Books, books and books!

Different… I'd been into Noosa Library last week and had loaded the last blog. On my own PC I have to change things and work pretty hard through it, but in the library it seemed easy! I just transferred everything from my USB - which had been set up as Arial 12, not my usual Calibri 11 - and when I looked this morning it seemed that the real blog was bigger than the last one! Was that Noosa Library or is it my own PC?? Funny! 

This week I’m looking for funds and planning on getting my second book published!

Books about recovery from brain aneurysms are very good when written by the author who suffered their own, or told by a carer whose family member or friend suffered or died. It helps with understanding. For those who write and whose recovery is longer or difficult, it can help this.

My own book Aneurysms with Aphorisms was finished this year after two years out of my surgery and stroke. It will soon be provided as a paper book, but it is currently available on-line on Amazon and Kindle. The Kindle copy doesn’t have the pics which will be in the printed paper book, but if you can buy a copy ($6.47) read how writing about my discovery, surgery and recovery helped me. If any of you would like to help me fund the publishing, please contact me at louisa@australiamail.com – thank you!

There is also a list below of books available. Most of these look at brain aneurysm recovery from a personal view, and a few look at brain rules to help.

The Brain Aneurysm by Vini G. Khurana & Robert F. Spetzler, 2006, USA

Fire on the Brain by Donna Magee, 2007, USA

Brain Injury Survivor's Guide: Welcome to Our World by Larry Jameson and Beth Jameson, 2007, USA

A Dented Image: Journeys of Recovery from Subarachnoid Haemorrhage by Alison Wertheimer, 2008, UK

Brain Rules: 12 Principles for Surviving and Thriving at Work, Home, and School by John Medina, 2008, Australia 

Walking in Fear...How I was introduced to my Brain Aneurysms by Susan M. James, 2008, USA

My Story: My Life After Brain Aneurysm by Teodora Shinn and Paul R. Shinn, 2009, USA

My Stroke of Insight: A Brain Scientist's Personal Journey by Jill Bolte Taylor, 2009, UK

Negotiating the Speedbumps: Living with Traumatic Brain Injury by Holly L. Springer, 2010, USA

As I Am by Patricia Neal, 2011, USA

Brain Storm by Amy Barber, 2011, USA

What I Learned When I Almost Died: How a Maniac TV Producer Put Down His BlackBerry and Started to Live His Life by Chris Licht, 2011, USA

The Other Side of the Rainbow by Mickey Antu-Urias, 2011, USA

Humdinger! noun: an extraordinary person or event by Stephanie Ione Haskins and Paula Lanier Seaman, 2011, USA

Rebooting my Brain: How a Freak Aneurysm Reframed My Life by Maria Ross, 2012, USA

In a Flash: Miracles Here and Beyond by Kim Justus, 2012, USA

Stir: My Broken Brain and the Meals That Brought Me Home by Jessica Fechtor, 2015, USA

My Choices

Making a choice in your life can lead you to… you don’t know. Well, perhaps you’d thought positively, but the negative choices can be real. My choices? Yep, I guess they were. I hadn’t thought ahead, I’d left the real decisions made by people who I used to consider meant a lot to me.

Some choices I have made have been good. I like the choice 11 years ago: I would have stayed in the house that I’d already been in for 11 years, and that would have kept me sane.

Getting my first book, First Person Singular, printed and selling a few of that. Finishing my second book, Aneurysms with Aphorisms, and lodged on Kindle on-line is okay, but when I can actually afford to get that published that is my better choice.

Moving up here to what I call the farm commune seems a lovely lifeline. I love this area, my dog, Jordan, loves it, and I get on well with being able to talk to people every single day. Socialises with them is not really a choice but a reality, especially when meals are shared even though we each have our own cabin. Some nights I’m cooking – my choice.

I’ve had more recent choices; I see these as being the “strong woman” thinking on these. The first one is QIRC, which I disagree with. I refuse to pay the bill for QComp – yep, these guys can take me to court - I will fight that. And the second one was action against the landlord who shafted me when I left Scarborough for a power account I didn’t know about. I was planning on fighting this in RTA and get back around half of my bond – and I do. I was disappointed that I couldn’t just “pay it off” as I suggested, but at least now that the landlord is getting what I suggested through the RTA conciliator, not what he wanted, it’s behind me.

The last week has been a bit up and down from Telstra. A heavy rain last week upset my internet. Many of my Facebook friends were surprised that it seemed I could still get into that even when my PC said it was disconnected! I rang Telstra the next day, and had been told that there were a lot of internet problems with Telstra. I let it sit there until, by today, I was frustrated. I wanted to get on!

This morning I spent 55 minutes and 55 seconds chucked about between four different technical people. The last one seemed, to me, to be rather rude. He…spoke…in…very…slow…words when he decided that I couldn’t speak fast and couldn’t understand him. That was not because I didn’t understand him but because he was somewhere far too far away (India??) to speak directly to me. He would say something and I’d try to respond and he’d repeat it very…slow.

Long story, my internet was fixed. What annoyed me was when I gave him my phone number the only thing he repeated was my “seven” as “sivin” and he giggled. Rude, I thought.

At any stage, whatever I had done this week was trying to get ahead on what Brendan and I had discussed – my pics which are right now on Reibus (www.reibus.com.au/quotes) and which I might take into a market place, possibly Pomona, and start selling them. I had seven empty quality frames – four A5 and three A4 – which are now filled with some of my favourite quotes. These are intended to be sort of a background, and the rest of the prints will be inside folders which can be looked at. I think it’ll still take me a wee while to get started, but it will happen.

In front of this is the printing of my Aneurysms with Aphorisms, which is so far only obtained from Kindle, without my pics. I don’t have any concerns about it, because I am starting to believe in me. Am I still alone? If any reader of this blog finds out information about me, then be my guest – support me!

These are my personal choices. I have faith in them.

Sweet Home Cootharaba

My recent visit had sealed my decision to move out of the city and onto a farm up by Lake Cootharaba. I moved here two weeks ago and I brought Jordie. I had spoken to the owner, Brendan, and he agreed that Jordie would be okay if she didn’t chase the hens or kangaroos. I knew that she wouldn’t, but I hadn’t truly known that she probably wouldn’t walk anywhere.

Jordie has arthritis in the shoulders which support her front legs, and a few weeks ago, for a “visitor” visit before we moved, she had a very small wander around to have a bit of a sniff and lay around in the common area. She had met Mike and Gail, two other residents who loved her – and, of course, she loved them. I had almost had to drag her back to my cabin before I got into bed.

Lovely visitor outside my cabin

I had found out that my sleeping music – waves and rain – was run by internet which I didn’t get at all in my cabin. For a phone call I’d expected that night, I’d gone out to Boreen Point and I got 3G and the call went long enough. Trouble was, I wasn’t staying in Boreen Point, I was staying in Cootharaba. I’d seen a problem.

During the visit Jordie didn’t really have a bed like what she had previously slept on – like a chair – so I’d set up her fluffy mats just inside the front door. It was wet that night so one of her mats was damp, and that one went on the bottom. She was not too far from the end of my bed, and she snored. Yes, she snored. Back in Brissie that was why I let her sleep outside during summer because (a) she’d chosen to and (b) I could listen to my sleep music and I could sleep. My visitor night had seemed like a disaster. I had almost no sleep. I can’t even say just when I did sleep. I had picked one of my music USBs for some quiet music which could send me to sleep, but I was far too cold and even with the music up a bit more I could still hear Jordie. I turned over countless times before I figured that I could stop the wind coming in by hanging a blanket over the door.

Looking through the cabin the next morning I’d notched all the stuff that I believed I really needed – in the bathroom, a towel rail and somewhere to put my toothbrush; painting hooks for at least six paintings I would wanted hung up; outside the front door some roll-down plastic which I could shut when the rain was happening – and which would keep wind out of my cabin; wooden rails on the windows so I could hang up my own curtains.

By 6am it was daylight outside, and Jordie was looking, often, at the door as if she needed to go out. I felt like a coffee, and I took her outside and headed over to the common area. I walked slow for her…. very slow. Thankfully it wasn’t raining by then. Jordie would move one front leg forward followed by her other front leg, and follow up with her back ones. If you can understand that, it was s-l-o-w. I think she was in pain, but most times she never gives any indication of this. When she finally reached the common area I dashed back to our cabin and brought the fluffy rugs over for her, and she’d laid down.

Looking outside through my cabin doors

Fast-forward. On Tuesday two weeks ago I moved here. Actually, Jordan came up on the Sunday before me because Brendan had come down for my large furniture pieces and Jordie came up with him. This facility was designed for seven residents and I was now number five (one had unfortunately left the week before I moved in). Brendan, Mike and Gail I had mentioned earlier. The fourth is Rick, who’s away right now – mostly off anywhere in his own motor home. Jordie has a love of the common area where she can meet people who mean so much to her. This whole group accepts her.

I settled in, learning the next day just what I could do. I started cleaning in the common area and now I seem to be a real cleaner there! I fed the chickens, hosed the vege garden, picked beans which I pre-cooked and put in the freezer, picked baskets of rosellas for Gail to make cordial and jam, and weeded around most days. Last week I found a convolvulus growing in the silage heap at the end of the vege garden – at least, I thought it was convolvulus as I recognised that from when I was just a kid at home with my parents many years ago and had helped them clean something very similar from one fence. This felt like “history”! I’d weeded what seemed to me to be a long patch between the garden and the carpark – it needs weeds removed, and yep, I did that!

Over the last two weekends we’ve had visitors staying a couple of nights here – Liz, a friend of Brendan’s the first time, and this weekend Jan, who is a possible resident. They are both lovely women.

Last week I spent time in Noosa at Telstra and my internet now works, and my phone can work on the farm on 3G. And I have discovered that Jordie will sleep in the common area – either on one of the sunchairs, covered, or on her own bed which is now under the end of the table and last night she seemed fairly warm. Yay, I don’t get any snoring! And yay, I don’t need my internet or USB music, for the first time in two years!! Most nights now I just sleep… well.

Today is the start of another new week, a lovely quiet day where I haven’t gone out anywhere but I still have company. The sun’s come up behind the tall trees, it’s getting a bit warmer. I’ve cooked a few meals, made pumpkin soup and last weekend I made a banana cake. I feel good when that stuff is eaten.

After our meal we will get ourselves a glass of wine and settle down in the sunchairs and talk. Maybe it’ll be 8pm, dark, when I feel very tired. I’ll get up, say good night to whoever is here, pat Jordie, and wander across the middle piece to my cabin.

Tomorrow is always a new day. I am loving this place.