The older I get, the more the changing seasons affect me. After my stroke, it’s affecting both my energy and my strength. Used to be that a crisp fall day was my favorite weather . And autumn was my favorite season. Now, I find myself enjoying the mid to late spring sunshine and any temperature over 15 degrees Celsius and under 28 degrees Celsius the most .That’s a great thing because where I live,it rarely gets hotter than that in the summer, so I’m able to enjoy the weather for more of the year. So now my favorite weather occurs from mid spring to mid fall,and sometimes even into late fall.
I used to be very impatient and not very in tune with my health. I only saw a doctor when I needed to have some medication, like antibiotics, or have a breast cyst drained. I thought I was healthy overall. What I didn’t know was that I had something growing in my heart from around the age of 30. There was no way to know it ,partially because I was living in the United States, and I avoided the doctor because it was so expensive even for a check-up,and besides, I was young and, I thought, healthy. Also, a machine called the echocardiogram that allows doctors to see inside your heart had not been invented.
So, 5 weeks after my 50th birthday, I was very surprised when I had a massive stroke that I barely lived through .I then learned that the stroke itself was a side effect of a much more serious problem, a large benign tumor in the right atria of my heart. I was lucky to have the stroke because it alerted doctors to the tumor. Most people with this type of tumor don’t get a warning. they will literally just drop dead.
The tumor is called an atrial myxoma, and it’s proof that something doesn’t have to be cancerous to kill you. If a piece of it hadn’t broken off and traveled to my brain, I wouldn’t be alive today to write about it.
I highly recommend that everyone should get an echocardiogram scan because it’s the only way to know if you have a heart tumor. Don’t think that just because you’re younger that you’re perfectly healthy. Get the scan. I didn’t realize that the fact that I was short of breath was a symptom of anything other than the fact that I was getting older, and that is literally the only symptom I had .
If you’re reading this, call your doctor tomorrow and request an echocardiogram. It could very well save your life.
Help from my husband. As spring has sprung, actually, since daylight savings time, my body has been getting stronger. Also, I’m getting more energetic and am trying to use that strength and energy to do more things for myself and need fewer things from him. For example, my husband usually washes my hair, but for my last two baths , I washed it myself. It might not seem like a big thing to you, but I usually don’t have the energy to do it myself. Also, I usually need his help with sitting back into my lift chair, and for the last few times, I’ve been strong enough to do it myself. Over the next several months, until winter raises its ugly head again, I will try my best to become more independent,including my ultimate goal of walking to the bathroom consistently without my wheelchair or AFO brace. I will definitely need to use my quad cane, but that’s perfectly acceptable. I need to use this strength and energy as much as possible while I have it. I NEED TO BE MORE INDEPENDENT. It will be a full decade since my stroke on August 24th and I feel like I should be farther along than I am. So I’m going to use the strength and energy to fuel my determination and tenacity so I can reach my goal of walking to the bathroom consistently with just my cane and that will be a huge accomplishment for me.
Don’t know why Canadians are united in saying “ELBOWS UP ” in retaliation to President Donald J Trump? Watch these 2 short videos and get caught up
Now that you know what it references, take a look at who started the trend.
Canadians may be known worldwide for our polite society,but get us riled up, and we’re not so nice and polite.
This may be only a trade war thus far, but it’s already united us from sea to sea, and that’s dangerous because we’ve already boycotted products from the USA, including food and alcohol with many stores putting the Maple leaf to connot products that are Canadian. Alcohol from the USA is off shelves country wide. Canadians are not traveling to the USA and instead opting for Mexico or Cuba, where our dollar is appreciated. The real estate market in the USA is being flooded with homes for sale in Arizona, Florida, and other sunny areas as Canadians are vacating their winter homes. Not to mention the stock market. Canadian investors are getting out of US stocks in favour of investing in our own companies.
Canada is ready for a fight. If this becomes another type of war, Canada will get creative if history tells us anything. In World War 1,Canada gave until it hurt, literally.
Let’s not forget about the war of 1812 and the last time the USA tried to annex Canada repeatedly, and we only had our First Nations warriors and the British backing us up. Now, we will have the European Union, the Commonwealth, and the NATO countries on our side. Canada isn’t afraid to fight, and we fight dirty.
I wouldn’t blame the US armed forces if they decided to go against the Draft Dodger and chief and refuse to invade. After all of our hockey hullabaloo, we know that we are great at fighting on ice skates. With a tip of the hat to Gordie Howe.
What happened in the east has moved to the west. We thought it would never happen here. It just took the right number of years for the generations to forget or not learn the lessons of the past. It’s early in the process, and we can still stop it, but every day that goes by, his power grows. Thankfully, Canada is not trying to help it happen. Siding with Europe and any other reasonable country instead.
Please share the following video with any and all Trump supporters you know. It explains what is really happening right in front of their eyes.
What tattoo do you want and where would you put it?
Neither of us has any tattoos ,which is quite unusual for 2 gen xers.
Although when I was in my early 20s, I seriously considered getting a tattoo in the webbing between my thumb and index finger. I was thinking about getting a cartoon character. Ironically, because I’m ornithophobic,I wanted to get the character Woodstock from Peanuts . Because I seriously considered it, I remained inkless.
Others have said things like smart, beautiful, determined, brave, tenacious, funny, and sexy.
If you ask me… vain and introverted, if there’s a word that combines them. I’m sure that there is one, probably in German, but I’m not fluent enough to know it.
