Had my first appointment at the stroke gym today. Wasn’t sure what it was going to involve apart from doing some of the exercises I did at the intro assessment.
Well I met a few other people who had also had strokes. Many, to look at, I would never have said that they had experienced a stroke. Most people walked fine, talked fine. There was only one person that I could clearly see had damage to one side of the body but they could still walk. Wow! I expected most people to have visible signs of stroke damage, but they don’t. I have, however, reduced the average age of the gym class considerably. Me, and another young lass - well I still see myself in the young category J
We did some exercises, nothing really strenuous but it was all about building co-ordination and strengthening any weakness we had. I could manage all of the exercises so felt a bit of a fraud being there. But sleep? That was all I wanted to do. I was knackered. I just had to keep myself going for about an hour but it was the longest hour – ever.
At the end of the session we had a chance to sit down and have a cup of tea and then we got a talk about diet, nutrition and balancing fats. So keeping our diets healthy to reduce the chance of any more strokes.
One lady explained that she didn’t realise she’d had a stroke until her son asked her why she kept dropping things. It was him that encouraged her to get checked out. This same lady thought I was a member of staff when I arrived because I was too young to have had a stroke. Yeh, that’s what I thought too - but how wrong can one be?
Anyways, sleep is calling and I need to do some catch up on shut eye. Night night. Zzzzzz