I’ve been back home for six weeks.

Syncope, hospital, my first actual fall, a routine to the grueling regularity of four hours a day of rehab plus some at-home work, sending Jacob back to school, and regular life

Still no ideas on cause of the syncope. Had another episode and was hospitalized for a day. We could have stayed longer and run a few more tests, but it would have been four more days in the hospital and unlikely to get results. Mid-August, I finally got in for my tilt table test which includes baseline, making my leg sweat with some electrically induced chemicals. Then they tilt me up to almost vertical and measure heart and blood pressure response in detail. We have the results, but our meeting to discuss them is not until October. On September 25, I get to visit a new cardiologist and our plan is to install a heart monitor sub-cutaneously in my chest. That will be in for a while to catch any problems Fortunately, it is MRI-safe.

For the fall, I was in bed in the middle of the night. When I rolled over, I was too close to the edge of the bed and rolled right out. Did not hurt my head, but scraped my right arm pretty badly on the night table.

Second week had me starting back at Centre for Neuroskills for outpatient rehabilitation. Similar program to before. We’ve tuned out some of the education, recreation, and counseling time to leave more room for occupational and physical therapy. In speech, swallow, cognitive, I do writing or typing as well as speech practice. In education, I often do book writing. I feel like I’m making good progress. Wondering how much more I will. It’s getting slower. Through the game of telephone, rehab reports insurance says there is a hard limit of 60 days. Last time we went through this, it turned out the person at insurance was misinformed. This is sadly common. Their job is not to get me care, it is to minimize their expenditure. This is ironic since it is not even Aetna’s money as the plan is self-insured and they only administer. Health care payments and incentives are broken in this country.

Life back in outpatient rehab has been tiring. My back started acting up again so I have scheduled to go back to my chiropractor.

We have continued our normal life of Austin FC, dining out, outdoors experience, church. It is now the misnamed Austin Restaurant Week — which is longer than a week. We have hit Cru and Comedor so far. Hitting Siri on Sunday and up to three more next week.

Weren’t Jacob back to school with a nice celebration dinner at Nagoya. He then spent half a week visiting his girlfriend in St. Louis. He is enjoying his new classes. I love to hear him talk about them.

I have been thinking a lot about therapeutic expectations lately. My dream is to get enough left arm use to cook and help Rachel, full self-care, and enough ability to walk that I can help Rachel go on hikes. I am working my butt off to get there, but realistically it is not that likely. One reason, it was so easy for me to b happy is my results — it is not hard to be happy when everything is going your way. What happens when progress ends? Truth is this was my situation when this started. I was sometimes down and frequently delusional when I started being happier. So the truth about how to do that is in me. I know how to be happy and work hard when life just sucks. And it does not suck now as much as it did then.

The crux of this climb is getting through this point again. Trying with all my will to achieve what might be impossible and being fine if I fail. It’s not the normal story of champions that you hear, but it is actually pretty common.

I get knocked down. I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down.