As a young lad I wanted to build a Charles Atlas type body.  For a while I went weight training several nights a week in an effort to enhance my slim build.  Like most body builders we lived by : ‘there’s no gain without pain’.  This phrase takes on particular resonance this morning.

I have an appointment at a Pain Management Clinic this afternoon to address the problems with my left shoulder.  It has got to the stage where painkillers are needed before it is possible to get to sleep at night. My legs aren’t too clever either, at the moment, with muscle pain waking me up early on most mornings.  I am hoping that this afternoons appointment spurs me on to stick to a schedule of exercises that eases my current levels of discomfort.  I know I haven’t been putting the work in and there’s ‘no gain without pain’.

There is another area where there is ‘no gain without pain’ but this time at an emotional level.  The time has come for a family discussion about the most supportive way to communicate with Maureen.  There are some members of the family ‘who don’t get it’.  Their communication with Maureen continues to be clumsy, and is causing distress.   Any conversation that reminds her of her faltering memory, spins her into a spiral of downward thoughts.  It just takes the wrong comment and down she goes thinking she ‘is mad’.  Imagine how she feels this morning being reminded, during a phone call yesterday evening, that she had forgotten a close family member’s birthday?   The  first thing she said this morning was: ‘I can’t believe I forgot his birthday’.   Now she is in a right state: thinking all sorts of negative thoughts.  I’m going to have my work cut out today!

Maureen often says: ‘What’s the plan Action Man’?  As there is no peace with the wicked dementia I have been continuing with my mission this morning.   I resorted to some of early morning  confidence building: helping Maureen to see that she is perfectly ok to be left to her own devices while I pop out to the shops for an hour.  That meant that she could stay warm in bed until my return, when she was sleeping peacefully.  Maureen has proved, on several occasions, that she doesn’t need baby-sitting and likes to be trusted to be left to her own devices.

On return from my shopping mission I woke her gently with another cup of tea in bed.  When she came downstairs for a late breakfast we practised filling the kettle, and making sure the lid was in place before it was switched on.  She is now singing along to a Joe Brown C D as she tidies up the kitchen.

It’s a dismal day here in Cleethorpes so we won’t be going far today.  As it is raining she has just put washing on the clothes horse rather than the line.  She is a busy bee doing all sorts of household chores as the afternoon progresses.

She may well sleep as I listen to the fortunes of the Sky Blues on the radio.  As a loyal Nottingham Forest fan she is unlikely to show as much interest in the match as me.  In fact she might just have a nap if my cheering when we score doesn’t keep her awake.

So ‘Action Man’ has been on the case today; attempting to build confidence as well as cognitive stimulation.  I might even suggest that we go into hold as ‘Strictly’ comes on the T V later.  Adult educators never retire they just watch their hair go white!

Maureen’s recovery from stroke is remarkable.  As I have said on many occasions when people meet her for the first time there are three things they do not believe: how old she is, that she has had a stroke and she has a diagnosis of dementia.  I would gamble that even the most astute psychologist would struggle to spot the symptoms when she has energy.  When she tires the signs of brain damage would be clear to the uninitiated.  What I am pondering this morning is do we continue with more of the same or move forward with a new agenda?  Well I have a cunning plan with Christmas looming we have a natural focus for what I have called our personal integrated stimulation therapy. 

Since coining IICST I have wandered into the field of neuroplasticity.  In simple terms my thinking has been moved on from the ‘use it or lose it’ approach to considering how the brain can heal itself.  I now realise I would be selling Maureen short if I just tried to keep her stimulated.  Preparing for Christmas can be fun and there is lots of ‘use it or lose it’ activities that can be undertaken in the build up to Santa’s arrival.  Buying presents and sending cards will build confidence but may not reach the parts that neuroplasticity offers: with ‘the sky being the limit’.

I have to confess that neuroplasticity is an extremely new concept to me, and I am far from well read on the subject.  From my cursory coverage of the subject two activities leap out at me from the screen of my tablet: learning a language and dancing.  They both offer the opportunity to learn something new and switch on something in the brain that leads to the equivalent of rewiring and the brain healing itself.  I hope those better read on the subject than I  will forgive this simplistic explanation.

The beauty of dancing and French are that we could naturally drift in that direction on these dark nights. We have all we all the material we need at our disposal and YouTube offers even more opportunities.  Astute readers of my Blog might well say he has said all this before: his rhetoric is strong but why doesn’t he just get on with it rather than pontificating?  Well when your wife decides to rest her eyes mid- afternoon and stays in bed for the rest of the night then it is a question of choosing the right moment My challenge is  spotting when Maureen has energy and knowing when she just needs to rest.  What’s life without it’s little challenges?  My conscience wouldn’t allow me to sit back accepting the limitations of departmental budgets and watching the inevitable progression of Maureen’s dementia!