Dear LPG

I have a friend who was a victim of a stroke about six months ago, and I cannot explain how upsetting it was to see her just after it happened.  I was only seeing what the effect was and could not imagine what it felt like and how it affected her, no matter how much she tried to explain.  Her left hand, arm and leg were most affected, and although the doctors assured her that things were likely to get a lot better given time, she found it hard to believe. 

She is only just a pensioner and lives alone, so all I could do was visit, but eight weeks later, she was released from the hospital and back home with carers coming to do all those things that we take for granted that we can do for ourselves.  She gradually found that she could operate the television’s remote control and her mobile phone, although it was a slow and frustrating process, and it did not take long for her to work out that you can get bored with the television, too.    

It did not take many home visits for me to realise that she was getting better gradually, but all the alone time she had to think about what was happening to her was not helping her to see those improvements, and she let all the negatives get to her.

I cannot envisage what it is like not to be able to go and get something just because you feel like it or to know that something you had no problem doing, given a minute or so, will now take at least 15, but it occurred to me that being able to adapt some of the things that she used to do might be a way forward.  

Trying to encourage her one day, I told her about what I managed to do with a broken right arm, although I was a lot younger when it happened.  I mentioned that I learned to put my makeup on, get contact lenses in and do some cooking, although my fingers were not affected, and I wasn’t also trying to relearn how to walk all over again.  I remember suggesting she needed something to do, including all the physiotherapy and exercises.  My bright idea was reading, but it was never something that she enjoyed.  

She really loves knitting and crocheting, both of which she and I thought she would never be able to do again. However, while it takes a bit longer, I found some instructions on how to do these things with only one working hand.  

I have never done either of those things with both hands, let alone one, before, but we learned together with some hilarious results at times.  Having something that we both were working on for different reasons gave us something to focus on during my visits apart from all the bad stuff happening to her, and while things are still not perfect, her hand is improving. I can see when she will have both methods of working down to fine art while I continue to get many holes in mine.  I think she is teaching me something that she can do, and I can’t have helped because she is helping me while I am helping her in some small way.

It is easy to reach a stage where you want to visit and be positive in adverse circumstances but having something we both wanted to focus on really helped.  

My friend continues to recover. However, I know that strokes and other such illnesses can affect people in so many different ways, and the extent of recovery can vary so much, too; finding something that we could do together made so much difference to what we had to talk about when things were terrible. I think my two-handed efforts pale compared to what she has achieved with her one-working hand.  

I only looked at crochet and knitting, but YouTube is full of things that it would surprise you to know can be done with one hand… 

DO, Bellingham.

D

DO shares some one-handed needlecraft videos…

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