Now for the double post: I apoligize for the negativity of this portion, but it's been on my mind lately.

I don't know how much longer I can take of this...
I can live with walking the way I walk now for the rest of my life. I don't fall and only occasionally need a hand to get up from a low chair or if I've been sitting for a long time
I can live with having help cutting my steak for as rarely as I eat food that requires being cut. And I can live with having to lean my walking stick against the wall to open a door with a twist handle. I can even live without playing flute for the rest of my life(it was always my weakest instrument any way and I was never all that good). But I don't think I can live with not being able to play clarinet/saxophone for the rest of my life. (*especially* clarinet) for eighteen years of my life, clarinet/music was *ALL* I knew. That's nearly two thirds of my life. Sometimes I wish the stroke had just killed me July 28, 2008 rather than make me go through the pain of not being able to play any more. A couple of nights ago I had one of my moments Where I had a dream about playing, even poorly, and I was happy for a moment in the dream world. But when I awoke to my usual sorrow of realizing it was just a dream and my hand was still s useless mass of flesh and bones, I started sobbing uncontrollably.. I had to get up and go to the coputer to finish sobbing soI wouldn't wake B. I tried to move my hand for a while cursing it and beating it when it wouldn't do crap for me; sobbing further.
I suppose I could learn to live without playing saxophone considering I was nothing compared to real saxophonists. I had two former students that are both very talented musicians and saxophone players. But looking at my track record as a teacher, I think I just got lucky with having two gifted children so closely spaced and from the same school that I let myself be convinced I was finally a decent teacher, and thought it ironic that my best students were not playing the instrument I spent so much of my life trying to perfect my art on. When really I can take no credit for the success these two young players have had; They would have been just as successful with any teacher.