My thoughts on the everydayness of life

John started with his first full days at work this week, he is doing 1 full day, 1 , 1/2 day and a day off. He seems to be coping well and we are delighted with his progress. He is coping with the complex 30 year plan and is able to write reports. We are thankful to all who have prayed and for the Lord who has brought John through this. This has been a tough 4 months , yet we wouldn't be without this experience. There are still some difficulties, yet they are small in comparison to where John was after the stroke.

We were visited today by someone from the "Young brain injury unit" today. She went through everything with John, his history, broken back, arthritis, diabetes, neuropothy, angina, cardiac arrest and finally the stroke. Apart from being staggered that John was in work for 3 days for five hours she felt he still has a lot of problems. She is going to refer John to a Psychologist to work out his neurological function and difficulties and also to a neurologist to have the level of damage assessed. I think poor John felt a little down after the visit, his comment was, I'm obviously not doing as well as I thought." She seemed amazed that these things hadn't been done before.

John had to order some tracts and Bibles from the TBS this morning, he finds telephones really difficult, I wrote out what he needed and went through it with him before he ordered. Yet he nearly ordered 800 sets of 800 tracts, there was also a mix up with accounts and poor John was left feeling fraustrated and stupid. He also had to phone the bank for a new Church account cheque book, it was one of these automated services, he found it very hard to process and after he managed to get him through to an advisor he was put through to a second advisor who told him the account didn't have online banking so he had to go into a branch to order a cheque book. I am beginning to realise that the way most companies operate with these automated call centres make it very difficult for someone with a language disorder to access the services. How many elderly people live alone and end up in a state trying to phone about a bill and just can't navigate the call system. Why can't we telephon...

Calum Mackenzie: Calum is now bottle-feeding properly. This is a g... : "Calum is now bottle-feeding properly. This is a great step forward. The feeding tube is still in his nose but that is merely precautionary ..."

John is still in the process of a phased return to work. He has had to slow down because the additional strain of working had affected his language. We are however greatly encouraged, we saw the stroke consultant on Wednesday, he was amazed at how much John had improved. He was the consultant who had told us John wouldn't get back to work or be able to drive again. We give thanks to our Lord for His goodness in giving such help and confounding the "experts". We both feel we can thank God for the stroke because we can see that as the Lord has promised in Romans, "All things work together for good, to those who love God." We can testify to all of God's goodness, he sends trials but there comes a time when we can see how they have brought us closer to the lord, made us perhaps a little less attached to this world and made us more understanding of others who suffer.

John seems to have taken a some steps backwards this weekend, his language has been worse, he's been saying the wrong words and stuttering on occasions. We took John's mum to get a laptop, John was getting confused with Argos's computer and struggled to order it. When we got back to her house we had to sort out her broadband, he found the computerised answer phone really confusing and got quite upset. Generally John has had a lower level of functioning and has been more irritable. This could be due to tiredness and so John is not going to increase his working hours this week. We are also going to try to make time for all the therapy. it is difficult because John is very tired. We knew the return to work would bring a lot of challenges and so it hasn't come as a surprise, but we both find it difficult when John seems to go backwards.