Working Girl.

After I came back from Maria's home in Newcastle, I still had a lot of rehabilitation to keep me occupied and I was still very frail, so, when I was taken to my fantastic place of work for a visit for the first time since I had the stroke - of course, I was crying! I went to have a 'barbeque' with my workmates and it is a testament to how 'normal' all these people were, they didn't show how affected they were, especially my immediate boss, Kylie. She set the standard for everyone at Screenrights and they just carried on regardless and welcomed me back. I am blessed by having her as my mentor before the stroke and as my friend after the fact.

It was 15 months before I was strong enough to attempt going back to work for just a half a day at a time. Leaning on my walking stick and taking small slow steps I was so excited that I had a place of work to go to! I am sure that no one who hasn't been where I have been, can imagine, just how important a regular place of employment actually is! Just getting up in the morning, with an aim in mind is fantastic, but to get ready and 'go to work' is beyond anything I have ever imagined. This has been the most wonderful gift that anyone could have given me. Kylie and the rest of the staff, have no idea how important having somewhere to feel like I belonged, that I was still a valuable member of society has made my recovery so much easier and made me what to get better, quicker.

Just the logistics of getting me back to work were like a military operation and my work place had to undergo an rigorous OH&S person making sure that my desk, chair and foot stool etc were in the correct place, where I got out of the car and into the building and the OT ensured that everything went smoothly. I was picked up from my unit block in the morning and driven to work where I would do a small job for a couple of hours and then driven home again where I would have a sleep for another hour or so. This went on for about 4 months and then I progressed to a whole day!!

After three years back at work, my routine has worked out really well for me. Now I am happy to say, that I work two whole days and that is about all that I can handle, with my rehabilitation taking up two of the other days. I go to a stroke meeting once a fortnight with my friends Barry and Michael and others from the Stroke Group and I go swimming or walking for a good couple of hours another day, other than that, I have wonderful friends who make sure that my life is full, I am happy just to sit back, relax and enjoy my life.

It is really strange to say that I am grateful for the way the stroke happened, because if it had happened differently, who knows what could have gone wrong and what could have happened to innocent people who crossed my path.

On the day 17th of March 2007 I had the stroke in the gym, I was about to get in my car and drive my (at the time) 16 year old daughter Erin to her part-time job at the movie house in Chatswood. Thank heavens that my stroke happened before I got into the car so I didn't crash into an innocent person while I was driving along the road, I didn't run over any pedestrians or bump into anything at all. Imagine how terrible it would have been that along with my stroke I had killed or maimed someone else!!!

On the 18th of March 2007, it would have been the 75th anniversary of the opening of the Sydney Harbour Bridge and the girls and I were lucky enough to get tickets in a ballot to walk across the bridge. The whole bridge was closed to traffic and hundreds maybe thousands of people were walking both ways across the length of the bridge it in high spirits having a great time and there would have been no way that an ambulance would have been able to reach me time in that melee of people and I would most probably have died then there or at least been much more incapacitated than I was.

Finally, as I have said, the girls and I were booked to fly to New York in less than two weeks for a months holiday, I most probably would have died in international air space and my children would have been left alone in a strange country with a dead mother!

As it is, to mark the five year anniversary of having the stroke and how far I have come since then, I am hoping to fly to New York in April 2012.