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I went to Dr. Zacharias, my neurologist, today. He said:

(1) No scuba diving. If I really want to dive after a year, he’ll write me a note, he said.
(2) No mountain climbing for at least a year.
(3) No kids for a year. When I want to get pregnant, they’ll have to move me off of Coumadin to Heparin or Lovenox — more shots.
(4) I can drive.
(5) I can ski if I really want to, but because I’m on Coumadin there’s more risk.
(6) I’m not going to die a horrible non-breathing death. :) I was very concerned about this; I didn’t want to have a stroke paralyze my breathing muscles while I’m still conscious. I would be in a coma, and that’s fine with me!
(7) There’s a recurrance rate of about 5% over the next 2 – 3 years.

Suck. It looks as if I’ll be a vegetable for a year or so. Also, it seems as though he’s just biding his time until I have another stroke. I don’t WANT another one, thank you! I would prefer to instead get a diagnosis, fix what’s wrong with me, and then go enjoy my life. Recovery SUCKS!!!

I’ve been doing alright for the past couple days. I’ve been less tired, which is good except (1) it’s only because I haven’t been doing anything, and (2) you would never know it because I’m still SO TIRED!!! Aaarrggh!!! At first, right after my second hospitalization, talking wore me out. I had to make a BIG effort to answer when someone asked me a question. I’m still pretty worn out, though not quite as bad as not wanting to talk. I don’t want to walk around the neighborhood because I’ll be exhausted when I return. I know I need to have the movie (below) open in a new window because it’s really big and takes a long time to download, but it’s tiring to figure out how to make something spawn a new window. I’m really frustrated.

I’m worried that I’ll never work again. That I’ll never be able to have children because getting up with them at night would be too tiring (never mind the medical issues that the strokes have bestowed upon me). I’m worried that Ben and I will never get to go to the South Pacific or even Hawaii, or if we do that we will be lying down for 70% of the time we’re there. I want to scuba dive while we’re there! Ahh!

For now, I’m going to keep on doing what I’m doing: showering, reading, and therapy homework. Oh, joy! :P

Ben’s 27th birthday was Friday. I had trouble figuring out what to get him because his list looked like this:

(1) New shoelaces for my hiking boots.
(2) For Kathy to get better so we can go to Las Vegas together.

I got him a book about mountain biking in the front range and a pair of gaiters for hiking in the snow. I’m trying to get better so we can go to LV, but I think it may be awhile :)

We went to eat at BD’s, a noisy but otherwise fun restaurant: an all-you-can-eat-Mongolian-BBQ place. Yum! We also rented some of Ben’s favorite movies: War Games and Flight of the Navigator. I didn’t get any pictures because my camera was kaputt; sorry, Moms!

Here, though, is a picture of our dogs. Ben let them lick the peanut butter off our mixer beater. They LOVE it! I may be able to post a video once I get the keyboard on my desktop working.

Life has been pretty boring here. After our disaster-day of snowshoeing, Mom and I went on a walk around the neighborhood on Sunday. That was hard because Bonzo pulled on his leash the entire way, and I didn’t have any traction because of the snow. It was, however, slightly more enjoyable than snowshoeing. :) However, I was REALLY tired afterwards and on Monday. Grr … this is how life is post-stroke! It’s “all tired, all the time.” I’m now back to not being completely wiped out, but I’m still exhausted most of the time, and I’m getting really sick of it.

Here’s a picture of my mom on the phone with my sister Kimberly, who got some more good news — she got into Caltech! Not only did she get in, but they’ve awarded her a full-tuition scholarship and $7500/year!!! That’s AMAZING, Kim!! (Not the money, but the fact that they want to give it to you.) Congratulations!

We’ve been battling the snow here for a couple days. My mom doesn’t drive in the snow, but I’ve had therapy and doctor’s appointments down in Boulder. Fortunately, our wonderful neighbors the Harrisons drove us, which was a godsend. Otherwise I’d've been waiting for the bus in the snow, which sounds cold to me :)

Today I went to geology class at CU, then to Dr. Stapleton (rehab physician) and Dr. Fox (hematologist). Dr. Stapleton said that the Adderall won’t be so effective because in the last stroke my basal ganglia — the “secretary of your brain” — was damaged. It used to be that it was just my frontal lobes that were damaged, and Adderall fixes those. Suck :( Dr. Fox said that my CT scans show no cancer (YAY!!!) and that my last round of blood tests was normal, and that’s about all the tests she can think of to do. That stinks because my strokes are now officially a conundrum.

This morning my mom and I went on a short snowshoeing hike. What a disaster! We decided to go to Eldora so we could bring the dogs. Chaco and Bonzo whined the ENTIRE way there. We finally arrived (keep in mind that our drive times have gone up, since Mom doesn’t like driving in the mountains), got our stuff together, and took Chaco and Bonzo into the hills … then a pair of women walked by, and Bonzo, trying to keep us safe, BIT one of them on the leg! That’s terrible! Mom was quick to discipline him, which was good because my hands were absorbed in my thick mittens and I couldn’t grab him. We decided to turn around and go back to the car with him. However, Mom didn’t want to leave him in the rental car, so we drove him all the way back home.

I dropped the boys off inside (where they could find more bits of wall to chew) and headed back to the car. We’d now been driving for an hour! We traipsed BACK to the trailhead and snowshoed for 25 minutes. Mom decided to time our hike because my therapist said to keep the it short. It didn’t feel like 25 minutes, though; we spent easily 10 of those minutes putting on our snowshoes, and 5 of them taking pictures (which I couldn’t download to my computer, hence the text-only entry). We turned around and headed back to the car. It was the suckiest quarter-mile I’ve ever hiked.

My INR level has reached a stable value of 2.25, so I’m now allowed to stop taking shots of Lovenox. Which, I must say, is EXCELLENT — although I was getting used to giving myself shots, I sure didn’t enjoy it. :)

I had my CT scan on Monday. Sunday night, as I was drinking my first bottle of banana-flavored Barium Sulfate smoothie, I noticed something odd on the sheet of instructions I’d been given: “For pelvis CTs, a small enema may be given.” I was indeed having my pelvis scanned, but I did NOT want an enema. Not even a “small” one. Fortunately, I didn’t seem to require one :)

I arrived on time for the scan, they told Ben I’d be about 15 minutes, and I snaked my way through the maze of hallways to the CT scan room. I put on a gown, laid down, and they tried to give me an IV. The first nurse tried twice; no luck. She called in someone from the ICU, who tried once but couldn’t do it. While she continued to search my arms for a vein, unfruitfully, they called in someone from the ER. He was about my age and had bright red hair. He tried the same spot as the ICU nurse, but it didn’t work because “I had a clot.” Now, this I don’t understand — I’m on both Lovenox and Coumadin, which are supposed to prevent me from clotting. On the fifth poke, he got me — yay!!! At this point, I’d been back there for an hour; MUCH longer than Ben expected me to be. At least the scan was quick — 15 minutes or so. I’ll get the results when I meet with Dr. Fox next Wednesday.

My mom’s coming out today to spend a week babysitting me while Ben’s in San Francisco. I’m looking forward to it!

My sister came in 10th place in the Intel Science Talent Search. Congratulations, Kimberly!!!!