BONUS POST? I recently enjoyed doing an interview about my experience of stroke with the young people of Coppell HOSA (a chapter of HOSA-Future Health Professionals raising stroke awareness).
I’d like to think that it includes some accessible stroke info for laypeople and anyone interested in learning about one particular individual’s experience of stroke.
It’s a handy introduction to my book, Stroke: A 5% chance of survival, too.
You know, I was just going to do one more post about COVID-19 and then move on. Something technical about its link to strokes.
Partly because, Do you want to read another hot take on the Coronavirus? Partly because I’m so angry about what’s going on, I figured if I did yet another one after a few more days had passed, I’d probably bust one of my brain aneurysms.
Then Boris Johnson did his thing on the telly.
[Usually I’d suggest that you check out the Apoplexy Tiny Letter for some light relief, but…]
Continue reading Television/The Strokes
After chatting about shiftwork last week, I planned to spend this week talking about why we’re working longer and later hours. But then some stuff cropped up, and there’s going to have to be a change to our scheduled programming.
First, here’s LongSufferingReaderOfTheBlogPaul’s favourite track of 2018 [sic], regardless.
Rule of thumb: That guy would never swimmie-swim knows what he’s talking about
[Sleep patterns messed up? The Apoplexy Tiny Letter can help with that.] Continue reading Irregular Programming
I’m starting to think in more detail about what I’m going to do for Death Awareness Week this year.
I was originally turned on to Good Life, Good Death, Good Grief‘s work when Mrs Stroke Bloke and I attended a Death Café back in 2013.
Having brain aneurysms is weird.
Yeah. It’s a bit like that. And an associated problem is, if an expert goes in there to defuse the bomb with a mesh implant or a tiny titanium clothes peg, they might just set the whole thing off.
[I know. Fun, right? Prefer whimsy and good tunes? Check out the Apoplexy Tiny Letter.] Continue reading Bullet In The Head
Last week, I was off at the Western General Hospital in Edinburgh for an MRI of my aneurysms. Cos, y’know, no-one wants this…
[Want more details of The Stroke Bloke’s exciting life? Check out the Apoplexy Tiny Letter] Continue reading The Warrior
I mentioned once that I had let slip to Longsufferinggirlfriendoftheblogbeth that “I didn’t solely come back from [stroke-y] death because I had to see her one more time. I wanted to see her one more time, and tell her that everything was going to be OK.”
And that that was a a lie, solely to the extent I didn’t think I was going to survive.
I read something last week that, had I known it at the time, would have meant I could have delivered the message with a clear conscience. Continue reading Something Fishy
Mrs Stroke Bloke just walked in and asked what I was up to. It probably looked like I was idly eying a Joan Didion essay on self-respect. But I was hard at work. Honest. I’d already read articles on A Formula For Happiness, Why Some People Dislike Everything and Seven Thoughts That Are Bad For You.
— I gotta tell you: I’m going for something big here, but I think my reach is going to exceed my grasp on this one.
— Why not just do something goofy?
Continue reading Search Engine Optimization
Last Monday, I went to the Western General Hospital for a CT scan. In some ways, it was quite similar to going to Methodist in Brooklyn. The NHS has signs up informing patients of the same sort of stroke-related stuff that the American Stroke Association is always — quite rightly — banging on about.
This past Friday, I resumed my conversation with mortality. It had been on the way, I suppose, since Beth had first mentioned what a pleasant time she’d had attending her first aneurysm awareness meeting. I’ve since been to one myself, and discovered from fellow attendees that a ruptured aneurysm is quite similar to a hemorrhagic stroke. That is, getting wheeled into the ER, unresponsive, late on a weekend evening, with potentially catastrophic results, and, generally, something to be avoided. Anyway, I guess that was Beth’s way of gently getting me used to the fact that the work-ups from my stroke had revealed that I had at least one aneurysm. Continue reading The Cure / Not The Cure, or, My Aneurysm