Last night, I was up most of the night in pain from my foot, and I was happy that I had an already scheduled follow-up appointment with the Doctor today.  Before the Doctor, we went to David’s Speech Therapy, which was pretty excruciating to get to and from.  Soon after we got home, I headed down the street to the Doctor’s office.  We went over my medications, and  I am now on the drug that he recommended for Gout, and is the common drug used to lower uric acid levels, but it doesn’t seem to work.  He recommended that we look to see if it might be something else – Pseudogout.  Who knew?  It has similar symptoms, but is caused by calcium crystals in the joints, not uric acid crystals.  He took some blood, and will check to see what the deal is.  Am now back on Prednisone – same treatment for Gout or Pseudogout.  I have a feeling that this may be what it is, because normally prior to a full outbreak, I have pain in my knee and achilles tendon, which is typical for Pseudogout.  For now, pain killers and Prednisone!

When I hobbled back home, I met Cristina at the elevator.  It was great to see her, and David was thrilled that she was able to arrange a visit while she was visiting from Sweden.  Thanks for the great conversation and beautiful gifts from Stockholm!  Sorry I was a bid out of it – tired from no sleep and a little distracted by the pain.  There are certain people, and Cristina is one of them, who David is able to communicate with more easily.  Maybe it is the history that they have, or just that they are in tune, but it is great to see.

We headed out together, Cristina for her train to CT and we made it to ACC in time for Gym at 3pm and PT at 3:30pm.  We decided to hang out in the area until the Young Stroke Survivors Group at 5:30pm, and walked down to 34th Street for a latte and something to nibble.  David has been looking forward to this group for over a month, and when we got back to 38th Street, we were a little early, and there were a few people who were there for the group.  At 5:30pm, a gentleman who we later met, named Andrew (David kept referring to him as Mike to me this evening) and David and I went into the conference room and we introduced ourselves and began chatting.  David was very engaged, and wanted to hear about what Andrew/Mike’s recovery has been like.  In the conversation, I discovered that he was the partner of one of the women who was at my group – Karen, who was sitting next to me, and I liked her.

Anyway, we talked for an hour, and nobody else showed up – not the group leader or any other member.  We asked again at the front desk, and they said that it was supposed to be in that conference room, because we all thought that maybe we went to the wrong place.  I will call the social worker tomorrow to find out what went wrong.  It was very good to talk to Andrew/Mike for both David and me.  He had a similar story, but he had a right brain/left side stroke and David’s was the other way around.  He had his stroke in November 2011, so has been recovering for a year and four months.  This concerned David when we got home, and he kept asking me when he had his stroke and when Andrew/Mike had his.  We also talked about the left/right issues, and a left brain stroke often causes speech problems, while the right brain stoke causes problems with intonation and a sort of flat voice.  David was quite jealous when he talked about reading as well.  David was disappointed that the group wasn’t really a group, but it was good anyway.

Anyway, we said goodnight, and headed back home.  Watched the SOTU (or most of it – David was tired from a long day), and was pleased with the President, and irritated by the Republicans (what else is new) but didn’t watch the rebuttals.  Pleased to catch the water grab by Rubio on youtube.  Read the blog to David, then the object was Hedwig Glass Beaker.  Bizarre history there.  The upshot is, even during the crusades, trade between the Muslims and Christians was very strong, which just goes to prove that at the end of the day, money makes religious convictions go poof, like a cloud of smoke!