It has been a little while since I wrote about my therapy and all the things that go with it. The past couple of weeks I have been talking to my therapist, Megan, about what I am capable of and what I want to do for a job when I finally get the doctors note that I can go back to work. It’s difficult because the reality is, I can’t do most of the things that I could before the stroke. Even when I am cooking or baking I have to really THINK about getting the oven mitts so I can take a casserole out of the oven because I don’t feel pain right away. There is something with my brain that I can’t process it until later in the day (that is part of the brain injury I have to accept). If I cut myself, it’s the same thing, I don’t feel it right away and that’s a scary thing.

All the questions about math and fractions, I am only at a grade 4 or 5 level. I can’t even make change in my head without really thinking about it for a minute or two. So right now, I can’t even imagine going back to work as an operations manager. It take me a while to just type out things, then I have to re-read them and I have to check that I spelled the words the right way and I have to make sure I am using the right words.

It’s weird because anyone who sees me face to face doesn’t see anything different. I still look the same, I don’t have a limp or an obvious disability but I can’t write very well and if you talk to me, you will realize there is something with my speech and if I talk to you later in the day, I mostly say “um-hum” or yes or no answers because later in the day I am getting tired and can’t think about the words I want to say.

It’s a reality that I have to face every day now since the stroke. There are a number of things that I am getting slowly back but I have to realize that there are many things (typing, words, cooking just to name a few) that I have to look at a different way and really think about them before I do them.

I guess what I am asking all of you, is to take into consideration when you think a person is slow or they can’t do math as well as you can or that they can’t find the words like you can – don’t forget you don’t know what the person is feeling or thinking about and you don’t know that they haven’t had a brain injury that you can’t see just by looking at them.