With Winter in full swing in the Southern hemisphere, Amanda is reluctant to go out for a walk in the cold, even when the sun is shining and the temperature struggles into double figures. Evening walks are currently not an option as it’s dark by 6pm.
I saw an exercise cycle you can use from a chair advertised on TV – one of those long ‘infomercial’ ads where they don’t tell you the price unless you phone the free number. I checked on Amazon and they were more than $300. So I looked for a cheaper version and found the one pictured below for $40.

Amanda is now able to sit and watch TV during the evening whilst pedalling in a dining chair. I set the stopwatch on her smart watch so she can monitor her progress. She can pedal for 20 minutes at a time but is determined to build up her stamina and do more.
Amanda is also keen to rebuild her cooking skills. With the damage to her executive functioning capability, she has difficulty with planning and sequencing tasks. So cooking is an enjoyable way to relearn those skills
With her support person, she had decided that Tuesday mornings are the best time for this. So she spends time looking at her many cook books and decides what she would like to try. So far has made carrot & coriander soup. …

This week she decided on cheese scones.

Browsing the cook books has highlighted that my cooking repertoire, which has sustained us for the past 24 months is, nevertheless limited. So over the next few weeks we’ve agreed to go through the books together and choose some different meals which we can cook together – and there are plenty of books to choose from!

Another effect of the further lifting of Amanda’s ‘brain fog’ has been an increase in her concentration level.
Last weekend for the first time she completed 93 different tasks using the Constant Therapy app. She took around 90 minutes, with no break and scored 91%. I reminded her that when she first started using it, she could only manage 2 or 3 tasks in 20 minutes before having to take a break – and the way the app works means it ‘learns’ as it goes so has actually got incrementally harder over time.
She is also keen to continue taking the natural supplement Voluntastrols.
These were having a positive effect before her diabetes diagnosis and now with medication controlling the ‘brain fog’ we never knew the diabetes was causing, Voluntastrols will continue to help in promoting Amanda’s mood and ongoing positive attitude to her stroke recovery.
Amanda enjoys playing Scrabble – something we have done since the early days of her recovery. Back then it was all about letter recognition and the whole organisational aspect of just playing a game. Last week her support person noted for the first time that she was actually arranging the tiles into words before placing them on the board, with no help.
One thing she has no difficulty with is adding up her score; mental arithmetic seems to still be way ahead of literacy. Luckily she has really got into audio books and listening to a novel has now replaced daytime television, which has to be a good thing.