Recovery gets measured in strange ways.

Distance walked. Strength. Balance. Appointments attended. Things you can do independently that you couldn’t do before.

All useful. All important.

But every so often I stumble across a completely different measure.

Evidence that I’m still me.

On Sunday, I went to the pub.

Nothing particularly remarkable about that. I go to the pub fairly regularly on a Sunday. There is no rehabilitation goal attached to it, no great act of independence, no inspirational meaning.

I just went to the pub.

I spent some time with someone I’ve gradually been building a friendship with. Someone whose experiences have brought out quite a lot of empathy in me – who even knew I had the emotional range for that?!  Then, as tends to happen, i relaxed and got talking to other people.

One conversation became another. There was joking. There was laughter. I was enjoying myself.

And then came the dangerous phrase:

“Just one more.”

Followed, inevitably, by another.

My sensible little plan for the evening quietly disappeared because I was having too much fun talking to people to particularly care about the time.

And afterwards, I realised something.

That was me. Unfiltered, undiluted. Pure Ben

Not me demonstrating that I can cope after a stroke.

Not me being rehabilitated.

Not Professional Ben, who has spent years knowing how to behave in clinical environments, understanding the language and instinctively slipping into professional mode.

Not Patient Ben, either.

Just Ben.

One of the strangest parts of becoming seriously unwell is discovering how many versions of yourself can exist at once.

For a long time, I found it difficult to stop being the healthcare professional when I was supposed to be a patient. Put me in an health care setting and some part of my brain  decides I must be at work. I have always understood what was happening clinically, had to knowledge to talk the language and analyse things sensibly.

Sometimes that was useful.

Sometimes it was likely an elaborate way of protecting myself

One of my neuropsychologists recognised that quite early. She understood that Professional Ben was real, but he could also be protective. Being knowledgeable about what was happening to me isn’t necessarily the same thing as experiencing it as the person it is actually happening to.

That distinction has been with me for a long time

perhaps recovery isn’t about digging through everything that changed and trying to reconstruct the exact person who existed in this body before.

Some things are different. Pretending otherwise would be pointless .

But the important bits of me keep turning up.

I am still interested in people.

I still feel deeply for someone when I recognise something in their experience.

I still get distracted by a good conversation.

I still make people laugh.

I still want to hug.

I still get waylaid in pubs.

And apparently I still occasionally abandon a perfectly sensible plan in favour of “one more”because I’m having a  nice time.

There was no assessment for any of that.

Nobody documents it.

There’s no clinical letter saying:

Ben continues to demonstrate good progress in spontaneous pub-based social engagement, with particularly strong performance in becoming distracted by people and remaining longer than intended.

Which is probably a shame.

Because Sunday gave me something that all the formal measurements can’t quite capture.

It gave me evidence that the stroke changed my life without completely rewriting the person living it.

I’m still Just Ben

And sometimes, , I forget that.