My Final Medical Article

I want to thank everyone for reading my blogs about my medical illness that struck me last year. If you are just finding my blog right now, you can go back to previous ones and read about my experience.  I am very fortunate to be alive and recovering well, after suffering from a rare virus that attacked my brain.   

Of course, my family members and my friends have been completely supportive to help me improve my condition, which I would say is a huge part of the healing process.  I enjoy having people come over to visit with myself and my wife and so I am appreciative to those who have taken time out of their own busy and complicated lives to spend time with us. I love living in Tecumseh. Our new home welcomes friendly faces who bring positive discussions and laughter. 

With the help of many professionals, including: our family doctor, the entire specialist team at Hotel Dieu, my neurologist, physiotherapist, various personal support workers, social worker and dietician, I am feeling in relatively good physical and mental shape.  I am keeping up with my exercise routines and looking forward to incorporating new activities when I am up to it.  My diet has also changed dramatically and I have learned about proper nutrition for my needs. I have red meat only a few times per week, but more chicken and lots of delicious seafood.  I do not eliminate anything, as that can cause its own problems, so it is moderation and proper serving sizes. Every meal contains a good serving of vegetables and once in a while I get a nice treat to finish off the meal.   

I have had such a good relationship with all of the medical people who looked after me and made sure that I was taking actions that would improve my health condition. I cannot be happier about their fine plans for me especially when I had a few instances of very serious concern which they dealt with successfully.  To be direct about it, in just about every case with the people with whom I was dealing with, they were fabulous helping me out and my family as well.  I have never had such great medical treatment like this before and am so grateful to all of them. 

I don't want to go into a lot of detail about my treatment from the time I returned home but will give you an overview of some of it so that you may understand what my illness required. 

After that first month on returning home and taking very sophisticated medical treatment, I had a number of different doctors and other medical personnel that I saw either by going to their offices or having them come to my place for additional treatment for me.  I still see some of them.  I probably have lost count on how many medical meetings I have had but they were all so important to take.  The number I take now is sharply reduced because of improvement in my medical condition. 

In fact, for those first few months, I could not even cut my food but had to have everything cut for me into small pieces so that I could eat. I understand now how difficult all this was for my wife because she had to look after me. However to be honest, she hid those difficulties from me so that I could bring my life back to normal. She was truly an amazing woman with everything that she did for me for so long without any complaints. This situation was very physically and mentally draining and I really never knew how hard she was working because she never let me know of any concerns she had. Not once.  

Just remember one thing, dear reader. The rare encephalitis virus that I somehow contracted is not very well known and has required special assistance to make my life better.  Honestly, I don't think that I will ever recover completely because it attacked my brain so aggressively. This is disheartening, but I will do the best that I can. Sometimes I get sad at what has happened, but then I am reminded of how terrible things could have been, not just for me, but my family.  It's a blessing to wake up each day and I try not to fret about the future. We now take things one day at a time, or at least try to.  So far, all of my treatment providers have done an excellent job to help me out and to teach me new techniques. There are still a whole bunch of new exercises that I have to learn about to help me improve. I hope to do that soon. 

One big surprise that I'm experiencing is that my weight has increased not because I'm eating a lot of extra food but because my exercising routines are helping to build up muscle. I did get disturbed when the weight increased but I noticed that my physical condition was not changing negatively, so it was a positive outcome. As a senior, it is important to build up strength because as we age, our bones get weaker.  I do not intend to look like Arnold Schwarzenegger though. lol 

The long and the short of it is that I have been treated so well by so many delightful professionals whom I have met over the last year. I'm very grateful to them! 

I'm sure that there's a lot more to talk about but I think it is enough. I probably wrote too much about all this today but I wanted to give you as much information as I could that was helpful. 

My life has been very difficult over the past year but I can see now that it has improved dramatically as well. I'm very optimistic that my next year will make everything even better for me. To be honest, I'm happy that I survived and have survived so well. 

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me directly, or just write me and say hi! I love to talk to people.