sticking around.
I’m sure you have someone that needs you to give it your best shot, if not, do it for yourself.
17: Staying Positive!
I have to admit, this can be a really tough one for me to carry the torch of positivity at times. Generally I take things as they come, but every once in a while I will fall into a funk where the combined weight of my journey come crashing down on me hard.
I wish I could tell you I had some super secret to get out of my worry state but I don't. The best I can do is sleep it off. I have learned that when I am exhausted, my brain goes to a bad place, where I know it shouldn't.
Other than that, my best defense against the Worried Man’s Blues is occupying my mind with any one of the many other distractions I’ve already discussed.
The key for me is to recognize when I’m starting to fall into that dark mindset before I do or say something I shouldn't and make a bad situation worse.
Good luck with this one!
Thank You for Reading My Story!
I truly hope you can take something from my words to help you in your time of need. This can be a terrible situation we find ourselves in and all we can do is try our best to make those bad days we all have, into better days!
I sincerely wish you the very best in your own journey!
Kenneth
Wait, there's more!
If you need a chuckle after all his serious stuff, HERE are some of my lighter comedic writings based on my many medical adventures and misadventures you might enjoy
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