My thoughts on the everydayness of life

John has worked very hard today, he has been on the exercise bike, the balancing board. He has done the audiblox programme, the Keda reading and had still been trying to read Planet Narnia. The new speech therapy work arrived today, it involves more written work, poor John worked so hard at trying to write things like how you can tell if a peach is ripe in a complete sentence. He also had to finish certain sentences, he found it very tiring and fraustrating, I think this aspect of the recovery is going to be one of th biggest challenges for John. On a more positive note we have bought our daughter's wedding dress and have ordered the bridesmaid dresses. We have bought everything from the UK even though we found some beautiful dresses from the US, in the end we felt it was unwise to gamble with an overseas shop. Particularly when the shop in the US wanted as much as the cost of the dress to ship it over to the UK and there would be vat and import duties to be paid on top of everyt...

The lyrics to this carol have been requested by a friend. Chorus: Past three a clock And a cold frosty morning Past three a clock Good morrow, masters all! Born is a baby Gentle as may be Son of the eternal Father supernal. Chorus: Past three a clock And a cold frosty morning Past three a clock Good morrow, masters all! Seraph quire singeth Angel bell ringeth Hark how they rime it Time it and chime it. Chorus: Past three a clock And a cold frosty morning Past three a clock Good morrow, masters all! Mid earth rejoices Hearing such voices E'er to fore so well Caroling Nowell. Chorus: Past three a clock And a cold frosty morning Past three a clock Good morrow, masters all! Hinds o'er the pearly Dewy lawn early Seek the high Stranger Laid in the manger. Chorus: Past three a clock And a cold frosty morning Past three a clock Good morrow, masters all! Cheese from the dairy Bring they for Mary And, not for money Butter and honey....

We have been unable to get much work done with the Christmas period, John feels his language has gone backwards a bit, he is keen to start again tomorrow. We are going to try to work on writing and building up ways of coping with stress, because John gets fraustrated when he can't think of what to say or write, we will try to work out ways for John to handle this. He also finds he can't work as well if there is a background noise such as music. We will build up John's tolerance to noise by playing music for part of the audiblox,or reading, as his tolerance improves we will increase it. John's reading is improving he has finished reading ,"The Hittite Warrior" and is now reading, "Planet Narnia", he has to keep on re-reading but is improving. I think we'll introduce more timed exercises so John gets used to working under pressure. We would value your prayers we move into this next stage, that we will not make it too stressful for John but will g...

It has been a busy week, some of us went carol singing. John enjoyed the practise before hand, the great thing is he knows most of the carols off by heart which means he can sing without reading. We saw the nhs speech therapist on Thursday, she spent almost two hours with John. She said he had made rapid progress and in her experience that is always good for recovery. She is going to work with John every week after Christmas, she said he was a priority because the stroke was affecting his ability to work. We see this as a real answer to prayer, so thank you to all who have been praying. John managed to pray in the prayer meeting on Thursday, a number of our friends at the Church gave him a hug afterwards which was very moving. He has also been able to read the Bible the last few evening just before we go to bed. All this is very encouraging, but we have a long way to go before John is up to returning to work. We would value your prayers for this, because John was absent from work a few...

We had our family carol concert this evening which was lovely. John practised a poem and managed to read it. He also managed to sing most of the carols. John has always loved Christmas, I think this evening did him a lot of good. A friend from work came to visit this evening as well.

It has been hard to get the therapy done over the last few days, just with busyness. On Friday evening it was the ypf party. On Saturday Morning John had an eye test and then we went to the Open Air, Joel Naomi's fiance came in the afternoon which was very nice. Today John managed to go to both services, we had carols and mince pies after the service. John knew the carols and so was able to join in. His head was really hurting, but I think he enjoyed joining in. We have a nhs speech therapist appointment on Thursday, which is a real answer to prayer. Joel has just put some new audiobooks on John's mp3 player which will be great because he has listened to all the ones he has.