can you tell us a little bit more about
your experience of tiredness and
having poor concentration how did that effect you?
tiredness has effected me very badly
very badly, I'd be talking to somebody and just feel tired all of a sudden
and concentration just went straight out the window.
I couldn't make eye contact with people at first
'cause that'd just tire me out
if I'm in a group of people and we're having a conversation
you know in a pub or somewhere like that, if two people are talking to me at the same time
I'll be switching from one to the other all the time trying to concentrate
and talk to the person who's talking to me
instead of just waffling around all' the place
wandering around all the place.
because I'm still coping with divided issues
memory, tiredness but probably from five years ago
I have a much better way of practicing that ...
of with coping with that, and I understand why I get anxious
and why I get angry
the danger is, is that you take these coping strategies
and you apply them and some days they work
another day's they don't and what would happen
is as I've mentioned earlier, if I do too much in one day
I will get very tired and what the consequences of that are
it affects my family
because I'll get more grumpy, and will have
I'll be short and so forth but
everyone knows that's a consequence
but if dad gets too tired
dad's going to get more grumpy, but we understand why that is, because of the
support we got from a psychologist
so the fatigue you find that it
comes and goes and affects you the amount you have to do
what you have to cope with
how your day goes or how your week goes
yeah, absolutely
[Interviewer:] and it goes up down still [Neil:] ... the fatigue thing is just the most
frustrating one I have to say because
you just
if you if you do too much you know the consequences are the next day or the
following day
you're gonna struggle, you're just going to be far more tired
... I said that has effects on everybody
but that is just one of the consequences now having a stroke
that I don't know if this is correct but
my brain is going at seventy percent as it was
before, but if you try and do the same things you did before
you're going to get tireder
I still occasionally
get days, which I'm still absolutely convinced
it's about the medication that I'm on, there are still days when I waken up and feel
absolutely lousy, I've not slept well
I'm waking up in a sweat, I feel very shaky
those are the days where
if I was having to do something before
I probably wouldn't have done them
because I would have been so anxious about something happening
and now
I probably would just work my way through things
by thinking 'look, if it happens it happens'
it's not ... and you know
it doesn't happen very often but when it does, it's useful just remind
myself about where I've been and what I've discussed
and what's happened
and that's such a positive thing, I mean I see that as a
really really positive thing, it's not
... an inadequacy on my part,
or failure on my part to turn around and say to someone
I'm feeling a bit shaky and I'm just having a bad day
and you know I just need a bit of help with this and everybody responds