Hello everyone. I’m Kelvin, and I live with the long-term effects of a stroke, brain tumour surgery, and radiotherapy damage. Over the years I’ve had to develop all sorts of practical ways of coping with challenges involving memory, fatigue, vision, balance, sensory overload, and day-to-day organisation.
I write about those experiences in a blog called Half a Mind To. The aim is not to provide medical advice, but to share lived experience, practical strategies, and the occasional insight that might help someone else facing similar challenges. If you’re interested, searching for “Half a Mind To blog Kelvin” should find it easily.
I’m looking forward to learning from other members and sharing experiences with people who understand the realities of life after brain injury and stroke.
Welcome @kelving and thank you @Bobbi for sourcing the link to Kelvin’s blog.
I have bookmarked it after an initial look as there is a lot to look at and I shall do this at leisure.
I am sure @kelving joining this forum will be beneficial to both Kelvin and the other members.
Welcome Kelvin and we look forward to more from you, or we (I) will simply visit your blog and have a browse as and when …
Thank you for sharing your work, Kelvin, and thank you Bobbi for providing the link, as technological challenges are beyond me just now. I shall look forwrd to reading this.
Welcome to the community, I’m sorry to hear about your stroke and brain tumour. It sounds like you’ve been through a lot. It’s great that you’ve been writing about your experiences though, this can not only help others but also help you to process things.
I hope you’ll also find this space helpful and I’m sure you’ll be able to offer much insight for others too. If you need anything whilst you’re using this space, please don’t hesitate to tag me using the @ symbol and my username.
Hi & welcome to the community @kelving good to have you here. I have had a look at your blog and will return to it later. It looks very professional with lots of useful information whichI am sure has/will help many people.
Many thanks @Bobbi for sorting the link to my blog When I tried to make my first post it was rejected due to having a link in it. That’s why I had to put the search terms in.
The forum has a tier system. What you can do is limited at the start. As you settle in you gradually acquire more things you can do. You will eventually be able to post links and more.
There was an introductory and an intermediate course in using the forum.
I’m not sure things are done like that any more.
@Anna_Moderator will no doubt offer some pointers but not much happens at weekend so it could be early next week before she responds to this mention.
Meanwhile life goes on. I’m sure you’ll find folk here friendly and helpful. We are a community after all. There are all sorts of opportunities to participate, to learn and to exchange views.
It’s good to see @Gravel as well. He’s new to this too and also finding his way around.
(I’ve been hanging around here for the four years since my stroke. )
If you look above in this post you’ll see what it looks like with your name.
So if you type the “@” sign and then type “Anna_Moderator” immediately after it, no space, You’ll have succeeded and that will trigger a response from her.
However bear in mind that the forum isn’t usually staffed at weekends or during holidays. Staff are available only during office hours so getting a reply can involve having to wait.
Sometimes another forum user can give you a reply, which can be quicker.
Very well formatted blog, I think the title is brilliant. There are some interesting observations on some core issues post stroke condition. Looks like you’ve got plenty of blog posts yet to come, make sure you let us know when a new one surfaces.
Hello @kelving - To start with, I am not sure I know exactly what a blog is.
I have just visited your website (or blog?) and read a few pages including this one.
I was wondering if it was possible to include a date on the page to indicate when the article was written. I don’t know why, but I find, for me personally, I am better able to appreciate if I know when what I am reading was written as it helps to put it into perspective.
This might seem like a daft thing to say and maybe I have missed something i.e. maybe the dates are on there and I have just missed them.
I thought I’d just ask in case this is something worth considering.
You have clearly spent a lot of time and effort in putting together the blog and your story/background is interesting.
@Anna_Moderator, Despite several requests, I still have not been told WHERE to type in your handle. If I send an email, there is a “to” address box, but I cannot find one on your site! Please help !
Bob Isle.
Hi @Pea_WoS i’m not sure if my Email got to you, I responded straight away, I don’t know quite how I did that but I’ll respond here as well, just in case that didn’t work. When you click through to a single post then in the bottom left, and quite small letters, is a date. I’m interested to know whether what you were suggesting would be to include the date inside the post as well. That would be something for me to think about. Thanks for your interest, it’s really nice to have some feedback.
Hello Kelvin - I was thinking of a date inside the post.
Your blog is quite extensive and covers many topics.
I haven’t had a chance to fully explore it, but I noticed that the date it was written wasn’t [easily] visible? For me, it is something I like to do - chronology helps put things in perspective.
Also, I wasn’t clear about how the numbers in the titles related. It might be difficult for me to explain as I am not looking at the blog right now.
When I get time, I am happy to offer my thoughts if you find them useful. Bear in mind, these are just my own preferences and you clearly have an idea of how you wish to present your materials and so at the end of the day, you’re the boss!!
Thank you very much for your response. I’ve been thinking about my response to you, which I think somewhat missed your point. The only place the date appears for each blog post is just that insignificant position in the bottom left of a post in the post grid, and I now thinking that it needs to be elsewhere. I’ll think hard about how to improve that situation.
improve that situation.
The codes such as Insight123 initially started appearing because of my incapacity to hold in my head the cross-referencing of one post to another, which is key to setting this apart from an ordinary chronological blog. I was a bit dubious about it, but I was hoping that people would get used to the idea and either ignore it or somehow find use in the fact that there was this cross referencing of posts. I’ve been getting a lot of help from ChatGPT, the vast majority of which is very helpful. I did have a discussion about this point with it, and the advice was to keep it in. I can’t recall why. In many of my decisions if I weren’t to take the advice of ChatGPT. Do you think it attracts from the blog? I will start putting the date into the text of new blog posts, and maybe backfill some of the previous ones.
