David - Interview 61  

David - Interview 61

Age at Interview: 62
Sex: Male
Age at Diagnosis: 54
Background: David is a 62 year old retired monitoring officer. He experienced two strokes in 2003. His ethnic background is White British.

Brief outline:David experienced two strokes in 2003 in addition to two episodes of pneumonia. The stroke, which affected his mobility, balance, and ability to drive, led to an early retirement from his job as a monitoring officer for the local council.

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David talks about the importance on focusing on one thing at a time during the recovery process.

 



 

So during that learning curve, feeling you mentioned things like frustrated and then wanting to persevere.....after, how did you get from frustrated to being persistent and wanting to persevere, how did that process happen? Or does it constantly go back and forth?
 
Acceptance I suppose. I think that’s the big word acceptance. And you know one thing that’s that that my specialist said to me, “Don’t expect to do too much at once,” he said, “Just concentrate on one thing at a time.” He said, “And if you’re breathing that’s all the concentration you need and when you feel comfortable about that, concentrate on something else.”And so it’s gone along the line and you just think, “Right well there’s no need to get confused or frustrated about this because after awhile you’ll be able to cope with it and then you move onto something else.”And all this breathing and things like that become second nature. I mean, I do have a lot of problems with breathing. And in fact I’m surprised I haven’t coughed and spluttered even now. But you know, if I try and touch my toes and stuff like that, I tend to choke. So, you know, I do have a lot of medical problems that prevent me from doing a lot of things. But yeah, generally it’s .... pretty good. Now I really do enjoy life.

 

 

 

 

Jonathan Miller - Stroke
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