I don't know who said it to me, but somebody told me early on that recovering from a stroke is like rewiring your brain. A stroke is a brain accident. Bleeding or clotting damages part of the brain, and the site of the damage and the extent determine the rest of the damage the stroke does—you can experience a loss of cognitive skills, a loss of motor skills, loss of speech proficiency, trouble dealing with your emotions, and I don't know what else. To get past the stroke, you have to teach new parts of your brain to do what the damaged parts of your brain used to do. That's rewiring, and that's where the title of this blog came from.

I had a stroke on January 6, 2006. Early in my recovery I knew that I would like to have a journal, a record of what I was doing and what was happening to me. This will be my journal for myself, my family, and my friends.