Hi Pando…… I completely understand the situation now….I had already experienced a spinal cord injury some years before so I guess I faced a bereavement then! It could be so easy to slip into a depressed state but I have gone the other way and am so happy I’m alive……music helps me mentally. Keep fighting and like me exercise each day, even a finger 
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Louise, hi
I too, was cheerful and happy for about 3 months, then I ran into one problem after another. Anyway, it’s not said you have to folllow the same path. Wishing you all the best for recovery, Roland
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Hi @flossy71 just want to welcome you to the forum and hope your recovery is goes well. It’s early days yet and your body eats up a lot of energy in the process. Hence the need for lots of rest and a good healthy diet 
Stay positive and laugh lots 
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Welcome Flossy,
I’m also new to the forum and a wonderful bunch of people.
Keep at that therapy - great stuff! You’ll get there, with your determination.
Cheers
Eamonn
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Thanks for the kind message. I’m extremely fatigued today!
Pando, sorry to hear you ran into problems after 3 months, I do hope you have found a way to overcome the issues. Warm regards Louise
After 3 months I was in a pickle… but I overcame all those problems
8 months later I am stumped by something that resembles spasticity, but comes and goes- i wish I knew what to do
@flossy71 sounds like a rest day is needed. Hopefully the fatigue will be better tomorrow. I know in the early days for me the fatigue was so overwhelming I didn’t think i’d be able to do anything again. It does improve in time though. Xx
Hi Flossy71,
Welcome to the forum.
Sorry to hear about your Stroke, wish you a very good recovery.
Bev X
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Thanks for the message. I’m having a day of fatigue and I can’t sleep 
Flossy71,
I’m exactly the same nodding off whilst watching tv, the minute i go to bed wide awake, so restless.
Sure it will settle eventually 
Bev x
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I was sleeping all the time at first, now I just can’t sleep for long……so I am feeling fatigued a lot. I do hope it settles soon
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Flossy71,
The first 3 months thats all i did was sleep.
Then got to where ,i was so exhausted i couldnt sleep.
6 months later i still struggle to get a good nights sleep,some nights are better than others, so slowly improving.
30 May i managed to return to work on a phased return, still tired but day by day getting stronger.
Keep going your doing great 
Bev X
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I’m obviously rather late to this particular thread but welcome @flossy71
Seems there’s lots of us who walk into a&e. Took the best part of a month for me to walk back out but I did walk . My right hand continues to be a challenge but it’s improving too after 2 1/2 years
Flossy it sounds as though you are recovering quite well - that’s definitely helped by the positive attitude (and rest and support and and and)
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I lost use of my right side. I hope it comes back as I wasn’t thrombolysed. But I’m positive! X
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Thanks for the message! I’m doing my exercise everyday and I’m up on my feet. My right side is not connected yet but it’s early days
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@flossy71
I wasn’t thrombolosized ( if that’s a word) either .
I push my right hand side to do as much as I can all the time for lots of reasons. the first is because learnt non-use is such a powerfully seductive disabler. It leads to atrifying muscles, shortening of muscles and tendons and nerves and so it exacerbates the curled up characteristic of arm and hand & inability to use it .
I have a great deal of trouble apply myself to repetitive ‘in the moment pointless’ exercises. I know there’s a greater long-term goal but I can’t sit there and pick up a tennis ball 50 times
but
I can go and move 50 pots around the garden or turn the light switch on or turn the shower or open the door so I do that all the time I also stretch it, flex the fingers as often as I am able. I might do 10 before I fall asleep or when I wake up in the morning or sat here now I’ve got my fingers of my right hand being stretched by my left to ensure the tendons are elongated
Although it’s slow it’s definitely progress
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Welcome on the start of your recovery
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I like your answer here. So boring with the repetitive stuff, but while in the pool I pretend I am rowing on the Yale team. LOL. I would rather be kayaking but … I try that in the pool as well, using my arms like I am peddling a bike. Yesterday, I was able to freestyle swim from one end to the other of an olympic sized pool. It was quite ugly and I did not have the stamina to put my head under water at the same time as often as I would. Thankfully I had the entire pool to myself because of my left drifting. HAHA. I will know I am good when I can do butterfly again, but it isn’t important to me and would cause too much pain for now. I will keep working on the freestyle awhile first.
Anyway, point was, you move pots around, I swim, sew horribly, dance a bit with walker most of the time, and try to cook (more problem with remembering the total process or reading directions, but also holding on to smaller things, or slippery things). Make the movement as fun or interesting to you as you are able so you will enjoy it, rather than avoid it.
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Hi @DeAnn
You know you can get a pedal thing like a bicycle for arm development? but I agree pretending to be on the yale rowing team is a lot more interesting. 
And butterfly !
that’s impressive.
I used to be a competent swimmer but butterfly was the one stroke that somehow eluded me from a coordination point of view with the dolphin leg kick. I could do all right with a frog kick. I enjoyed front crawl, breathing on opposite sides every one and a half strokes and tumble turn with a good strong push off and glide - ahh nostalgia it ain’t what it used to be.
I washed the car yesterday. well part of it. Those parts that required my wrist to be in line with my arm IE horizontal. I did pretty much all of it right handed or right armed. I really did notice that by the time Id spent an hour and a half on it my ability to put hand on the washing mitt with my fingers flat rather than clawed up had improved. I could start them off even if they clawed up within 15 seconds - but that’s an improvement👍. Reward for all the times when I am consciously stretching tendons, nerves & muscles.
I haven’t yet got to the point where I can work on relaxing my foot while my hand is in use. my toes were crunching as well. but one thing at a time. Actually I do try all the things at once but I don’t stop and reset when the first thing goes wrong if I can get something right. I did find that by using my hand standing on one leg my toes stayed relaxed!
in the evening I was able to straighten hand out when it was resting and then when I went to bed again I was able to do the flattening the hand out and flexing the wrist Just a little, a development in the right direction.
I’ve got more of the car left to wash today. Even if I hadn’t I can wash a clean car for exercise where I am less able to just sit with two bowls of balls & various sized nuts to move from one to the other
Wiping the front of cupboards down is another form of exercise. Its a slightly ambiguous halfway house for me but still better than pushing my fingers in to therapyputty or other physio terrorist dreamt up delights.
I have to get the wrist into the vertical orientation with the fingers extended for the rest of the car and cupboard fronts. My fingers curl up as soon as my wrist tries to flex so I’m not yet ready for cupboards. laundry also provides a good exercise and I put a load of stuff in the machine yesterday that needs taking out today. I was sanding the handle of my broom garden broom that I repaired with glass fibre yesterday. It requires grip. ALL of these things are improving different aspects like strength, grip, range of movement, and very very slowly dexterity. I actually pulled a splinter out my finger with a pair of tweezers yesterday - I wouldn’t have been able to hold and manipulate tweezers a year ago and it took a great deal of concentration to squeeze the tweezers while looking through a magnifying glass at the very small exposed end of the splinter but I did it - that was fine motor skills and it was definitely a need within lived experience and it is a result to celebrate.
A constant throughout my rehab has been washing myself and a constant goal has been being able to eat with left and right-handed cutlery. I’m not at the cutlery stage yet. trying to do things with cutlery while I have plate the food in front of me is just too frustrating and messy. I hate dropping things, accepting it as a post stroke fact of life is unavoidable, but dropping food all over my clothes and my lap -to the extent required to practise being right-handed- is a no-go. Manipulating my phone two handed is a step between washing the car and using cutlery and I’m just beginning to be able to manipulate the phone with my right hand. I’m at the 2½year-old stage. Today might be a day for a wholly right-handed sudoku on the phone- The problem is when I make an error trying to undo it makes more errors then I just go backwards to the point where I’ve got such a mess that I can’t clear up because of random un intended touches - BUT today might be the day to try again
I was noticing yesterday getting out of the shower that learnt non-use was still an issue. while I try and use my right arm and hand there’s a lot of things that I swap to the left. EG drying my legs down to my feet. so yesterday I showered and dried with a militant determination almost entirely without using the left hand. I felt the urge to swap to the left hand a lot of times. I realised yesterday morning when I was examining the degree to which learnt not use has cemented itself into my routine that I haven’t won that battle yet. I do draw & door handles and light switches right handed but I don’t do everything right handed. It’s an insidious foe.
I think stroke warrior is the right title You do have to be a warrior
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