Is that I’ll never be back physically to what I was. I know that’s the wrong pc attitude but that is my current reality. There are too many concurrent diseases going on. The strokes were one thing. The Crohn’s another. If that was it, there might be a slim possibility of nearly full recovery.
But on top of that there is neuropathy in both legs, which is to say that nerves are still not talking properly to each other. Now throw in a distended bladder, and and related to it, the various spinal issues: which I won’t list except to say the curvature that puts me in pain is not improving after months of Physical Therapy.
On the other hand, my leg muscles which were effected by the strokes are improving. There was a time when I couldn’t get out of a low chair. Now I usually can.
I can write this without feeling depressed and I’m not looking for sympathy. If Stephen Hawking could write books by blowing into a straw for each letter (something like that, I don’t remember the documentary that well) but there are ways and wills and I have a very strong will.
But I try to also be a realist.
Just the fact that I can sit here and write about the experience of going from running up and down the subway stairs to catch the next ghost station, to barely able to stand upright, and winding up in an Assisted Living facility, across the park; after living as a virtual shut-in in a two-floor walk up, shows that anything is possible.
The idea of teaching photography to residents with an interest and the cognitive skills needed seems unlikely but possible. I would need to compile a list with the staff here of those with their marbles intact and make sure to keep my own marbles intact.
I can say for sure that it would begin with smart phones. Nearly everyone has one.
BECK 