Having been to the Mediterranean tour in Oliva (that’s the name of the small town it’s situated in) I have got even more determined to get well enough soon again so I can do this show or somewhere like this.

I met up with Lisen today. So wonderful to meet her and all her boys. She is down there competing although today she had a rest day as her horses all jump at weekends!

The concept of this year being a more rough one than last is being more and more confirmed from day to day. Not so much actually how I feel and how much difference I make on a day, not that I caused a wave before although now it feels I cannot even cause a weak ripple to the waters surrounding us.

Funny that, how all of a sudden all anecdotes include water. Bloody water! Last night I had an incident. Not actually wetting myself or my pants but my pants actually getting wet by a faulty tap that was supposed to be turned off(and wasn’t!!!!) in my hotel bathroom. I woke up this morning. Having only brought one pair of jeans as I was only staying one night I was a bit surprised this morning when I got my jeans to put on and they were soaked! Literally dripping.
Thank god for lovely mother, Tania of my student Vanessa, as she lent me a pair of trousers! I would have had to wear either my wet jeans (slightly ever so slightly drier by hair dryer) or my scarf in shocking pink worn as skirt. Hmmm… I am sure the hotel would not have been overly pleased with choice of wardrobe with pink hair, pink scarf worn as skirt and finished with pink sweater… Ah well! I’m sure they have more things to worry about…

So I was thinking. I’m not worried about getting stuck in this healing process. My worry is aimlessly drifting. Not able to decide what I want to do or how to get there. That’s what scares me about 2013. I am not allowed to choose my own destiny. Not that my life is dependent on other people’s input, but just now as people start to disregard my decisions as silly or not thought through. I am fiercely serious and even though it can take me a shorter time to decide something. It doesn’t mean I have not thought it through and compared it to many different solutions. I guess my brain has always been quick, now that it has less input as I am moving slower all over, it has actually become faster at decision making, comparing and math. So even though I am not as fast as I used to be my brain is quicker than ever. I think people around me feels it makes me slightly more unhinged. I guess it’s their right. Do you know what they call disabled people in Spain? “Minus-valido” minus valued people! Well I’m one of those.

So my aimless travel starts here. I will have to stay scared to stay alert. I travel alone. Sometimes with friends and family around but essentially alone. I fear what will happen tomorrow. Where will I be and what will I do?

Keep smiling 🙂 make every decision you have the power of deciding yourself count. Be proud and aware that you are in control of deciding things yourself!

So after a middle “so so” month, I am now forcing myself to recuperate in a more positive manner again.

I feel the loss of enthusiasm from my side has affected everyone around me in a different manner. So no more feeling sorry for myself and getting low, it really doesn’t do anything for my confidence or my getting better!

It might be forced at first but from there comes a genuine free feeling of healing and inner strength!

So I’ve had my first two lessons back on a horse and it was awesome! I was back riding and feeling utterly normal again and even started challenge myself a little bit more. At the end I felt like a real person again. The discussions I had with Gösta was not about anything related to my disability but everything was focused at my ability of thinking and changing. It was all positive, but equally challenging.

He knew about my disabilities but didn’t not challenge me because of them. I felt real for the first time in a long time.

Work has put me at Oliva Nova. A golf club and equestrian centre between Alicante and Valencia. Here we have come to watch young horses jump and meet some old friends! I travelled here with one of my students and her mother.

Today we have just arrived but tomorrow more horses and I hope some shopping for horse related stuff!

I got a very kind email from a lady that has been reading this blog. She had also had a similar accident about 2 years ago and the way she wrote to me I could understand the tiredness I sometimes feel! And I haven’t seen it before! When you start to feel tired, that’s when you have to stop doing anything! It is instantaneous. If you don’t stop then it will take you days to recover! And it’s so true! I had a late night after a full on day on Friday, and I suffered still on Monday. Today I am fine! Back burning silly Nike plus points on my Nike plus power bracelet! Awesome!

So the letter I got inspired me! To meet my goal of getting better, without rushing. Taking time but without slowing down, it’s possible. Taking it easy as soon as I feel tired! That way I stay focused and motivated! Lets hop the sun comes out tomorrow!

Keep smiling 🙂 if you feel you are stuck just relax and let your imagination take you somewhere beautiful!

I have met some incredible people in the last couple of weeks.

I haven’t been on here much but I blame it mostly on technology and lack of battery charger. As my laptop has been in a one month coma (as me) I have been out trying out a few things kind of new to the new me.

So here it is:

I have no longer got any taste in my mouth or a distorted sense of taste and smell. This makes me never hungry and never really thirsty.

My left hand side is still suffering and is not getting any better by a daily training exercise or ways of moving it, holding things etc I don’t have a lot of feeling of heat either and baths feel to hot on left side (like burning when it actually is lukewarm) and I still don’t have any real pain reflexes… Not sure it will ever return or be as good as right side. At the moment I am just a little annoyed by it, but I can also do things that my friends all find amusing or disgusting. Hard pinching is probably the easiest one. Pinch skin on left arm as hard as you can with right hand. Try to notice where the pinch is…. Naha? Not able to!

I am tired a lot. I can always get up and do things in the morning, but if I didn’t I could just as easily fall back to sleep again and stay asleep all day I think. (I haven’t tried it yet but I’m sure I would be able to). Sometimes I am more tired. Any arguments had between me and anyone no matter how small affects me in a way I have never been affected before.  Mostly I get tired by it. I don’t often break down but the other night I really did. And for the first time in ages I cried and not for anything other than pity for myself. I’d had enough of this half life, not being able to taste or feel things correctly. It’s incredibly annoying when you realise your smallest treasures you took for granted before just might never return.

A hot bath for example is one of them. The left side has no idea of the heat of the water and is always burning as if my skin is either burning or boiling. Not an easy treasure to reclaim and even more annoying as I normally don’t feel anything on the left side.

Reading a great book I now have a half answer for. I can avoid the double vision by reading looking upwards. So my Kindle actually works. Wohoo! On the other hand the kids books are awful as I see everything twice on angles and overlapping each other.

Eating potatoes is another NO GO area. The texture of potatoes is disgusting and only comparable to say sand for instance. I used to love potatoes in all kinds of ways. Oven roasted, mashed, boiled, in salad, chips, french fries and all these previous treats are now so un-appealing.

A lot of food go under the “previous-treasure-treat” supply and no longer I’m sad to say. How come when I used to be able to feel hunger at least I could look forward to somethings. Now I just stare at the food on my plate and pray to my inner soul please please let me like this. It’s forever changing as well. I used to love my lactose free yogurt with fruit and nuts and seeds and now for a reason unbeknown to me it tastes sour. And as I didn’t have this problem in Switzerland it’s obviously a new quirk of my brain damage.

My loss of memory from the previous years is also quite annoying. People I have met for the first time and had no contact with via Facebook or email during 2011 or 2012 are really hard to remember. I think I’m getting better and then bam, I go to a party where I should know the majority and I only know a few faces. I have stopped at these occasions to tell people mid fifth sentence “So sorry who are you? How do we know each other?” As it’s become a challenging game to me if I can retrieve who they actually are within the time I’m talking to them… So far it hasn’t yet happened.

Cycling is the next big thing. I got a bike in the bike shop the other day and cycled by myself without casing thousands of euros damage. I was very hopeful this could be a new way of getting around as I am now stuck to the indoors unless I ask for someone to take me somewhere. Then I got it confirmed, I am not allowed to legally cycle on a road. I guess this is what I feared but having it confirmed just slapped another fine on my already charged arse…

This is how I see it. I have been charged for some reason with this undeniable hard sentence and the worst thing is I don’t know why it happened to me or what actually happened to me. So avoiding it is impossible as far as I am concerned.

So what to do?

The most normal I feel is on a horse. I feel about 65%off the horse and at least 90% on a horse. Why is that one could ask? It’s second nature to me I guess. And my communication with the horses and other animals get through vividly and visually. No double vision there.

Today I had my first lesson with an actual instructor, Gosta Asker, the previous Chef d’equipe for the Swedish show jumping team has a holiday house on the island. I called Gosta last week and asked if he would mind giving me a lesson next time he was over here and it only so happened he is over this week! The lesson was fairly straight forward. But all I needed was confirmation of what I am doing. I think he was happy enough with my progress and he is coming back on wednesday for more lessons! Lara was very sweaty and I got a real feeling of pride. That all my hard work is actually for something and not just for nothing. There are so many thing I should be thankful, joyful and proud about. I might just sometime feel alone in this struggle. I know I am not as I have great support from my family but it sometimes bugs me. How they stay disconnected from the only thing that makes me feel alive and normal. I have explanations of one thing after another to why I shouldn’t see them not coming to see me ride as a problem but the truth is whatever they or other people say it’s never not going to bother me. I am bothered by it. And it might add to the tiredness I feel away from the stable, but what do I know? I am just a recovering epileptic-fit/brain bleed victim.

I have so many things I would like to do. Places to go, people to meet. I just have a temperamental left side and taste buds that won’t work.

Keep Smiling 🙂 There are hundreds of words for feeling glad, cheerful, delighted, ecstatic, elated, merry, rapturous, satisfied, upbeat or just plain old sunny! This world would never have that much jubilant highs unless we also had some lows. If you go through a low patch, remember that!

So here we are. I am still alive, although some days I feel like I am struggling a lot the overall feeling is still that I am getting better every day. But having spent over a week away in the UK for Dan’s dads funeral and to check on my horses I still have in the UK. I managed to put an appointment in with my London doctor Fred Wadsworth. So in the days away, not an hour of rest nor an hour spent on top of a horse or doing my essential training. So when i left Mallorca I was ca 85 % on a horse and 65 % on “normal” life. That plummeted when I was in UK. I went down to basic 48-50% whilst living, I didn’t ride at all in UK but this morning I did and I only managed 2 horses before I got too tired.

So this is what my doctor said about me. He has delt with other brain injury sufferers recently, James Cracknell. And he had some insights to living with brain injury as well as living with someone that has had a brain injury. He could see a little from both sides, how my directness could be compared to a teenagers, not being able to let anything lie or let people get away with their point of view, if I believe they are wrong, I will say it. Some people are ok with this but some really can’t handle it.

I missed out on a course with Sue Gurnee this weekend. I hope she will be back for me to see/hear and learn from her at a later date. She is the American healer I have been working with over the past couple of months. I wish I had been able to attend her course about energies. How to make energies work for you and not against you.

Its nice to be home again, finally I can sit down and write again. I have started reading a new book. “The brain that changes itself”. Its so inspiring to read. It’s about people that work with victims of accidents or born with defects to the brain, where they prove that brains are neuro plastic and able to change to find ways to get around to become “normal” again. Although I also believe Fred when he told me I might never become the same person I was before the accident. In my teenage stadium I’m at at the moment, I will have to re-learn being more patient. And whatever taught me the first time round might not be what teaches me this time. So beware everybody, the new me might be different.

I will continue to write more later as I am getting quite tired now.

Keep smiling 🙂 You can keep learning new things and there are always new things to learn!