Hi Jace. Your mail was very well read and respected. I am now at the ten month stage,and have started to believe the neurologist in that I am a 5-10 year recovery patient. But, I am, me and there is no way that they will be right. Even with bad balance, speech and vision problems I refuse to give up. I now go to the gym twice a week and also swim twice a week. All the work I do has been given to me by specialized people to help improve all the defects in my life. The annoying thing at times is that I look normal to people, and it is only when I try to speak, that people notice me. If I concentrate on my voice I can manage to fool people. I walk like I am drunk, so I often think I may as well have a bottle of wine, but know that that would be a stupid thing to do. I used to do show jumping and school difficult horses, but realize that this is something that I would probably be silly to do as well. I am slowly learning about the new person I have become, hard as it may be. All I can say is that we need to accept that we are now very different people physically , but we don't all have to be different mentally. Good luck!
Y