Click here for a Machine Generated Transcript   It's been 4 years since my stroke. It feels like 4 months. It's a good time to reflect on the experience. The most important piece is that I'm still recovering. Within the past 6 months I've gotten more independent finger control back. That may not seem like much, but the key point is that recovery can continue for years.  Anyone who says recovery stops at 6 or 12 months is spewing nonsense. Celebration I choose to recognize this date. Maybe next year I should arrange a full party. It's not a celebration of having a stroke, though. It's a celebration of surviving a stroke. It's a celebration of that new birthday. That day could have gone so much worse than it did. I'm grateful to still be here, alive and kicking (if off balance). Life is short. I may have only another 200 years to live, and I've got a lot of stuff to do in that time. My partner has a harder time with it. She describes that day as the worst in her life. Her experience was very different and traumatizing in a different way. See it's one thing to face your own mortality. It's another to face your partner's mortality. She had a lot more to stress about and worry about on that day than I did. All I needed to do was lay there, not  dies, and visualize tine spaceships in my veins shooting laser beams at the clot. So I temper my enthusiasm because it's not fair to make her relive that while I come out positive about my new direction. Still, it is important to commemorate it. But everyone will have a different reaction to their own or a loved one's Strokeaversary. It was still a good day to reveal my tattoo to the world. You can see pictures and read all about that at http://Strokecast.com/tattoo. Going Forward I've got a bunch of plans I'm working on for the next year I want to write a book (making some progress there) I'm launching the Strokecast newsletter in July I plan to start PT again this summer I want start doing more talks and presentations to share lessons from stroke and the power of yet …and there's probably a dozen more things on my list, too. But I'll get there because I'm still here. Hack of the Week Use larger plates or bowls to carry things from the microwave. A lot of food containers, TV dinners, chicken pot pies, and craptacular pizza that comes from the microwave comes in flimsy containers. They're meant to be carried with two hands or the collapse under their own weight. To solve the problem, I just stick that whole container on a plate to carry it somewhere. I can then safely manage it with one hand. With soup or cereal, I'll often put that bowl into a larger bowl to also make it easier to handle with less sloshing. It means there are a couple more dishes to do, but that easier than getting microwave chicken masala out of the carpet Where do we go from here? Visit http://Strokecast.com/tattoo to see my tattoo and read the story. Subscribe to the free Strokecast email newsletter at http://Strokecast.com/News Share this episode with someone you know by giving them the link http://Strokecast.com/4Years Don't get best…get better.