There are so many similarities in Amanda’s situation and recovery to the way a computer works. The brain bleed was like a piece of badly – written code; corrupting existing data and stopping the program from working correctly –  stopping it from executing existing code, saving information and subsequently retrieving it. But somehow, luckily in […]

Sunday  Amanda spent an hour looking through her many recipe books. This is the first time she has shown any interest in these for 6 months. Her anomic aphasia (we are narrowing it down to a very specific type now), means she can read in her head, but not aloud, or paraphrase what she has […]

So, the 6 month ‘plateau’ has come and gone and progress continues. Last week I downloaded the same ‘Tactus Therapy app used by Amanda’s speech therapist. This means she can practice her spelling and word recognition at any time. She spent an hour today browsing through her recipe books. It’s not novel reading just yet, […]

On Thursday, Amanda baked a chocolate cake, assisted by her occupational therapist, carefully following the recipe on box (yes, it was a simple cake to start baking again). She had a hospital appointment (which was subsequently postponed) and wanted to take the cake into the ATR unit to give to the nurses who looked after […]

It’s been 6 months since Amanda’s stroke. Despite the so – called ‘plateau’ she is still making progress; progress she sometimes finds hard to see for herself. But even seeing her each day, I can see her doing things she simply could not do, even a month ago. A while ago she mentioned she hasn’t […]

I came across a video interview of US congresswoman Gabby Giffords. You might remember she was shot while campaigning in 2011. I can’t put the video on this site directly but you can watch by clicking here As I watched I was struck by how  the bullet which struck her brain had left her with […]

On 2nd February, the day after Amanda’s stroke, the neurosurgeon  summarised her prognosis. Looking back, he was gently introducing us to this whole new world using his wide experience to carefully make no promises, no assumptions, no guarantees. Knowing where the bleed had caused the damage, he accurately predicted Amanda’s reading and writing difficulties and […]

This week Amanda went back to work. Just for an hour and just for morning tea. Around 20 staff came in from their holiday break to say ‘hi’ and see her again for the first time in over 5 months. She sat at her desk in the hope it would spark some memories. The desk […]

This week, it’s time to thank some of my work colleagues  who very generously gifted us a voucher for the online food delivery service My Food Bag . The voucher allowed us to order meals for 4 nights a week, over 5 weeks. I waited until Amanda was home and settled before I signed up […]

Our lives changed forever the instant Amanda collapsed in front of me on 1st Feb 2017. Amidst the drama and fear of those first few minutes, that was my first practical, coherent thought. “This will change who we are forever.” As soon as I accepted that, and the fact neither of us had any control […]