It sounds like, despite the seizures, you did a great job and your boss was impressed. I hope you can get past the seizures and get some sense of normalcy back in your life. Maybe you just need to sleep a lot more, like hibernation seasons or something lol.

Believe me I'm getting plenty of sleep too and taking it as easy as I can. XD I don't want to just become a giant couch potato, but brain injury isn't the sort of thing that heals by 'pushing through' either - it just takes time. So I'm trying to find a balance that feels healthy and works for me. :)

If you don't want to be a couch potato, you could always try a recliner potato or a bed potato lol
But yeah, brain injuries are no fun at all, and I hope you get better quickly ^.^

Thanks hon. <3 Progress so far seems slow but steady, and considering how bad it could've been I'm just immensely grateful for how fortunate I've been and how much support I have.

When you say support, I'm really tempted to make some sort of insole joke, but I can't think of anything lol

pffahaha XD

Stroke recovery time is long but it is a progressive process. I am glad that you did successfully the presentation. Such seizure is not a problem since you was totally able to continue.
Every milestone in "going back to life" is always appreciated! Month afrer month there will be just better and better.

Yeah, one of the happy elements in all this is that when I do have the seizures they're never too bad. The worst they can really do at this point is stop me giving a presentation. But hey I made it most of the way through before it happened. ;) And yeah, any milestone I can hit feels like real progress.

Geez, sounds like you’ve been through a lot! But I’m glad you’re feeling better and getting your life back on track. Good luck with the rest of your job!

Thanks so much! It's definitely getting there. :)

Thanks for the update. Day by day, step by step, talk by talk will improve and let your body know what it needs to be back to normal again. Normal, that is different for everyone. Have a great relaxing Christmas. Remember, dragons are a part of Christmas as can be seen from my last few years doing my light show. See videos at Dale's Light Show on facebook.

Yeah, all very true. I don't want to push myself too hard, but I want to stay active and convince myself that I can still do things like this. And I'm definitely hoping for a relaxing and chilled out Christmas! I'll be sure to check out the light show too!

You're very brave, and your sense of duty shows in these times. I, no we, love you. 💕 And fluffffff what was ypur presentation about, if you can say! It would be neat to see what you're getting into again, if it's envirronmental projections or what not! *wagwag* C:

*wags softly* I'm trying hard to find the right balance between duty and self care, I don't want to overdo it. I think the conference was a good thing for me and I gained a lot from doing it, but I have been spending the rest of the week recovering, still being pretty low energy!

The presentation was about the potential to grow biofuel crops (e.g. fast-growing grass or tree species that can be harvested every few years and burned to produce heat and/or power) in UK cities, using marginal spaces that aren't likely to be very attractive for other uses, and thus won't be in competition for food growing or anything. At this point mostly pretty broad scale estimation and mapping, not really rigorous stuff with hard data, but we feel like it's something that hasn't really been considered so there's some untapped potential there worth looking at. The whole larger project I'm part of right now is generally looking at what we can produce in cities, which we think is interesting since cities tend to be overlooked and only thought of as consumers of resources.

It's all stuff that from my end just gets published in scientific journals (hopefully) and I haven't ever yet done anything working with like, politicians or urban planners, but my long term dream is that some of the research I'm involved in helps people design and build better cities that are more liveable and sustainable. :)

YESSSSSS see? This is involving and fascinating, and I am interested innit. :D I wonder if this is UK Big Fuel trying to manipulate your research or your aims, they are good at that, and maybe pushing biofuel when there is a more real approach available. Really, there's intrigue and stuff that happens like that.
I am also all about the conceptnof cities being consumers now, but being self-made energy producers, and the transition to that. I have a forming belief that it is not governments nor NGOs that will do the work of solving problems, but nano-changes a household and individual at a time-- government or well intentioned groups will never get around to change like one person doing the legwork of buying a solar microproduction bit will. And then the sum of gradual growing changes. At least in my ignorance that's the only conclusion I can come to.

Thanks! The research project I'm on is all funded by a government research council and everything we do goes through a scientific peer review process, which should protect us from that kind of manipulation or bias. That's a big trouble with incentivising stuff like this using economics, as has been done in the past - if the government hands out incentives to businesses to encourage them to get into biofuel stuff, they'll do so in whatever way is cheapest cost-wise, not necessarily whatever way makes the most environmental sense. Even if envrionmental sustainability is the original point of the incentive program. Case in point, a big UK fuel company that started a biofuel operation but imported like 70% of their woodchip fuel from Canada on big freighters because it was cheaper by cost. While obviously really crapp in terms of carbon pollution. So it's all pretty frustrating, and the idea of having smaller local operations just operating within a city might get around some of those long-distance logistics and such, thus saving on the environmental transport costs.

Basically global problems need to be met with:
a) local solutions, and
b) punching big oil and automotive execs in the face, or at least stopping letting them dictate all our politics to us.

So I think it really takes as mix of both individuals doing good things for a grassroots effort, but there's also a big effect from the chokehold that big conservative businesses have held global political systems in for far too long which needs to be broken too. It isn't gonna be just one or the other.

Hope this holiday season helps you recover faster. I just got out of Surgery myself for something. Praying nothing worse happens and I'll keep you in mind. A good friend of mine is epileptic so I know how seizures can be.

Oof, my sympathies! Sounds like we could both use some nice relaxing times over the holidays. I hope you recover well too!

Yikes. Did you have migraines before the stroke? They apparently show up on an EEG like seizures, and can be similarly triggered by anxiety or fatigue (or food triggers or barometric pressure changes or....)

Either way, I'm curious if CBD oil would be helpful at all; the local Dobra tea house here offers a latte with it and it has been a lifesaver at knocking out migraines for me, and it's known for its effectiveness against certain types of seizures.

(if only it didn't taste like Woodstock funk, blegh. But to stop a migraine that's running rampant and roughshod over my energy levels, focus, mood, and pain levels: worth it!)

That's awesome, I'm really glad it's been helping you! And delighted that it's finally being allowed to grow in availability. I've heard of CBD oil being really helpful with some forms of epilepsy, haven't tried it myself but it may be something to investigate. I've never had migraines though; not now, and nothing before the stroke. No warning signs at all that I recall at all. I'll keep the CBD oil in mind though and maybe bring it up with my clinical specialist!

Come to Asheville and I'll invite ya! Then we'll order the South African tea that's an entire meal and tasty, and well rawr and draw together. :)

Ooo, sounds tasty! And I will happily do these things with you any day.

Sorry got carried away describing my own experiences. The reason I mention them though, is because your description of the trigger and experience of the seizure was weirdly familiar, even though I'm sure migraine is much less dangerous/incapacitating.

Not at all, it's neat to hear about! And as you say it does sound like it might well be relevant to me. My husband gets migraines sometimes so I have some perspective on how nasty they can be despite never having experienced them myself, and I know that they can appear as precursors or triggers for strokes even though I have no recollection of ever getting one myself. The brain, strokes, epilepsy and migraines are all very complex and individual things!