You took a hard hit, Jackie, and it's amazing how well you've done. Cause for hope for everyone.
On the subject of husbands, I am lucky. My husband is the one of the strangest men you'll ever meet--a touch (okay, more than a touch) of Asperger's, remarkable intellect, bizarre sense of humor. He's been great about the whole thing--even the three times I flooded the house.
At one point, I gave handed him a concise, written explanation of the problem (a professionally written article), so he is well aware that I'm not doing it on purpose. It never occurred to me to take him to a doctor's appointment, but when I related to him the trouble I'd had with the neurologist, he said, "You should have let me talk to him." It was the first time I realized I could use him as an advocate if I need one. The next doctor who gives me trouble is in for it.
If moving around the house counts as activity, then I was more active than I thought. The doctors certainly didn't count it as such, but I went (and still go) up and down the stairs frequently, and if you think that cleaning eight litter boxes every day isn't work...well, except for the two double size ones, they're sifting pans, so there's a lot of lifting involved. And I suppose that hauling all those cans and bags of cat food might be akin to bursts of weight training. I don't use a cart in any store. I have handheld shopping baskets that I carry around, and when I can no longer lug them, it's time for the register. It just didn't feel like, yanno, exercise.
Reading was the real problem. I really pushed on that because reading and research is the end all and be all for me. The neuropsychologist said that all the effort I expended delayed the healing of my brain. She said that 15 minutes at a time might even be too much. I found myself reading the same things over and over and not comprehending any of it. If I read a freaking novel, I'd get to the end and start over again because I missed so much the first time through. Even then, I wasn't retaining more than a small percentage of the content. I never finished all the courses I'd signed up for. I stopped working on the family genealogy project. I stopped doing genetics research. It all just went down the tubes because I couldn't understand any of it.
Worse, I couldn't write at all--I'd come to this group and write entire posts, and when I'd review the draft, it would be utter nonsense. I did that a lot. I made tons of posts on Facebook, and no one noticed that they were all shares, and my own contribution was, at the most, one or two words. Familiar words that I've used all my life were suddenly foreign. I had to look up words that I've used hundreds, even thousands of times in the past. Sometimes, I knew exactly what word I needed, and it just wouldn't come to me.
So now I have a chemical helper, and it's great, but it's still a relief to hear that there is a light at the end of the tunnel from someone who got hit with a double whammy. Thank you.