I had a minor stroke in September 2023. That affected my ability to walk smoothly. Sometimes I have to scrape my left foot. Then in early July this year, I had pneumonia, including getting some kidney stones. During the time I had pneumonia, it didn’t seem to affect me (at least I thought), except that for several days I lost my appetite, and during those 2-4 weeks I had lost about 15 pounds. The kidney stones had disappeared after a couple of months. Now four months later, I realized that that pneumonia has had more impact on my health. In particular, my stamina had decreased significantly. So after a 30-40 minute walk, I would need a rest before I can continue to walk, or even just standing up.
Because my health insurance will pay for acupuncture treatments for back problems, In the last two months, I have been doing acupuncture treatments. Besides treating my back problems, my acupuncture treatments have also tried to work to treat on the nerves related to my feet and walking in general. It is too early to determine whether the acupuncture treatments are helping me to improve my feet movements and walking in general.
It is clear to me that to make overall improvements in my health and overall improvements with respect to my stroke, the process of recovery is going to be a major and long process. I will have to attack it from many approaches:
(1) Besides going through physical therapy twice a week (for one hour each), I must do it every day since every exercise in my physical therapy is useful, either to use the muscles that have not been used or used sufficiently.
(2) I must do more with the weights to strengthen my muscles, especially after my loss of weight.
(3) I must do the threadmill on a regular basis to strengthen my stamina.
(4) I must do my Taiji on a regular basis since I have not done it on a regular basis for several months.
I will do these exercises on a regular basis, and see if there is any improvement. It is also possible that it is just aging, and my health will progress based on just aging. Only time will tell.
