Hi Darling Ones,

Everything continues to be awful and difficult here in the land of stroke recovery with the added bonus of COVID.

Yup. One week after the stroke and five days after being released from the hospital, I got the COVID. Again.

My new nurse practitioner winced when I told her this morning during a telehealth follow-up.

“I’m so sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “You’re going through a lot of scary stuff.”

Some of that stuff involves being a newly diagnosed diabetic with hypertension.

I don’t have the emotional stamina to get into the shame of all that right now.

Darling Ones, everything is so hard as it is. I have at least one tearful breakdown a day. Usually, it comes after I knock something over with my jerky hand or my sleeve lands in some food.

The other night I spilled some Caesar salad and cried for five minutes over it.

I cried because it took me three tries to open the pre-made salad. Then it took another minute or two to add the chicken, cheese, and croutons to the lettuce. Putting dressing on the salad was also a nightmare. Then to spill the salad on the floor where it would take more minutes to clean it up? Yeah, many tears.

And every single thing I do every day is like that. I think about every movement and how I want it to go. Meanwhile, my brain is doing its best to follow directions while also noting how things are not going as planned and how everything feels wrong.

Picking up a water cup and getting the straw to my mouth takes a ton of effort and thought. Now imagine how much it takes to prepare something to eat and feed myself.

Now that I’m diabetic, I have to use my shaky right hand and non-dominate left hand to check my blood sugar and inject myself with insulin.

And on top of it all, I’m sick and thus handling everything very poorly.

Forgive me for whining, but it’s all so much.

Jodi