[Kele Motshwane]

I concur and I would like to add the following:Washing dishes not using a dishwasher  Putting on a head scarf using 1 hand Buttoning your pants after using the bathroom 

[Kele Motshwane]

Thanks Daniel for making me see this differently it is as much my duty to get my family on this site so that they can understand what we feel like when we feel like we are not accepted. In the past I even considered moving and going to be a caretaker in a shelter or something just to get away and start afresh somewhere far away and now with this platform I should get them to register on PDSS so they can voice their frustrations too because I am sure that I also have flaws that frustrates them. I will convince my family to register and be part of the discussions. 

[Kele Motshwane]

I feel like I am tolerated and not fully accepted by my family, I will give you an example of why I say so I have been told that I am capable of using one hand to do chores around the house and it frustrates me to think that before the stroke I was able to do a lot of things by myself for my family and now that I can’t do things like washing dishes the way that I want them to be done. I am fortunate though to have my helper who was supposed to have retired at the end of the year I had the stroke and she decided to stay saying that she can’t leave me when I still need help with a lot of things.  She is very understanding and caring and she is more like a mother to me whenever I share my frustration with her about not being able to do certain things she is always there to say that when I was hospitalized they all prayed for my life to be spared and she is grateful that I am alive and tries her utmost best to make me feel comfortable. She is also like a counselor because she allows me to share my feelings with her and she encourages me to carry on and not allow certain things to get to me.I thank the person who raised this question as it got me to open up about something that hasn’t been sitting well with me lately and trying to talk about how some of these make me feel I am told that I like to always see myself as a victim so I keep a lot of things bottled up. I do a lot of work with strangers listening to their problems and helping them to work through their issues. I also do a lot of introspection like am I doing this work because it makes me feel good afterwards to be told that my intervention has helped a lot of people to look at their lives differently and even not consider suicide as an option anymore. I sometimes ask myself am I doing all that because I want to feel that I am not useless to the world and I am still able to contribute by giving others hope when their lives are bleak. 

[Kele Motshwane]

I have found that even with sleeping tablets  I still struggle to sleep I sleep a minimum of 3 hours then make it up during the day

[Kele Motshwane]

Hi Avashna I am going to try and get him to see a psychologist as he also suffered a stroke 4 years after my stroke and because I knew the signs when he got back from work and I saw the drooping face I first got him to take an aspirin then took him to the hospital he was there for 4  days only and it wasn’t a major stroke his artery on the neck had a plaque that had made the flow of blood to the brain difficult and the doctor said that me administering aspirin may has saved his life by thinning the blood and allowing it to flow easily to the brain. He fortunately didn’t need any physical therapy as he was okay a few days later and went back to work after a week. 

[Kele Motshwane]

I believe that mine was a blessing in disguise as I could have died on the operating table as I was scheduled to go for surgery on Tuesday morning and I had the stroke on Sunday morning.  I now have all the time to give to people who are broken because of life going wrong in their lives. I also had an opportunity to make up for all the time I wasn’t home to spend time with my kids because I was working. It taught me the importance of life and to make the best of each day as tomorrow isn’t guaranteed. 

[Kele Motshwane]

I can talk about the pain that I went through after my stroke and what my family went through on the other hand my husband and kids were deeply affected by my stroke and unfortunately my husband doesn’t believe in talking about it he says that it brings back all the emotions that he went through during that time. I have tried to get him to at least talk to a psychologist about it but he has refused to do it. I have only been able to get him to open up about the pain he went through and it was after a long drive back from a funeral and we passed the hospital were I was hospitalized and he happened to remember the times that he was in and out of the hospital visiting me on a daily basis for 2 months and us talking about it he ended up breaking down and he was telling me about how scared he was and thinking about what would happen to him and the kids should I have died. To this day it still makes him emotional when he remembers how helpless he felt during that time and especially when my kids said can he please do everything in his power to make sure that I survive even if it means selling our house to pay for the hospital bills just to keep me alive. We had just been at our current house for 2 years when I had the stroke and the kids were saying that they wouldn’t mind moving to a squatter camp and have the house sold to pay for the hospital but luckily it didn’t get to that even though we had recently changed our medical aid because the old one and the new are managed by the same company they were able to pay for my medical bills. I remember that when I left the hospital before going to the Rehabilitation hospital the bill was already nearing R1 million.  The only person that I saw my husband being able to openly talk to about my stroke is a fellow stroke survivor who has something about him that gets people to open up and share their deepest fears with him. His name is Barry Nkosi he is part of our team at Stroke Survivors Foundation. 

[Kele Motshwane]

I say that as long as you are still alive keep on pushing and when you do feel tired listen to your body and rest and then do your exercises again when you feel better

[Kele Motshwane]

For me having this platform is a good start and we have to encourage our families to get involved in the discussions without fear of being judged by the society and the survivors as well. 

[Kele Motshwane]

This is indeed an emotional topic, I was lucky that my daughter was 18 at the time and she had taken a gap year and was meant to go to Tertiary the following year and because of my busy work schedule I didn’t spend much time with my kids except on Weekends and with my daughter she was the one who took the role of keeping the family together and my son was 15 years at the time and in high school and he wasn’t doing well at all the school told me later after I was discharged from The Rehabilitation hospital that they thought he was going mad. When I was at the hospital my daughter came on a daily basis to give me a sponge bath and we spent a lot of time together and she became more of my caregiver as she knew which medication I had to take when and I am actually grateful for the time I got to spend with her as we bonded in a way that we had never done before and she had even decided to cancel her dream of going to University wanting to take care of me by herself and we had to convince her that I was going to be fine with her at University as I had my elderly helper and my husband and son at home to take care of me. There were times when my emotions would be all over the place and my son was the one who would sit down with me and tell me that things could have been worse and it’s okay to cry whenever I felt like crying as I was trying to bottle up all the emotions not wanting to hurt him and my husband as they were more broken about my stroke. The kind of things I used to do for them like baking and cooking their favourite meals all that went out of the window because of being forgetful I have nearly caused a lot of damage to the house like burning meals to ashes and I was then banned from cooking and even though I understood their concern I felt useless for not being able to do minimal task. Things are much better now as it has been 7 years 7 months post stroke and I am able to cook and not forget that I have cooked. I still have one functional hand but as long as the ingredients are prepared for me I am able to cook a meal for my family and now during the lock down I have experimented with a number of dishes that I got from Pinterest and the kids favourite biscuits are now prepared by them as I supervised them when they one day said that they miss the biscuits that I used to make for them. Unfortunately healing is a long process as there are times when I feel like they loose their patience with me because I will be sharing something with them and they will tell me that you are now saying that for the 5th time and it kind of upset me and I then apologize for telling them something over and over again.  I heard that when I was sick they were praying for God to spare my life even if I end up on a wheelchair for the remainder of my life but thanks God that I am able to walk on my own. I feel like they are still struggling to get used to the new me even though they prayed for me to be spared in whatever condition so I sometimes ask them if they are not happy with the way God healed me. I have sometimes apologized for having a stroke because I am no longer the person that I used to be to them and I sometimes feel like they see me as a person whose brain doesn’t function to its full capacity and before I used to wish that I had not survived but I realized that I was spared for a reason and whenever I come across anyone willing to listen to me I share my story about my stroke journey and advice them about the signs and how they can identify someone having a stroke and preaching that there is life after a stroke. 

[Kele Motshwane]

In the beginning I didn’t have any desire for intimacy and I thought that it was because of the anti depression that I was taking and I stopped taking them 

[Kele Motshwane]

Hi Daniel acknowledgement of the email 

[Kele Motshwane]

Hi George is it possible to post a picture of the chopping board that you are using as mine doesn’t have raised corner sides and I think that something like that would be very helpful to me. I have been cooking a lot during the holidays and making all sorts of things like my own chilli sauce that needs a lot of cutting of onions, tomatoes and chilli so I rely on my family to cut the veggies for me and I get frustrated when it is done in their own time.

[Kele Motshwane]

Hi Daniel is it possible to have videos of different exercises that helps with regaining the use of the limbs on the app?

[Author]

Replies