Thanksgiving

My wife, Polly, is an outstanding southern cook and she really shines during the holidays.  Tomorrow we're going to travel to see a relative with a new baby, but Thanksgivings when we stay home, her menu looks like this.

Tossed salad of spinach, sliced almonds, craisins, with buttermilk dressing
Kentucky ham made with brown sugar and pineapple (no one in our family likes turkey)
Cornbread dressing
Corn pudding
Cheese pudding (casserole)
Cranberry with cream cheese
Broccoli casserole
Sweet potato casserole
Dressed (deviled) eggs
Rolls
Pumpkin cheesecake
Coconut pie
Pecan pie
Red wine
White wine
Coffee

Polly is taking several of these dishes to the relatives' house, and she will make most of them for Christmas dinner.  I love the holidays.

A setback

I've been experiencing health issues the past two weeks, but I'm gradually recovering.  It all started on a Friday with a flu vaccination.  I wasn't feeling well that day, like maybe I was coming down with a cold.  I knew I shouldn't get a flu shot under those conditions, there was even a question on the questionnaire that asked if I were sick.  I lied and said no, because I wanted to get it over with and didn't want to come back the next week.  The next day, Saturday, I had flu-like symptoms, like a cold on steroids, so I lay around all day.  The next day, Sunday, is when the real trouble started.  I woke up with shooting pains in my back and down the back of my right leg, so I lay around all that day too.  In my life I've had a couple of episodes of sciatica, inflammation of the sciatic nerve, but nothing that severe.

All the next week the pain in my right side (my good side) was agonizing, and even spread down to my ankle and up into my neck.  In the morning I would take a couple of acetaminophen and hobble into my home office and collapse into my chair.  Once there I would yell and writhe in pain until the pills took the edge off.  The pain never really went away, but as long as I sat, I could concentrate enough to get most of my work done. 

The weather here turned cold and rainy that week, and some combination of the weather, the flu symptoms, and the sciatica, caused the spasticity in my left side to amp up.  So that's the way I've been for almost two weeks:  right side burning with pain and left side stiff as a board.  The pain has gradually started to ease in the last few days, but there is still a definite limit to the distance I can walk before it comes roaring back.  Yesterday, I had to go to KHC to get some tasks accomplished that I can only do there.  It went pretty well, since I was able to sit in various places most of the time. On the way back though, I had to stop at a gas station, which was self-service of course.   After filling up, I decided to go inside to use the restroom and get some coffee.  When I came out, it was sleeting, and both my sciatica and spasticity were awake and angry.  I limped back to my car, hunched over to my right trying to get some relief from the pain, while my left leg was so stiff I couldn't bend my knee.  I must have looked like Quasimodo, plus I was talking to myself, saying "Ow, ow, ow," every time I took a step.  I'm surprised no one called the police.

I haven't been able to exercise in two weeks, and I'm not sure when I'll be able to again.  I imagine I'll have to start over from scratch.  I was up to 16 lengths in the pool, and I hate to think about how long it will take me to work up to that again.  This has been the biggest setback to my recovery since the spasticity started 18 months ago, but I overcame that, and I 'll get through this.  Just another episode of living with stroke, the gift that keeps on taking.

My Attitude

I've never been a glass half-full kind of guy.  But I try not to be a glass half-empty type either.  I'm definitely not into positive thinking, and I try my best not to engage in negative thinking.  What I strive to do is to see the world, and my place in it, exactly as it is, no more no less.  I'm not claiming that I always succeed, or even mostly succeed.  Seeing the world as it is isn't easy.  In fact I've found it to be damn hard, since what you may be seeing may not be pleasant.  But to me, viewing the world through a lens of positivity is just as wrong as negativity.  Positive thinking is just as much a form of self-delusion as negative thinking.

My first encounter with the power of positive thinking was way back in college.  I didn't agree with it then, and still don't.  The guy who expounded on it in class supported his belief in it by describing an incident that had been in the local news of parents who had gambled on an untested and expensive cure for their child that had succeeded in saving the child's life.  To him, the lesson was that if the parents hadn't engaged in positive thinking, the child might have died.  I disagreed. 

From the beginning of time, and well before positive thinking, people have been defying the odds as they see them and taking actions that they believe have no chance of success.  It's called hope, an ancient concept.  To me hope is a much more valid approach to living.  It implies an objective evaluation of reality and perhaps a decision to pursue a course of action that is probably doomed to failure, or perhaps not.  Perhaps the parents of that child didn't engage in positive thinking.  Perhaps they did what parents have done from the first time there were parents:  acknowledge the futility of their actions, but go on anyway, and hope for the best.

This is my approach to recovery from my stroke.  Realistically, I don't think I will achieve complete recovery.  In fact, I'm pretty sure I won't.  I don't know with absolute certainty that I won't, though.  In fact, I hope I will.