Roy Jose’s Stroke Story

My stroke story

Before stroke. 

I’ve stopped working in 2006. After two years I began PhD in history.,and which I continued for a number of years. it was extremely fulfilling. I enjoyed everything I did. Unfortunately this was not to last. I began to go downhill. I gave up by 2015, and spent rather more time on cooking. By the time I had a stroke in 2017 I had not done very much at all. Since I began the course at City University I have done rather more, and I am rather less frightened of putting things down on paper. Hopefully some good will  come of this.

After stroke.

A lot of things have changed over the last sixteen months.

Since my stroke a number of things have happened. Firstly, I did very little. I read but I didn’t retain anything that I had read. For a long time this was the case, and I read but did not take in very much at all. Hopefully things will change, but it seems as if it is going to be a long time before anything is going to happen. I hope that things will change, and that I am able to do rather more in the future.

What changed.

Initially I couldn’t speak very much at all. But with the help of my wife I have been able to do rather more. Candy, my wife, has been magnificent, and I am very grateful for all the help she has given me. She has been absolutely invaluable. For over a year she has watched over me as I have made progress, albeit at a very slow pace. She has not given up, and, for that, I am very grateful indeed.

Nowadays I am able to do much more, although my progress has been rather slow compared with what I had been able to do before I had my stroke. But I have been able to read much more, and I am now reading a heavyweight tome on the life of Eric Hobsbawm. (Eric was a Marxist, whose father died when he was only twelve, and followed by his mother, who died when he was fourteen. By the time he was seventeen he had a place at King’s College, Cambridge to read History, and ended his undergraduate career with a brilliant Double First.)

The book on Eric Hobsbawm is a splendid read, although I have read only the first eighty or so pages so far. But it will become a nighttime read for me for the foreseeable future.

Future plans. 

1. For the next week: I need to revise what I have done in the past, with my PhD.
2. I need to reacquaint myself with work that I have done over the previous few years. I need also to contact my Supervisor to see how I can get started again. This won’t be easy, particularly as Anne seems to have retired. But I will have a try, although I am not too sure what the situation is since both my Supervisors have retired.
3. If it is possible for me to re-engage with my work from the past I hope to be able