Hi all! I have the BEST excuse for not writing ever. I had a stroke! Honest to god, yer pal RANTWICK had a scary incident involving a brain hemorrhage in his cerebellum. Your cerebellum is at the bottom, right behind the brain stem, which in my case was in danger from the bleed; I was super lucky to live through it. I am even luckier that a full recovery is likely, although it may take some time.
One reason things look good is that I'm 46 years old, which is young for a Strokie Joe. Strokie Joe is my new nickname around the house. My balance and motor skills with my arms have been affected such that cycling as a rehab goal may be possible by late summer. We shall see. At first my speech was halting and slurred, but it is almost back to normal now, so who knows, maybe it'll be sooner.
I had my stroke on March 29 under the best of circumstances. My wife and I were together at home and an ambulance took me to the best hospital in the COUNTRY for strokes, University Hospital at Western University in London Ontario. The level of competent care and compassion I got there still brings tears to my eyes when I think about it. I was there for 9 days. There was no findable cause for any of this. Scary, right?
I wasn't kidding with the title of this post. I wanted my online friends to know what happened, but I don't want this blog to be about this stuff at all. There are plenty of good online sources of online information and discussion about brain and rehab stuff. If you want to engage on those topics I recommend you try those. If, on the other hand, you have an appetite for the random ravings of an affable bike freak, I'm still yer man. My faculties, while still "special" as ever, have not been affected.
You can expect the next post to be a return to form. It may be about wheels or video or headsets, but definitely not heads. Well, I guess it could be about heads; I never really know. But not my head. Nuh-uh.
Yer Pal,
R A N T W I C K 