This weekend we celebrated 35 years of marriage.
Amanda made sure she remembered the anniversary by passing me a card at 1.30 a.m. – while she thought of it
She then slept in until 9.30 a.m. on Saturday morning. I asked if she had been asleep all that time.
“Well, I was asleep until I woke up.”
Mmm… Sometimes you can be too quick.
We walked to the local café for lunch; a walk Amanda has done a few times in the last year. The difference was, this time when we got home she proudly displayed the number of steps recorded on her watch
“Look, 2000 steps.”
It was, and it was also the first time since her stroke she had correctly associated a number with the digits on the watch.
Another milestone.
Amanda can still struggle with her short term memory. On Sunday evening she said there was something she wanted to tell me but couldn’t remember what it was. At 7.15 on Monday morning she said she still couldn’t remember what she wanted to tell me from the night before.
So she remembered she had forgotten something earlier!
This week I read the Voluntastrols capsules Amanda has been taking to assist with her cognitive function have successfully passed the product registration process with the Australian Government’s Therapeutic Goods Administration and have gained approval to be promoted and labelled as (among other things:)
Maintaining and supporting mental concentration, focus & clarity, supporting healthy emotional and mood balance, and also maintaining and supporting cognitive and mental function.
These assertions all back up my own observations of Amanda’s improvements since taking these capsules. But to date, even in this blog I have had to be careful not to make unproven claims, even as a user, not a supplier of the manufacturer. So I’m really pleased that some strict criteria have been fulfilled and I can freely say what a difference Voluntastrols have made to the speed of Amanda’s stroke recovery.
Also this week, after being contacted by the producers of the Constant Therapy app Amanda uses, they have linked up with the American Stroke Association and now feature a short video they invited me to make on dealing with Amanda’s stroke recovery. I’ll also be making a 10 minute video to be shown at the Australian Aphasia Conference in November.
Meanwhile Constant Therapy has recognised Amanda’s regular improvements and tweaked the tasks to make them even more challenging. So the maths questions – which had got to 3 digit addition sums (e.g 978 + 422), suddenly switched to subtraction, which totally confused her! The concept of numbers going backwards as well as forwards is suddenly as new as it was 50 years ago.
Thankfully she enjoys the challenge.
The Blue Banana Diaries 