El Beach

My hair is getting longer....

Poach Eggs, Ham with Gravy, Bisquit and Fries

Ok, I only ate 10 of the Fries....

"The Jesus Trail"

Aah! ( Sleeping Puccini )

Unbelievable - yhea - an awaking

It is hard to fathom, but this morning, at Farmer Boy, my level kicked up a notch. It was "clearer" that it has been before. That is, my mind was clearer than it had been every other morning. And it stayed that way. It was not like, during the stroke, I grasped something and wanted to go to my Director and then when I was there, it all went away, leaving me questioning why. Instead I am feeling like my old self again. An older self that has been through heck via the stroke. But myself. Now I have to make sure this is not a random occurrence, and I will slip into the dream state ( the stroke state ) again. But if this is where I am going, I salute it, and say carry me with you my friend, carry me with you.

Aye...el stroke....

On Tuesday I was whacked with the stupid, horrendous strokism. It was really weird, I was feeling kind of strange all day, no I did not visit El Stroke again, just kind of funny, I just wanted to go home and get in bed and sleep there for a million years. Today everything is fine and dandy. It is sort of odd getting over a stroke. A million brain cells and every one of the stroke victims has a different thing to say about it. Other than they just want to get out of the stroke and get on with life. Really, that is all I want to do. Yes I could go on as I have gone on lamenting the strokes indifference to me. But what of it, things must change, I really do want to get better. That is all I want. I think it has to do with Protein in a lot of ways, I did not have much Protein yesterday until dinner. And from 10AM till I left at 4:46PM I was aghast, tripping out with Aphasia. I said to Rose, my wife, on the phone yesterday :

 

" I feel like I am burning the wicks at two ends..."

 

She understood what I meant. 

 

Must get some Protein today. Onward and Upward.

Urine Coated Dog

On the Sunday Hike again.....

El Mountians

320 Diovan

So I was off of the Prozac. And this meant my Dr. could try out another Blood Pressures Medicine on me. He decided on Diovan 320. Now had I been my normal weight every thing should have been fine. But I was not my normal weight I was 60 lbs above that. Yes, I was 260 lbs. In fact when I got the stroke, I could not do anything but get better, so in the three months I had off, I dropped that down to 229 lbs, which was good. During the Prozac phase, this grew up to 259 lbs.

 

Anyway, the Diovan 320, after a week of it, my Blood Pressure went down from the 140/90 to - and I gasp - 119/55, it was miracle, or rather it was a pill, I could not believe it.

 

I told the Dr. : "Wow, all from a pill, what do you know?"

 

This was within Two Weeks.

 

Now after the Two Weeks, I keep taking it. And round about , Four Weeks I started to feel something. And I quote from the package description :

 

Symptoms of fluid and electrolyte problems ; dry mouth.

 

But I figured, dry mouth, I can deal with that as long an my BP is 199/55, I can do this!

 

Around Six Weeks, quoting from the package description :

 

Symptoms of fluid and electrolyte problems : dry mouth, thirst, lack of energy (lethargic) , weakness, drowsiness, restlessness, confusion, seizures, muscle pain or cramps, muscle fatigue, very low urine output, fast heartbeat, or nausea and vomiting.

 

I new something had to be wrong, I was experiencing : dry mouth, lack of energy (lethargic), drowsiness, muscle fatigue, and very low urine output.

 

So at around three mouths of this I went it to see the Dr.

 

"Dr. I can not believe a pill does this to me, I mean the lower BP, but it is messing with my system....."

 

I went on to tell him about the problem I'd been having and wanted to know how I could go from the 320 Diovan dose to twice daily, 160 Diovan dose.

 

It would be the same amount, but at 160 Diovan dose twice daily.

 

My Dr. was amazed I went into the url Diovan page and read up on it.

 

So I was on the 160 Diovan dose, twice a day.

 

And what do you now, all the problems I was having went away in a week. 

 

My sister in law , Tree, said this :

 

"Your Doctor can try what he will. but unless you feed him the knowledge, it will only be a guess."

 

Well know that my stroke is just about gone ( although it shall be with me the rest of my days ) and my aphasia is just about gone (almost), it is as if I am waking from a dream.

Prozac

I started on Prozac after my stroke. My wife said : "You are sleeping a lot, maybe you had better go in to see your Doctor?"

I went in with her as she could explain it better that I could. The Doctor ripped me off a prescription pad : 20MG of Prozac.

The Doc said, you will be on Prozac for 6 to 12 months and please see me for any follow ups.

I started talking it the next morning.

I have no idea what the depressive needs for El Prozac.  What I needed from it were to get the SSRI moving in my head again. I was going down the tubes as it were. Do to my stroke and the aphasia. Going down the tubes!

I did not notice it at first. But when I showed up for work, around 8 in the morning, I would be going at Reports they wanted me to do. And then, at around two months into it, I started to feel it around 10 in the morning. Feel it is a big way. In fact if you could have seen the inside of my brain you would have seen firecrackers going off, and I was happy as happy could be. This lasted for six months. Then the happiness went away. And I was in the Prozac zone.

When Rose said : "Let go see Wanted and the movies."

When we got out Rose  said : "That was simply amazing!"

To which I said : " Huh? Simply amazing? It was so so."

That is when I new I had to get off the Prozac, it had done its job. So I went to see the Doctor again.

"What do you mean I will get off the Prozac in 3 months?"

"You have to get off it gradually." the Doctor said.

So in fact I was on it 12 months. Just like the Doc said I would.

Prozac is as Prozac does. It got me going again. Thank you Prozac!

Next up, was the Diavon 320MG.

Oh my!

" El Bros-

I had an interesting view of the dreaming. From 6 O'clock I had a dream, it was nonsense in nature. I woke up when I screwed the bottle back on itself, and there was much fuzziness about that."

I am glad I am out of the stroke. There were times I just wanted to crawl into a hole and never come out. But I did, every morning I got up and did it again, and again, and again, and again......

FB : two scramble eggs and diced ham with three flour tortillas....

FB : an excellent cinnamon bun

Kafka at Farmer Boy

El Beach

There were many people out by El Beach today.....

High Plains Drifter

1973 : HPD ....I must have missed this one, I have seen it on re-runs , but this the first time I saw it....it was, a shall say.....awesome.....

PG&E

 or rather, SCE - now the guy only has to walk down the block and he gets the readings from there....

Halloween....

Halloween was yesterday. Let's see, Dylan made off with Riley and Michael to parts unknown, I think they have band practice today, Savannah had about 30 of her friends here. The last guy to go home was at 1:35 in the AM.  I had to be asleep , the dog in tow, buy around 11PM. But with that I was up every two hours with dogs barking. So I am a wreck today.