Sometimes, the universe sends little hints that all of your efforts are going to be worth it and that everything really is going to work out in the end. This past week, I had a massive one of those experiences, and it’s the simplest little thing that is the most significant too… I can feel the ground underneath my right foot.

That is HUGE NEWS, because that was the first thing that I lost with my first stroke back in 1998. I was 13 years old and it was March Break. I was spending it at my grandparents’ house out in Waterloo and my grandmother noticed that I was walking differently. She kept telling me to “stop walking so lazily and pick my feet up!” We didn’t realize it at that point, but that was the beginning of a progressive stroke, which had been caused by brain swelling (a side effect of the radiation treatment that I went through to try and shrink the life-threatening AVM buried in my brain). The following week back at home, I remember commenting to my parents that I couldn’t feel the ground underneath my right foot any longer. It all got worse from there – my right leg shut itself off, then my right arm followed suit. Even the right side of my face was affected! I was bound to a huge plastic leg brace and had my arm in a sling. All this made me mad and determined… so I gave up my life and did physio five days a week until 2001, the year that I got better! But that was also the year that I had the second brain hemorrhage, which caused the second stroke. Back into recovery mode. Back to physio. Back to working out five days a week. I have not yet made the amount of improvement that I want to… yet.

It has now been over 20 years, and I sort of got used to not feeling the ground when I stepped down on the right side. So it felt extremely unfamiliar (foreign even) when suddenly earlier this week, I could feel the ground again under that foot. It is noticeable too, as if my foot remembers what it felt like before when it could feel that normally and suddenly it’s like a long lost friend is back and they are throwing a party. My entire body has been in sensory overdrive all week as a result of this, and even my upper limb functioning seems to have improved a bit. I have better balance, better coordination, and better use of my body.

Science seems to believe that recovery slows down after a lot of time goes by since a brain injury like a stroke, but I disagree! It has been over 20 years for me, and I still notice new little improvements almost daily (please note the use of the word “little improvements” there – most of them are not huge! Most are barely noticeable. But they are still improvements! Baby steps towards getting better).

So I want to use this week to encourage all of you other Survivors out there! Keep pushing. Keep trying. Never give up and never surrender! Don’t believe everything that your doctor tells you about how much or how fast you will recover, because they don’t really know! They are giving you their best guess, but also I feel they are preparing us for the worst case scenario… which is a good thing, if that is what ends up happening! But what if you blow all of their minds and just recover completely? Maybe get to a state that is even better than you were pre-stroke?

That’s my goal… 110% baby! And I am still taking baby steps to get there, 20 years later.