Perspective

 

There is nothing like a little perspective to adjust your attitude...

This morning I had a telephone appointment with the surgeon who operated on me in Vancouver.

I have spent the better part of the past 8 weeks essentially kicking the floor boards and shaking my fist at the sky at the unfairness of being felled (literally) and weighed down with yet another health issue.

But this morning I found out how close I had been to having *no* more health issues.  Oh, I knew how serious it had been - sort of.  I knew that if I hadn't had the surgery it would have gone very badly for me.  What I didn't know was how truly lucky I had been.  That all those medical people who kept telling me how well I was doing were simply amazed how well my recovery had gone.  And how the recovery had been expected to be much more difficult.

When I asked about speech therapy, the surgeon essentially said that by the time I could get an appointment with a therapist, I would be further along in my recovery than a therapist would be seeing.  

He also said that essentially a person with that degree of bleed (17mm) would not leave hospital and go directly home, but would be expected to be discharged to a rehabilitation facility and scheduled for months (not weeks) of intense therapy.

He advised me to live my life as well and fully as I can because healing will come with using my brain, even if that means I don't have the words I need on my tongue.  We talked about my weaving and he encouraged me to *slowly* take up my life again, writing, weaving etc.  

I still don't feel like I want to stress myself with doing remote presentations, my speech centre has been in the middle of where the damage happened, and truthfully he told me my speech may never recover to what it had been.  He encouraged me to keep playing Scrabble and whatever I enjoyed, but to not sit around waiting for recovery because recovering my life will be through living it.

To that end, I will carry on with the proto-article I had been planning before all this happened.  I have a draft just needs a tiny bit of tweaking to make it look 'better' (to my eyes) and the samples I wove on the current warp have confirmed my speculation about needing to change the density to 32 epi.

I have - quite literally - been given *another* chance to live and to weave, perhaps to teach, some more.

Thinking Things Through

 

Linen from Lithuania, Tex 56 or Nm 17.9

I received a gift from someone in the form of linen produced in Lithuania.  I chose the fine singles because my end product was intended to be tea towels, and I thought this yarn would make a lovely weft.

Since I really liked the end product, I bought 5 more kilos in dyed white.  (I know I'm supposed to be stash busting, hush!)

I proposed a project for the new magazine and while it hasn't been approved yet, I figured it would be a good idea to do some experimentation to go with the idea I had to weave.

The singles linen is finer than 2/16 cotton, but that was what I wanted to use as the epi.  However, the idea I had for the article was to weave with two singles in a double bobbin shuttle, but 36 epi - my current warp density - wasn't going to 'work'.

Yesterday I got to the end of towel #6 and instead of weaving one more towel, I wove a couple of samples with the 2/16 and two strands of the singles linen.

My initial thinking is accurate, it looks like.  It's the wrong threading/treadling and the wrong epi, but I was looking to add more data to my decision making, and it's looking like the 32 epi that I expected would be needed, is.  Just based on the difference in the density, the weft is beating in too loosely to square, so it looks like 32 is going to be a better match.

Normally I wouldn't fuss too much about a weave that doesn't beat 'square', but there are times where it becomes important.  On this project it's optimal, if I can get there.

I won't go into that here now because if the project is accepted for the magazine I'm not supposed to talk about it before it is published.

But I thought it was fair game to talk about the steps leading up to my actually going ahead with this idea.  And, who knows, if they don't feel it is appropriate for them, I can go into the details here when I get them done.  Because now that I've done this much work on it, and exploring the factors that are being considered during the design process, I might as well share, if no where else.  

Season Change

 

Somehow, without my noticing, it has turned into deep autumn and winter is not far away now.

The other morning the windshield was covered with frost.  Which isn't a surprise at this time of year - in fact it is 'late', truth be told.

This year winter, for me, is going to be another level of challenge.  I did buy boots with built in studs in the soles, so hopefully I can get around.  Plus I have been using a cane, to make sure I don't lose my balance.  I have a handicapped parking pass, which will help, but there are other things that are going to take a while to resolve - like the swelling in my brain, the fact that there is swelling in my head, above my ears so that my eyeglasses don't sit properly on my face - which makes seeing properly difficult.  The assistant at the eye doctor's advised me to wait until the swelling goes down before I get my eyeglasses re-fitted, which makes seeing...annoying.  Fortunately my closeup vision isn't too bad, but it gets dicey at a distance - and is why I am not driving now.  I'm seeing a massage therapist who is working on the whiplash (mild, thank goodness, but still) and that is slowly getting better, too.

When I talked to the pain doctor a couple of days ago, he understood that I was even more compromised dealing with injury to the lower back, and now the upper - and was sympathetic.  It is such a relief to have found a pain doctor who doesn't ignore the other things going on in my body.  And to have him be supportive about the tweaking on the new medication.

I am trying very hard to pace myself *slowly* in building up my strength again, but I admit it is hard.  Next week I talk to the neurosurgeon who did the surgery, and hopefully find out a bit more.  What to expect.  If I have a 'deadline', then I am happier if I don't.  Something to aim for.

This is not the way I foresaw the winding up of my life so I am having to change my expectations.  Something that is always more difficult when it is pressed upon you.  And I have no idea how far my recovery will go.  

So, I guess the next few years (?) I am going to have to practice the 'no expectations' way of life.  And work at that attitude of gratitude.

Just so long as I can keep weaving...

Contemplation

 

Everything seems to take ages and I get so frustrated that I can't seem to get myself in check.  But truthfully I don't have the energy to do much.  

Between the two of us, Doug is driving me everywhere because I'm still not driving yet.  So when I go somewhere, he comes too.

But little by little, tiny pieces of my new life are appearing.  And over the coming 3 weeks, I have several major appointments - because this brain injury is *not* my only issue - and I am hoping to get the phone call with the neurosurgeon, the appointment with my eye doctor, the review at the cancer clinic and continue to tweak the pain meds.

I am feeling as though my writing is getting better enough that I can try to keep writing.  The nice thing for the next one was a very short 'opinion' piece, and I managed to get through it - slowly, but never mind.  Have not heard back from the editor - yet - but in the early months of the start up for a 'meaty' publication, running on a skeleton crew, I am sure they are scrambling as hard as they can go.  In the meantime little 'newsletters' come and it feels nice to know that they are making progress.  I have zero desire to be in on launching this publication - writing an article or two is enough!  

As for more?  Well, I have been discussing another, but I need to weave some samples and see if what I'm thinking is the direction they want to go.  In the meantime I tweaked the draft and it will need some work, although it looks do-able.  When I get the first section cut off the current warp, I'll weave some samples of the yarns I am thinking of using, testing to see if I do need to adjust the epi or not.  Everything takes so long I cannot miss a deadline...

In the back of my head I keep hearing 'this is the winter of our discontent...'   I'm hoping that I will be able to drive when winter leaves so I can be more independent again.  

And please, whatever keeps testing me to see if I've become strong enough?  Stop!

Bite by Bite

 

Aerial photo of my town.

It's harder and harder to maintain any semblance of keeping my energy spoon drawer filled every day.  Of course, the overcast dreary days don't help.

Yesterday I managed to keep myself going by laying down but not actually sleeping.  But I stayed down for 40 minutes by reminding myself I needed to rest.  Hopefully the balance between rest and activity will become a 'better' balance.

OTOH, this morning we went to have our flu shot, so who knows where I will manage on that rest/active point.

On the positive side, yesterday I didn't feel quite so tired, and now I just go with the flow, as we say.  

I may do at least one session, and see how the afternoon goes.  A friend who got both her shots at once said she didn't feel awful, so perhaps I can keep going.

But that's the thing right now - no expectations.  Do what I can and if fatigue (or ennui) is greater than my desire to do anything?  Well, I am supposed to be 'retired'.  

My hair is bugging me as the part that got shaved is starting to grow, but the rest is weeks late in getting cut.  And my eye glasses are still not fitting on my face properly, so I am not driving right now.  I see my eye doc early in November, and maybe she will have some advice about the left eye that keeps swelling up - with no tell-tale reason why.  Just one more niggling 'worry' that might be unnecessary!  But there are so many things to 'worry' over right now.

My craft fair inventory has gone to the guild, I've added a couple new towels to the inventory on ko-fi.

Little by little I seem to be starting to function (at a very low level!).  

Full Calendar

 

My life is over run with appointments, along with a dearth of energy.  No matter how much I tell myself it's ok, it doesn't feel like it.

This week one or other - or both - of us have appointments, one of them the flu shot, to be followed in a few weeks by Covid.  We decided that since there were several weeks between both, we'd do them one at a time.    The bug we caught (some nasty cold) lingers and Doug is still coughing a lung up.  (He's had multiple cases of pneumonia which have left his lungs vulnerable.)

Neither of us wants to catch anything else, and we make sure we tell people that we have a bug to let them know we don't want to share it, and at the minute we are protecting *them*, not just us.

I have just added another appointment to my calendar for Friday, which had been 'empty'.

In the meantime I am faithfully heading to the loom twice a day, for 15 minutes each.  The big job now is to increase my leg muscles so that I can get back to two 45 minutes a day.  It feels good to be there, and now that I'm weaving again I can start to work on regaining the physical fitness I lost over nearly 8 weeks.

But everyone cautions me to take it easy.  So, I am working really hard on doing just that.  The earliest I've been warned is to not even think about regaining what I want/need is 2.5 months, and that is just getting started on getting my brain working again.  (e.g., I wrote the next appointment down for next week instead of this, but my brain kicked in and I was able to put it on the correct day...)

I don't always 'hear' the words being spoken to me, and I don't always recognize the words that come out of my mouth.  And until I can see the speech therapist, I will likely continue have to problems.  In the meantime I play some games (Scrabble and such) and hope to encourage my brain to use the neuroplasticity our brains are capable of, and try to work on writing (still hiccoughs, there, too). 

On the other hand, after some really dull dreary days, the sun is shining brilliantly, and even though the autumn coloured leaves have mostly dropped on the ground, it's a pretty day.

The Drifts of Days Gone By

 

I keep looking at the calendar, wondering where the past weeks have disappeared to.  

I am still dealing with whip lash issues in my jaw and neck.  I still have less energy than I had before I fell, and while I was thought I was tired then, I'm even more tired now.

And yet.  I have been told by more than a few medical professionals how 'well' I am doing.  If this is 'well', well...

At this point in time I 'work' (if I could call it 'work') about 30 minutes a day, spread over two sessions.  In between I tend to sit in the recliner feeling tired, or if I can't stand it, I can make my way to the dining room table and poke at the jigsaw puzzle.

My massage therapist keeps me sane by recognizing how much it irks me to have to sit and sit and sit.

I did manage to do a little extra 'work' today.  I measured and labelled 5 shawls and put prices on them.  A guild member said that she would come by and bring my box and hanging bag up to the guild room.

Right now - and for the next few months - I will not be driving.  There is swelling in my skull, still, and part of the whiplash has caused my eye glasses to not fit properly, nor my hearing aids.  Seems like a good idea that I not start driving, maybe not until winter lets go of us.

That said, just going from 15 minutes a day to two 15 minute weaving sessions finally begins to feel like 'work'.  Or at least, a level of productivity.

I've emailed a short article to the weaving magazine - now to find out if it fits their criteria.  I have no judgement if my writing is decent or...not.

I think the most discombulating of all of this is...losing my judgement.  I could usually tell if my writing was ok - or at least - acceptable.  Now I have no idea of grammar or...whatever is needed.  The first 3 or 4 times I read through it I'm not even sure all the words there, or how many duplicates are in the sentences.

It's very frustrating.  

But I am not the only person dealing with difficult things.  Which doesn't make what I'm going through less frustrating, but at least, nearly 8 weeks on this part of my journey, seems like there are small increments of progress beginning to happen.

Patience, Grasshopper...

I 

Small Steps

 

Yesterday I started to weave.  The physiotherapist wants me to cut waaaaaay back - it has been 7 weeks, after all - and given I was doing two 45 minute sessions (most) days, I was instructed to dial way back in order to build my muscles back up, again.

Mostly, I am so woefully 'weak', that it is going to take time to build back up again.  

Previously, when I had an injury, I could plan ahead and gently begin again when I could.  This injury was a sharp, sudden, and potentially much more serious.  I had weeks to plan what I could/would do and have strategies in place, unlike now.

However, if I just keep in mind my slow start up, I should be fairly quickly get back to what I had been doing.  The weaving did not do this, those muscles are not particularly injured, and I just need to remember that slow and steady is what is need right now.

Demonstrated for the physiotherapist very quickly showed that my speed wasn't too 'off' and mostly I was needing to corral my skills again.

So what was I able to accomplish in the 2 15 minutes over two days?  I accomplished a tiny bit more on day 2 than day 1.  Now to keep to the plan, and keep going...

Begin Agin...

 

Tomorrow is week 7 since the brain bleed.  I took the holiday weekend off and made myself take a couple more days before I tried to do anything until after I had a good chat with the physiotherapist.

However, I explained how the loom worked, what I had been doing just prior to doing the face plant etc.

Then I showed how I worked on the loom and showed how I wove on it.

In the end, we discussed what I had been doing with the massage therapist, and how I had been working on it before this, the most recent injury.

We had a good talk and in the end I was given the green light to slowly and start weaving.  With the advice to start at 15 minutes, then finish with the instructions I had been doing, graduating to 30, then 45 minutes.

I'm mulling over if it would seem more adventitious and ultimately, beneficial if I spread the time out - maybe do 2 twenty, for example.  Since I will see the massage person, I might get him and see what he thinks.

There is a many slip between lip and cup.  Now to pay attention and see how it goes.

 

Canadian Thanksgiving

 

Yes, we 'celebrate' thanksgiving.  We do it on a different day, in part because living so much further north.  But we largely use the same sort of foods that our US 'cousins' do.

Practicing my attitude of gratitude, I made sure to look at both Sunday and the Monday holiday in order to 'celebrate'.

Tomorrow I see the physiotherapist and hope I can pick up some better ways to weave in order to bring myself back to working 'well'.  I mentioned to the physiotherapist that I have spent the better part of the past 50 years doing this, plus mentioned I am the 27th weaver to achieve the award of 'master' weaver, and have written 3 books  (plus a pdf book as a memoir on my ko-fi shop) with multiple magazine articles.  I don't know if they were impressed (or not!) but I spent the 50 years and passing what I know on to others.

I figured it was noteworthy.

And, if I was going to get some help in order to keep weaving in a 'healthy' way, I might as well learn as much as possible as they could pass on to me.

Since no one of us has any idea how much I could weave on this early, I would like to keep weaving for as long as I can.

In the meantime, I contacted the weaving magazine, and said I would like to write the short article for them.  It's due in December, but it's a topic I've written about before, so I figured I could maybe manage it.  If it doesn't pass muster, that will be up to them to decide.  I have zero way to judge.

Up until August 27 I had a pretty good idea of how well I could communicate.  From now on, I will constantly be working on how well I can make myself understood.  

So be it...

One Way

 

While waiting for the physiotherapist to come on Tuesday, I am being very cautious.  It is Thanksgiving weekend this weekend and I am focusing on trying to work on an 'attitude of gratitude'.  Given it could have all gone very badly less than 7 weeks ago.

Since I am not in a position to be clear on how more 'wrong' things could have gone, I have to spend more time on being how whole lot more than it could have gone.

If I am going to - at the very least - continue to write for this blog, then I need to get back into the possibility of once again writing.  

Even if I don't write well.  Even if I don't know how I can express myself to others.  If I don't get back into the 'harness', I may never back into this place.  

This place of expressing myself through the written word.

So, today I grab my little book of small expressions of a grateful heart.  It was a small book I picked up from Costco (!) lo, these many years ago.  I nearly always pick it up and where ever I flip through the book I nearly always find something to find my heart to be grateful for.

Let's see if I find something today.

There were three on the two pages today.  Out of the three on the pages, I decided I wanted to go with the following:  

Give me a sense of humor,

Give me the grace to see a joke,

To get some pleasure out of life

And pass it on to other folk.

Unreal

 

Autumn scarves - painted warps

The past 6+ weeks have been...an experience.

There were days when I could NOT find the words I needed to say what I wanted to say.  It was a lack of expression that I found discombobulating.  I've never expected being told I would lose my speech, and I was practically unable to say what I wanted to say.  I took it for granted that I would have control over my words.

This inability to express myself in speech was frustrating, and truth to tell - it hasn't entirely gone away.  If I'm tired my ability to express myself in language can go away entirely.  Still.

I have *some* ability to write, but there are whole parts of sentences that wink out of existence.  Words double up, or disappear entirely.

And this is why I feel I have to stop teaching, even remotely, probably for the rest of my life.  When left alone with my desktop where I can take hours to write a sentence that actually says what I want it to say...well, that is just my time being 'wasted'.

I am still dealing with a level of 'amnesia' from the time I crawled into bed after lunch, to waking up in Vancouver.  It is very strange for several days to disappear with zero memory of them.

I have requested the physiotherapist to come and confirm I am still able to weave.  I hope that the body remembers what the brain forgets.  With nearly 50 years of fine tuning my weaving, I hope I will be able to continue to weave.

A number of medical professionals are telling me I will recover.  They tell me I'm doing well (really???) and they foresee my making a good recovery.

But will that 'good' recovery allow me to teach?  Somehow I don't want to teach in person.  Because I never know when my brain will close up shop. 

As far as the blog goes, I can spend hours - if I have to - to write a post, while my brain recovers what I can to know and write down.  Instead of 20-30 minutes.

People assume that I spend hours to write a post.  Once I started writing blog posts I got quite practiced at writing them.  Oh, it wasn't 'perfect', it was just me, jotting down thoughts that filled my brain.  But neither did I spend much time writing what I was thinking about it.

Sort of like weaving - so many weavers just assumed that I lacked efficiency when I'd spent the majority of my time as a weaver to become as efficient as I could.  

With the future really and truly unknown to me, I have no idea how far my recovery will go and how my future years (?) will go.  

Six Weeks, 1 Day

 

I woke up Monday morning with a *very* swollen left eye.  My thought was that there was something wrong with my left eye - either the shingles or the surgery on that side of that hemisphere of my brain.

I panicked.

Neither was a 'good' situation, but I could not get through to my family doctor, or my eye doctor.  A friend recommended I call the optometrist, and fortunately she was able to see me.

I explained the brain bleed and my concern about the surgery or the shingles.  They did pressure tests, took photos, and when all the tests had been done...there was nothing to blame for either thing.  I had gotten a doctor's office visit with the locum with my doctor on Wednesday and he read her report and pronounced himself as perplexed as she was, what was wrong.  

But it was 3 days of worrying about what was going wrong.  On the safe side, he wrote me an eye ointment Rx just in case there was something 'wrong' that neither of them had thought about.  (The swelling is gradually reducing, but still no answer as to why.)

There is nothing quite like a body that appears to about collapse.

I have had to spend a great deal of time, thinking about what to do now.

I had a physiotherapist's assessment, and he will come back next Tuesday to give me feedback about how to proceed to continue to weave.  I have massage bookings to help with the mild whiplash injury.  I will be picking up other therapists as the time goes ahead.  Hopefully speech therapy will be scheduled - it is the 'worst' thing happening.  (IMHO)

I have a contract to write an article for a magazine, and now I need to decide if it is possible.  The article for the summer is still a possibility - but I will need to redo what I had planned.

But I have had medical professionals tell me I am doing 'well' (while I bite my tongue explaining it doesn't *feel* as though I am).  Teaching in person (by Zoom) seems like a step too far.  I have a couple people ready to help me do alpha reading - and whom I trust to tell me I'm not making a fool out of myself.

But at the 6 week and 1 day after the surgery, I now have to prepare myself to proceed - at some level.

Why?  

Because I'm not dead yet.

When my younger brother died in February 2008, I had to think long and hard how to continue.  In the end, I decided he was dead, and I was not.  If I were to honour his memory, then I was going to live well for both of us.

And here I am.  I've experienced a brain bleed.  I'm 74 years old.  If I am going to continue to honour Don's memory, I need to pick up what I do 'next', and do what I can do.

So.

Forward.  

Where the road leads from here on, I have zero idea.  If the weaving magazine wants me to keep reading, I guess I keep writing.  If not, there is this blog.

Hurry Up (and wait)

 

This morning I had the physiotherapy assessment.  I had the loom set up, but the therapist needed to set another time slot in order to address any actual therapy.  I decided that maybe I would be a 'good' girl and wait until there was time to go through the loom and how it functions.  I'm not entirely sure how much the therapist knows about weaving, and I would rather wait one more week before I start trying on different ways to work towards learning what I should be doing.  Or even just shorter time slots, to be getting on with.

It was a thorough discussion - what I was able to do, and I could not, and between my knowing how to weave and the therapist's knowledge of how to move one's body, I am willing to wait one more week and get a little stronger.

There have been areas where I definitely feel like I'm getting stronger, and it seems about right to get myself working better before trying to weave on the loom.

In the meantime, I can adjust my strength.

I have the first two linen towels ready.  The first will be listed next, and the 2nd has already been listed on my ko-fi shop.  As usual prices are listed in Canadian dollars.  The rates by Canadian posts have gone up since last spring.  I am going to keep the rates the same for the time being.

A reminder of my ko-fi show address...

5.5 weeks

 

Late last week we were contacted about getting the assessment for what I'm facing ahead of me.  Since I had been slowly getting the rest of the warp I'd left on the loom ready, I managed to get it sleyed and tied on over the weekend.  This morning I prepped the warping draft for tea towels, and I'm hoping to take the therapist down to the studio to see what it is I used to be able to do.  If I can at least weave, that will go towards feeling like I'm 'normal'.

Face it, I have done a lot of different weaves over the years.  And I am pretty sure I can do at least simple things, if nothing else.  

My 'voice' still fails me.  I suspect it will keep me from teaching in person, remotely.  

I have heard conservatively about two years to...recover...and face it, I may never to make it to where I was before.  OTOH, several medical folk are telling me I've been very lucky, so who knows?

Did I have more I wanted to do?  I'm sure that I did.  I'd just engaged to write some articles.  But do I 'need' to?  Who knows?  (At least those two got done - can I do more now?  Dunno.)

For all the health challenges I've experienced - cardio stents, living with cancer, triple by-pass, more cancer (the type of cancer I have doesn't just go 'away' - usually), then damage to my lower spine etc., well, I truly thought I didn't deserve any more physical ailments.

Apparently not.

Maybe it is well and truly time to 'retire'.

(Nearly) 5 weeks

 

Working on a little bit of weaving - something I started thinking the one before my fall.

(I feel like calling it My Fall - because it is...definitive and possibly life changing...)

I'm of some two minds (heh) about whether or not I will do is for this project.  I've gotten it to the point of getting it to the stage where it *may* be decided - or not.  The likely that it is necessary to, so I will have to continue to get it to 'work' if I want it to.  The two years that folk are being quoting that are change difference, if at least I haven't lost all my potential to weave.  My 'brain power' is not only just in my speech, but the craft tends to drill way far down deeper that just a within the speech centre of the brain.   The knowledge is so much more that the speech, even if I cannot no longer teach, I am pretty sure I will be able to continue to weave.

The next two days are 'busy' (given my capacity to be 'busy') but physically.  Friends have told me to pay attention and rest.

Everyone who knows anything at all is telling me to rest, heal.  Not rush back to the loom.  

To that end, the cards, bouquets and messages have encouraging.  I don't see the surgeon until the end of the month, and I hope that I will find out more of how my recovery will shape my future.  I will be removing the Zoom presentations from my website as soon as my webmistress has the time.  While my voice is beginning to gather strength, I don't want to stress myself.  I never know were will my voice end, and when...it doesn't.