Brain Recovery

There were weird things that happened in the wake of the stroke.  For one, my skin is more sensitive.  Last week I picked three pumpkins and two tomatoes and soon had another rash.  There is no poison ivy mixed in with my pumpkin vines and tomato plants.  There isn't!  I'm not good at recognizing poison ivy and all its other poison-forms, but I do know pumpkin and tomato vines for what they are.  Then in a separate incident, I got a rash from a Tegaderm covering.  When the itching forced me to remove that (about 1 whole minute after the time-limit of the doctor's orders) I used a regular Bandaid.  Guess what?  Another rash.

Recent tests showed that the aneurysm mostly healed, but not all-the-way as we had hoped.  If you can picture an aneurysm sort of like a balloon, the bubble of the balloon is filled and clotted and healed.  The neck of the balloon is not.  That means more monitoring than would've probably been necessary otherwise.  But overall, it appears rather safe, quite unlikely to go and bleed (just as a balloon's neck isn't likely to pop).

I've been back at work for five weeks, doing mini-shifts three days a week.  Now that the doctor's had a chance to take pictures of the inside of my brain, I intend to ask him to lengthen the number of hours I'm allowed to work.  After a few weeks of longer part-time days, maybe he'll let me step up to a full-day with my half-days.  On the one hand, I'm anxious to get back to being helpful at work and getting my income back to where it was.  On the other hand, I sure am liking my mornings at home with Maggie, doing schoolwork and chores ... and not overtiring myself.

Oh, and it is absolutely maaaahrvelous, darling, to have car keys and a drivers license again!