Diff'rent Strokes

It seems like the majority of adult speech pathology deals with rehabilitation of people who have had some kind of neurological problem, like a stroke or something like that.  Even in patients who haven't had strokes and may be in the hospital for cancer treatment, heart attack, disease complications, or pulmonary problems there can be speech and language and swallowing implications.  It can be a pretty eye-opening experience: scary because you get to see daily what can happen if you don't take care of yourself, and terrifying in some cases because some of it, like traumatic brain injuries from a car accident, etc., you can't really do anything to prevent.

Essentially, speech pathology deals day in and day out with people dealing with some really serious stuff.  After about a semester of this, working with stroke patients, and two weeks of working with stroke/cancer/heart/lung patients, I have made a decision.  I am NOT going to have a stroke.

See, it turns out that grad school just involves a whole lot of just sitting.  Sitting in class, sitting at home and reading, sitting in clinic, sitting in the student lounge... And now that I don't have marching band and walking across campus to classes to get me up and moving and motivated and off the couch, I have noticed a decline in my physical status.  I have gained weight, my sleep patterns are worse, I get tired more easily, and my eating habits have gotten much worse.  This, added with the stress of school and, ya know, life, is a recipe for eventual disaster.  It's difficult to plan for my life 40 years in the future while I can sit and be comfortable all day and have a slice of pizza and some ice cream, but seeing these patients who are suffering so much and have even lost their ability to communicate to their loved ones has helped me decide to stop sitting so much, eat better, and exercise my body as much as I exercise my mind.

It's not an easy task - I don't have cravings for junk food, and I don't eat fast food anyway (except for Chick-fil-A.  I could really go for some Chick-fil-A right now.) but I am not a vegetable person.  I think almost all of them taste terrible and bitter and I would really rather just not.  But here I am, upping my fruit intake and trying to cram as many vegetables I can stand into my diet.  I'm not ordering pizza or cooking mac and cheese, even though it's easy and comfortable and convenient.  I'm watching what I eat, counting the numbers, and putting in the time on the new treadmill I got (for free!!! Winner!).  I feel hungry all the time, and I don't crave specific foods, I just want to not be hungry.  But I know that the pangs of hunger or the shin splints I get from treadmill-ing are not that bad compared to the pain of an ischemic stroke or a heart attack or daily insulin injections.  And while it's depressing to realize that I can't just do what I want anymore and bake delicious things all the time (sorry, classmates), I am really trying to make this a lifestyle change instead of a short-term kind of thing to reach a goal.  If I am going to prevent diabetes and stroke, I have to make these changes for the rest of my life.  

Now, I still feel pretty good about this, and it's only been two weeks, but I'm sure a pretty rough patch will come sometime in the near future.  However, I just need to look at my patients to reaffirm my decision to change my lifestyle and redirect the trajectory of my future.

This subject might become a recurring theme in the future; I have a lot of thoughts (and complaints and gripes and cheers) on the subject that I'd like to discuss.  But for now, I would just ask for your prayers and words of encouragement as I try to fulfill my commitment and work through this life-changing decision.