Carolyn J. Routh Stroke Recovery Journey: Overcoming Fear After Stroke

When a series of crushing headaches brought Carolyn J. Routh to the hospital, she thought it was just another battle in her long fight with Type 1 diabetes. But what looked like migraines was something far more serious — a venous sinus thrombosis stroke waiting to strike.

On Thanksgiving morning in 2003, while lying in a hospital bed surrounded by doctors, 

A Stroke No One Saw Coming

For weeks, Carolyn had been in and out of doctors’ offices looking for answers. Her MRI had come back clear, and everyone believed she was fine. But her instincts told her something was wrong. “The pain was unbearable,” she remembers. “It wasn’t a normal headache — it felt like my head was going to explode.”

When she suddenly lost her speech, everything shifted. “In my mind I knew what I wanted to say, but all that came out was gibberish.” She was transferred to a larger hospital, where she would finally discover what had been missed — a blood clot the size of a pinky finger sitting in her brain.

By the time the doctors realized it, the stroke had already begun.

When Life Stops Without Warning

The clot had caused a venous sinus thrombosis — a rare but dangerous form of stroke that blocks blood flow in the veins of the brain. The damage left Carolyn unable to speak and paralyzed down her right side.

“I could hear and understand everything,” she says, “but I couldn’t make anyone understand me. I just gave up. I thought, this is it — I’m done.”

It’s a thought many survivors have when they first come face to face with the unknown. You can feel the life you once knew slipping away. And yet, even when everything seems lost, something inside keeps fighting — sometimes quietly, sometimes fiercely — to come back.

Relearning Everything

When Carolyn finally woke up, the doctors had warned her husband, Daniel, that she might not remember anything. But as soon as she saw him, she burst into tears and said his name.

That moment marked the beginning of her recovery.

Her speech came back first, followed by the slow, painstaking process of walking again. “Before I left the hospital, I told myself I would do everything they said I couldn’t,” she laughs. “It took me an hour to button my shirt and zip my pants — but I did it.”

Therapy became her new normal. Her right hand wouldn’t cooperate at first, and she had to consciously think about every single movement. But through persistence and sheer determination, she not only regained her strength — she found herself again.

“I may have to walk slower, but I can walk. That’s all that matters.”

The Fear That Never Fully Leaves

Even after the body begins to heal, fear often lingers. For Carolyn, the mental recovery was just as hard as the physical. “Every headache terrified me,” she admits. “Every little twitch, every off day — I’d think, is this another stroke?”

That’s the part most people don’t see: the constant vigilance, the second-guessing, the worry that history might repeat itself.

Overcoming fear after stroke isn’t about pretending it doesn’t exist — it’s about learning to live with it. Carolyn found strength in acknowledging her fears and talking about them openly with Daniel.

“I’ve learned to tell him when something feels off,” she says. “That way, if something ever happens again, he knows what to look for.”

That communication — and her willingness to face fear head-on — became one of her greatest tools for recovery.

From Survival to Gratitude

Today, Carolyn calls herself “a walking, talking miracle.”
She’s grateful for every moment she gets — even the hard ones.

“I used to say, ‘I hate my life,’ when things went wrong,” she admits. “But not anymore. I realized I don’t hate my life. I love my life. I just hate the tough moments sometimes — and that’s okay.”

That simple shift in language — from hopelessness to gratitude — transformed her recovery. She stopped seeing her stroke as the end of her story and began viewing it as a new beginning.

“Find your happy,” she says. “Some days it’s harder than others, but there’s always something to be grateful for.”

The Power of Support

Throughout her recovery, Carolyn’s husband, Daniel, became her anchor.
He pushed her when she needed it and caught her when she fell — figuratively and literally.

“There were days I’d get so mad at him for pushing me,” she laughs. “But I know now, he was doing it because he believed in me even when I didn’t.”

For many stroke survivors, that kind of support — from partners, family, friends, or even an online community — can make the difference between giving up and growing stronger.

If you don’t have that support around you yet, find it. Connect with other survivors. Join a group. Talk to someone who understands. You don’t have to do recovery alone.

A New Chapter of Courage

Carolyn’s story is one of resilience, but also of realism. Recovery isn’t quick or easy. There are moments of fear, grief, and frustration — but also joy, laughter, and gratitude.

Every day is a balancing act between fear and faith, exhaustion and persistence, setbacks and victories.

Carolyn continues to travel, share her music, and live life fully — proof that recovery isn’t about getting back to who you were, but becoming someone even stronger than before.

If You’re Struggling With Fear After Stroke

Fear after stroke is normal. But it doesn’t have to control you. Here are a few ideas that helped Carolyn — and may help you too:

• Acknowledge it: Fear thrives in silence. Talking about it breaks its grip.
• Track your triggers: Notice what causes anxiety — fatigue, pain, certain thoughts — and share that with your doctor.
• Stay connected: Isolation feeds fear; community dissolves it.
• Focus on gratitude: Each small victory matters — and gratitude fuels hope.
• Remember your why: Like Carolyn, find your reason to keep going. It could be your family, your friends, your dreams — or simply life itself.

You’re Not Alone

If you’ve survived a stroke, you’ve already proven your strength.
Recovery isn’t about being fearless — it’s about moving forward despite fear.

Carolyn’s journey reminds us that even when life stops without warning, it can restart with purpose.

📖 Want more stories like Carolyn’s?
Read The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened — a book that helps you find meaning and direction after stroke.

💬 Join our community on Patreon: patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke
You’ll gain access to survivor Q&As, behind-the-scenes insights, and one-on-one guidance to help you move forward.

Carolyn J. Routh: Finding Strength and Hope After Stroke

Carolyn J. Routh’s story shows how strength, hope, and love can guide you through fear and toward recovery after stroke.

Support The Recovery After Stroke Podcast on Patreon

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Highlights:

00:00 Carolyn J. Routh’s Introduction and Background
02:24 The Day of the Stroke
07:23 Immediate Aftermath and Recovery
13:30 Challenges and Deficits Post-Stroke
25:06 Emotional and Mental Impact
32:42 Bill: Navigating New Battles After Stroke Recovery
41:58 Life After Stroke and Band Activities
54:32 Advice for Stroke Survivors
1:03:21 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Transcript:

Carolyn J. Routh’s Introduction and Background

Bill Gasiamis 0:00
Hey there. It’s bill here before we jump in a quick thank you to everyone who’s been supporting the show on Patreon. Your help covers some of the costs and keeps this Recovery After Stroke Podcast going after more than 10 years of me doing this solo and a big shout out to Banksia Tech, proud supporters of this episode and distributors of the Hanson rehab glove by cerebro. It’s designed to help stroke survivors improve hand function at home, whether you’re early in recovery or years into it, and you’ll hear more about this later in the episode.

Bill Gasiamis 0:33
Today’s guest is Carolyn J. Routh, who had a venous sinus thrombosis stroke at just 34 she lost her speech, her right side movement, and for a moment, her confidence. This episode is about overcoming fear after stroke, and how Carolyn found her way back to strength, gratitude and purpose. So grab a tea or coffee, settle in and let’s get into it. Carolyn Routh, welcome to the podcast.

Carolyn Routh 0:57
Thank you for having me. This is going to be great.

Bill Gasiamis 1:00
It certainly is. Tell me a little bit about what was life like before stroke?

Carolyn Routh 1:06
Pretty normal. I guess. I grew up in a family business. My grandparents started a restaurant in 1946 so I grew up in the back of the restaurant and worked there. Always wanted to be a musician. And finally, in 2003 Well, 2001 let me back up. My husband, Daniel, and I met. He’s the guitar player, and we started new blue, and we haven’t looked back since. We’ve enjoyed playing music.

Carolyn Routh 1:31
And I had two strokes my my two strokes right after we started new blue. So everything was great. Up until that point, the band was going great. We were both enjoying what we did. I was just loving life, and then the strokes that set us back a little bit.

Bill Gasiamis 1:54
I have a feeling that new Blue was a country band.

Carolyn Routh 1:59
We played blue grass, and we do a little bit of country here and there. We even throw some rock tunes in, because Daniel and I both had a rock and roll background, so we had to do a little bit of that just to satisfy what we came from.

Bill Gasiamis 2:12
How old were you guys when the band got started?

Carolyn Routh 2:14
I was 34, and let’s see, 34 Daniel would have been 25 he’s nine years younger than I am.

The Day of the Stroke

Bill Gasiamis 2:24
Okay, I like it, my wife’s four years older than me. And, you know, even she got the ah, you go for the younger ones. And it’s like, wow. Age is really, you know, it’s really not that relevant, in my opinion. And as long as the two people are in it for the same reason, and everyone’s on board for the same reason, then that’s cool, right? And that reason for me would be love, right?

Carolyn Routh 2:52
Yes, sir, absolutely. We started out as best friends because of the music, and in fact, we were best friends long before we ever started new blue. So I really don’t know when it turned from friendship to more than friendship. Those lines kind of blur. He never really asked me to marry him. It was just like we both knew it was time to get married, and so we went and got married at the courthouse.

Bill Gasiamis 3:17
I love it. So he, he was definitely, I’ll tell you now, he was definitely on board the whole time. He was thinking, Well, how am I going to manage this? How am I going to get married to this person? And then I think he he thought, why don’t I just go with the flow, go with the flow, and then just spring it on her one day.

Carolyn Routh 3:35
That’s kind of what happened. It really is. That’s a good description of it. But he was there through all the strokes, because that’s when we were best friends. We didn’t get married. We started the band in 2003 and we weren’t married until 2006 so there was a while there.

Bill Gasiamis 3:50
What was the day like of the strokes before they happened? What were you up to? What were you doing?

Carolyn Routh 3:55
Well, it really happened in a weird way. I had been having severe, severe headaches, like for three or four weeks, went to the doctor. They thought it was migraines. They were going to send me to a Headache Clinic, and before I got there one weekend, it just got so bad that it was debilitating. And so they took me to the hospital, and I stayed in the hospital for the weekend, they the only thing they really did was just medicate me, which was not good. I don’t like taking a lot of medicine. And then they released me on Wednesday morning, they had done an MRI.

Carolyn Routh 4:34
The MRI came back and they said, You’re clear. There’s no problems. We’re just going to send you to the the Headache Clinic the following Sunday and then on Thursday morning, Thanksgiving morning of 2003 laying on a hospital bed in an ER and Moses cone, it’s one of the hospitals here. It’s one of the the bigger hospitals here, surrounded by Team. Of neurologist, I had my strokes, so I could not have been in a better spot at that time to have strokes than where I was at.

Bill Gasiamis 5:09
Goodness, that is the best timing ever and when. So that’s the thing. You’re in the hospital and you have the strokes, but the before that, the MRI didn’t show anything.

Carolyn Routh 5:21
No, when I got to the hospital, they did another MRI. This is before I stroked I actually came into the hospital the night before, because I lost my speech. I was just garbling everything in my brain. I knew what I wanted to say, but it just came out like mush. It was indistinguishable. So that’s when they took me to the hospital then, and I’m also a diabetic, and at that point, everybody just thought I was having a very low blood glucose, and that’s what was causing that. And then they transferred me from our hospital to the larger hospital late in the night, and they did another MRI.

Carolyn Routh 5:59
And after I had the strokes, my neurologist took Daniel back in some room and showed him the two MRI slides, the one at the previous hospital, like four days before you could see the clot. You see the clot perfectly formed, and they just totally missed it. I don’t know who read that, but they need to find another job.

Carolyn Routh 6:23
I don’t know whether that would have made a difference or not, but I would think possibly, if they had known about it even three days before the incident, that they may could have started blood thinners and done something about it. So it just, it was, it was really unfortunate on the front side, but it was going to happen again. I was in the best place for it to happen, at the hospital.

Bill Gasiamis 6:44
Yeah, human beings sometimes make mistakes, and unfortunately, in hospitals, the mistakes can be dramatic. Then you you know, you’re presenting with a stroke, with stroke symptoms. They take a scan, somebody missed it, or whatever. You don’t look like you’re having a stroke, really, you know, you know, it’s not the common stroke signs or or symptoms, they kind of go, “Oh well, and it’s probably not a stroke. It’s something else” And that’s the thing. They scanned my head about what I’d say, maybe 18 months before my stroke, my first bleed, and they never found it either. It was mine.

Immediate Aftermath and Carolyn J. Routh Stroke Recovery

Bill Gasiamis 7:23
Was a blood vessel that was malformed, and they never found that either. So sometimes, you know, these things happen, and I went for a massive headache and all the real challenging kind of head situation. And they did every test. They scanned it. They did everything because it hadn’t bled yet. They never found blood. So that ruled out certain things. But then they also missed it on the on the scan, because the scan wasn’t looking for, unfortunately, a blood vessel type problem. It was looking for other things. I don’t know what, but yeah, these things happen, it’s common.

Carolyn Routh 7:59
Mine was very surprising because I had venous sinus thrombosis, and my my clot was right here in the top of my head, and it was about the size of a pinky. I mean, it was very pronounced, and when my brain had started rerouting around that spot, thank goodness it was it was a vein. It was Venus, so it was flowing back, or I would have probably not been here right now, but my brain, being the remarkable thing that it is, had started trying to reroute around the clot.

Carolyn Routh 8:30
And that’s I stroked first. So that’s when that one blew out and the blood hit my brain, and then that’s when I stroked and they found the clock. It was. It was a pretty remarkable occurrence, genuinely very unexpected, and just if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen to me.

Bill Gasiamis 8:53
It’s a remarkable occurrence. That’s understatement of the year, definitely remarkable. I mean, everything that could go wrong went wrong. And then everything that could go right under the circumstances definitely went right this time around. What when you woke up? Or firstly, how long did it take for you to sort of come around and be back in the world again?

Carolyn Routh 9:14
Well, I I remember being in the first hospital again. I had awareness of what was going on around me. I just couldn’t speak. And because I could, and I just, I sort of gave up at that point, you know, I just, I felt like I was just laying there on that bed. Nobody knew what was going on with me. Nobody knew. I couldn’t tell anybody what I was feeling. And so I had just sort of given up and just resigned myself to what happens, happens, because I had no clue what was happening either.

Carolyn Routh 9:39
And when I got to the larger hospital after they did the MRI, or when they were doing the MRI, I am terribly claustrophobic, and I was aware enough to realize they’re sliding me into this tube, and I freaked out. I mean, I can remember the I can remember hands on me. I can remember the tube, and I can. Remember what to me sounded like the Wicked Witch of the East or the West, whatever it was from the Wizard of Oz movie, just screeching at me, stop moving. Stop moving. You’ve messed everything up.

Carolyn Routh 10:12
They ended up drugging me when they put me in and then when they found the clocks I stayed they had me totally knocked out like for three days, just to try to give my brain time to heal. And they had apparently told Daniel that when I woke up they didn’t know what my cognitive ability would be at that time, what my memory would be. They were kind of preparing him for the worst.

Carolyn Routh 10:35
So it was three days, and when I finally woke up, I saw somebody going out of the room. I caught it out of the corner of my eye, and I spoke to him. I, you know, cried out to him, and they came in there and checked me and got Daniel in there. And I remember the first time that I saw him after that, the door was behind me, and he had come around the door and walked to the end of the stretcher and, sort of, you know, touched my foot and said, and said, Do you know who I am? And I just started crying.

Bill Gasiamis 11:03
We’ll be back with more of Carolyn’s remarkable story in just a moment. But first, I want to take a quick moment to thank Banksia tech for supporting this episode. They’re the distributors of the Hanson rehab glove by cerebro. This one here that I’m holding in my hand, a clever piece of tech that helps stroke survivors regain hand strength and function right from home. If you’re working on your recovery and want to know more, there’s a link in the show notes. All right, let’s get back to Carolyn and how she learned to face fear with courage.

Carolyn Routh 11:34
Because I remembered him and so it was that was another one of those moments in life that really stands out in my mind the first time I saw him again and realized I was kind of back in the world. So those few days though I have, I have really no memory of I have, I have flashes. They would wake me up every so often to make sure I would wake up. But that’s all, nothing was clear.

Carolyn Routh 11:57
Then I would have a little bit of reasoning skills to know how I’m waking up, but I thought somebody was trying to kill me. That’s where my brain was. I thought they were trying to kill me. Thankfully, we were not.

Bill Gasiamis 12:07
They were doing the opposite. So you’re, you know, when you said you ex, you kind of resigned. Was it resigned to the fact that something’s happening to you? Don’t know what’s happening. You just kind of let it happen. Was that acceptance? Did you know you were having a stroke? What was that? Was it just resigning to the fact, or was it that you would just wear cognitively not capable of processing everything?

Carolyn Routh 12:33
What triggered that mostly was I had been seen a new endocrinologist for my diabetes, and my blood glucose levels had not been in very tight control. There I was just at one of those points in life, they were just kind of crazy. And I remember him emphatically telling me over a few visits, you’ve got to get this under control, because if you don’t, you’re going to have a low one day, and you’re just going to you’re just going to be in a coma, you’re just going to be a vegetable the rest of your life.

Carolyn Routh 13:00
And that’s what I was thinking when that happened, and I couldn’t talk and I hadn’t did have a low blood sugar about the time that this was happening at home, and they had treated it, they’ve given me orange juice. So it wasn’t, it wasn’t a blood glucose thing. It was the stroke. It was all of that starting. But for me, when I just kind of gave up there at the hospital to begin with, in my brain. I was actually because of my blood glucose being low, I done it. You did this to yourself. This is your fault. It finally happened.

Challenges and Deficits Post-Stroke

Carolyn Routh 13:30
What this doctor was saying, you’re just going to be a vegetable the rest of your life, and that’s what I was believing. So that’s why I gave up. And you know, what can you do about it at that point?

Bill Gasiamis 13:40
Yeah, going with the flow is probably the only thing you can do, and hopefully the flow goes the right direction and it goes in your way. So were you dealing with type one or type two diabetes?

Carolyn Routh 13:51
I developed type one when I was just before I turned 11 years old, and I’ve been living with that essentially my whole life.

Bill Gasiamis 13:58
And what does it do? What is the dangerous part of it? Because I understand type two. It’s people’s pancreas not being able to generate insulin or becoming or the body becoming insulin resistant, where it doesn’t matter how much the body tries, they can’t deal with the high blood sugar levels due to diet and due to your consumption of food, right? So what is type one all about?

Carolyn Routh 14:26
Type one, essentially, my pancreas is dead. It doesn’t do anything. It produces zero insulin. So I have to take insulin. When I was younger, I took insulin shots. That was way back before insulin pumps. In fact, I can remember the very first Medtronic insulin pump that was invented, and they were pushing me to go on. And at that time, they were very large, and I was a child, and I didn’t want to carry this thing around all the time, so I started taking shots. And that’s, that’s totally where I get my insulin is from shots. And I do have an insulin pump.

Carolyn Routh 14:59
And now I’ve been on this since 1992 and it was a life changing experience, because now I can program how much insulin I’m getting, so I don’t have to constantly take a shot. I do have a blood glucose monitor that gives me in real time where I’m at so that I can adjust as necessary, but type one is an entirely different beast than type two. It’s like night and day, a lot of type two. Like you say patients can control it with diet, and a lot of people do, and there’s a lot of oral medications and things like that.

Carolyn Routh 15:34
Now, medical science has come a long way in treating type two, unfortunately, since they’re unable to revive your pancreas, they can’t do much for curing type one. They have just come up with a lot of ways to make it easier to manage and be able to live a more normal life when you’re type one. But there’s, there’s always that insulin issue if you don’t have enough insulin, like with type two, and your blood sugar gets really high. If it gets too high, it causes a condition called ketoacidosis, which can be deadly.

Carolyn Routh 16:11
It can cause you to go into a coma, and can kill you from lack of enough insulin. The reverse of that is low blood glucose, which is insulin shock and is a genuine emergency. High blood sugar, you need to get it taken care of, acidosis, you need to get it taken care of but you’re not going to die instantly. With high blood sugar. When your blood sugar drops, if it drops too low, you’re you’re essentially starving your body of oxygen. Works without oxygen, so it goes too low, you start feeling it in your extremities, you know, you’re dizzy.

Carolyn Routh 16:47
Different people have different symptoms that they notice, but it’s a big difference, and that’s when you have got to immediately treat it, or you could die very quickly with low blood glucose reading a lot different.

Bill Gasiamis 17:02
Your doctor was. Were your doctor saying we’ve got to get this under control? As in, there’s some kind of thing that you’re doing that’s making it worse? Can you make type one diabetes worse by diet or lifestyle or anything like that? Or is it simply you’re not taking care of when you’re taking your insulin and how much insulin you’re taking. What’s the issue with it?

Carolyn Routh 17:28
That’s all involved in it? You need to follow a diet of some sort of another to be able to control blood sugar spikes. You also have to manage your insulin, because, like you say, if you get too much insulin, that throws you into insulin shock, which is low blood glucose, that is immediately deadly, or if you’re not giving yourself enough insulin, or if the insulin level is where it needs to be, but you’re overeating, that can cause your blood sugar to go high and put you in ketoacidosis. So it’s a constant, it’s a constant vigil to try to balance your diet with your insulin intake.

Carolyn Routh 18:07
And it can go either way, but the two, the two are in this dance all the time, and you’re you’re trying to figure out who’s leading, not the one you want to be leading.

Bill Gasiamis 18:19
Sometimes you have human times, and then you just do what you need to do to feel good in the moment, and then you pay the price later.

Carolyn Routh 18:26
Well, exercise can affect it, or does affect it? Emotions can affect it, like if you’re really upset, if you get depressed, if you’re in a happy place, your emotions can have an effect on where your readings are too. Yeah, it’s a very complicated, very complicated disease, and a lot of people don’t understand it. A lot of people just automatically go because you hear more about type two, really, and about controlling it with diet and meds. And so most people, if you tell them you’re diabetic, their brain goes to type two.

Carolyn Routh 18:59
Well, can’t you control that with diet? I only wish it would be so much easier, if I could just control it with diet. So it’s a constant education, an educational process, too, with people that just don’t understand it.

Bill Gasiamis 19:15
Absolutely and then, and then you decide that you’re going to have a stroke, and now you’re dealing with type one diabetes, but you’re also dealing with what stroke caused? What did it cause to happen to your body? Any deficits that you’re dealing with?

Carolyn Routh 19:28
Well, when I first stroked, like I told you before, I lost my speech. I was just garbled with my speech. Couldn’t make sense of anything. I lost my right side, my total right side, which was really tough, because I’m right handed, so that made a big difference. And the first thing that came back when I woke up was my speech. Thankfully, I got my speech back very quickly, because I’m a vocalist, and without my voice, I mean, I was really devastated over that. And maybe more than losing my right side. Not that I wanted to not have that. But you know, you can roll somebody on stage if you need to.

Carolyn Routh 20:07
They can sing. You just you can’t replace your voice. So my voice came back first and then with my right side. I had to go through a lot of physical therapy and occupational therapy, physical therapy with my legs and learning how to walk really went very quickly. They had me walking within a few days before I left the hospital, I was able to walk. Now I was doing what I refer to as the grandma shuffle. Both feet are on the floor, and you just kind of shuffle along. And I remember one day when they were walking me down the hall with all the straps on me.

Carolyn Routh 20:41
So if I fail, and I’m just sort of shuffling around. And I thought, you know, I may have to walk this way for the rest of my life. And for about a split second, I started to feel sorry for myself. And then I thought, but I can walk, you know, it’s okay if I have to walk like this, I can still walk and get around my the occupational it took a while for my hand to come back. They had told me that I wouldn’t be able to for a long time, and I may never be able to button my shirt, zip up pants, tie shoes, brush my teeth, eat any of that stuff.

Carolyn Routh 21:13
And so when I left the hospital, before I left the hospital, and it took me about an hour to do it, but I did every one of those things getting ready to go home from the hospital. I was just so determined that I was gonna do this. I went probably for about four weeks, which ended up being about six occupational therapy visits, and at that point, they just turned me loose and said, We can’t do anything else for you. My grip strength was higher in my right hand, where the stroke it affected than it was on my left hand.

Carolyn Routh 21:41
So, I was really fortunate. I attribute part of that to just sheer tenacity, of just being determined that I was going to get better. Of course, Daniel was pushing me the whole time. You can do this yourself. You can do this yourself. I now have this is strange, but if I’m going to sign an autograph, or if I write anything, I have to focus on what my hand is doing and every movement that my hand makes.

Carolyn Routh 22:07
I couldn’t sit here with you right now and be jotting something down or writing something down on a piece of paper while I’m talking to you and focusing on you, I would have to stop and focus on my hand to be able to write again. So it’s little things like that. My husband says that my memory is a lot worse than it used to be. But what’s a husband going to say? That’s his act, you don’t remember.

Bill Gasiamis 22:28
I told you that. Why don’t you listen to me when I say something?

Carolyn Routh 22:32
So I don’t know if I can put much stock in that or not. That’s that’s an argument he and I have occasionally.

Bill Gasiamis 22:38
I wouldn’t believe him either. Well, your timing, honestly, it’s really lovely to hear your outcome, because your timing to have the stroke when you did was, you know, the best timing ever. If something bad is going to go wrong, well, then you may as well just be in the best place when it happens. And I think that’s exactly what happened to you. So it’s not a surprise that you got so much back so quickly as your brain starts to heal and everything starts to kind of, the inflammation starts to go down, and everything gets treated.

Bill Gasiamis 23:10
Waking up those neurons again with therapy and rehab and all that kind of stuff is just beautiful, like perfect. That’s, you know, we very rarely hear such amazing like good news stories after stroke, there’s always a challenge. And I’m not saying that you don’t have your own challenges. Now with it, of course you do, but it’s so much better when things go bad, things go the right way. I don’t even know if that makes sense.

Carolyn Routh 23:34
It was a miracle. I mean, I tell people a lot of times even more on stage and I talk about it, you’re looking at a walking, talking miracle, because it could have gone a lot worse, a lot worse, so many things. And I try not to think about that, because I just want to focus on where I’m at now and getting through it and coming out the other side, not to dwell on the what could have been.

Bill Gasiamis 24:00
Absolutely there’s no point in that, because it never was. So it doesn’t mean anything. What could have been, you could, you could do the whole, you know, it’s interesting. Sometimes I do this in the car, you know, when there’s a close call and we nearly have a collision, right? But, but we didn’t have the collision, because even though I or the other person made the mistake, we were able to realize what action we needed to take immediately to avoid that collision from happening. And nothing bad happened. It was fine, and yet you still get all worked up about it.

Bill Gasiamis 24:33
And you know, you shake your hand at the person that was driving potentially having done the wrong thing, and you think that that’s the right response, and it’s really not, because it was avoided. Nothing happened. So that’s, you know, it nearly happened. I mean an inch away. Well, you’re that doesn’t mean anything. You may as well been two kilometers away. It doesn’t make a difference. But I love what you’re saying. How about you. So who’s the biggest person? Who was the person in your life motivating you the most?

Carolyn J. Routh Stroke Recovery – Emotional and Mental Impact 

Carolyn Routh 25:06
Daniel, definitely. He’s the one that got me started playing bass. Turned out to be, and it was a little bit after the stroke, but still, again, with my hand. You know, I’m always, I’m always working on my hand and making sure that I still have the dexterity and things like that, and focusing. Have to focus a lot of mental power on my hand, and so play, learning to play bass was a great therapy for me, because it was engaging both hands at the same time. It was engaging my mind.

Carolyn Routh 25:37
And he’s, he’s the one that did that, he’s the one that pushed me to that he was always the one that was there for me to cry on his shoulder when I just felt defeated. Because there’s always those times there’s there’s always those times that you’re having a really bad day or or things just aren’t going right, and you have those moments. You have those moments of defeat, and it’s the best thing in the world when you’ve got somebody there, especially somebody that’s been there from the beginning and knew you before this happened, so they know where you’re coming from.

Carolyn Routh 26:07
And they know where you’re trying to get to. So he definitely, I got mad at him a lot of times when he was pushing me, because it’s like, just leave me alone. I can’t do that right now. But he kept pushing in a good way, in a positive way he kept pushing me, and it turned. He still teaches me a little bit, and I don’t know if he needs to now.

Bill Gasiamis 26:27
He probably does.

Carolyn Routh 26:31
He’s still my best friend through everything.

Bill Gasiamis 26:33
You can get mad at him still. I think you have permission to, you know, it sounds like you guys have permission to push each other, get mad at each other, get over it, and move on and and then notice the growth. That’s the beauty of it, right? Is notice there has been growth like I think for me, my wife’s not a pushy, pushy kind of person, but there’s been growth after the stroke, both mine and hers, because she had to deal with a stroke survivor at home who was quite debilitated for a long time, because it was about, you know that the difficult parts for us lasted.

Bill Gasiamis 27:13
One stroke in February 2012 another one in March 2012 another one in November, 2014 and then brain surgery. So the really extended period of time in the acute phase, you know, where shits going wrong all the time. And then after that is when we kind of start to learn how to Okay, let’s try and move back into routine, some kind of life, etc. But even then, she doesn’t have the experience to be a caregiver of a stroke survivor. She’s not a nurse, she didn’t study, she’s not a doctor. So that was interesting.

Bill Gasiamis 27:49
To go through all of that and we had to grow, because you couldn’t be the same dumb ass that you were before the stroke. At least I couldn’t, because it didn’t work. It wouldn’t work. You know, when you say emotional upset makes your diabetes worse. So does emotional upset during and after stroke and stroke recovery. It makes things worse. And the idea was to learn how to stop being emotional when it wasn’t necessary.

Bill Gasiamis 28:15
And then to be practical and to attend to the emotional part, the part where you’re feeling upset, mad, sad, whatever it is, so that you can not allow it to affect you in a negative way when you’re going through a tough time trying to heal your brain and and get your deficits under control somehow or recover somehow. So I love that you guys had the opportunity to dance around that time we did.

Carolyn Routh 28:45
Yeah, we did. It was, I don’t know, I don’t know where I would have been if it wasn’t for him in there and helping me through it. And even now, even now, he kind of, you know, when I’m having trouble writing or anything, sometimes he’ll sort of, for lack of a better term, take the blame. If I’m taking too long on something, you know, he’ll sort of field it for me so that, so that people don’t look at me strange. He’ll deflect, right? He’ll come step in and intervene and take, take some of the heat for me, if it ever becomes necessary.

Bill Gasiamis 29:15
I love it. That’s excellent. So what were the biggest challenges that you faced? Now, I know that you had a number of deficits, but what would you describe as the one that was the biggest challenge to deal with, with regards to stroke.

Carolyn Routh 29:28
Just being able to get back into my normal routine in my life without being scared all the time, because if I had the least little bit of a headache, or even if I didn’t really have a headache, but I was just sort of feeling bad That day, my mind always went to “Oh my gosh. Am I going to have another stroke? What am I going to do?” You know, do I need to be here? Be I just that probably was the hardest thing to overcome. More so than the physical, was the mental games and just being terrified that I was going to have another stroke or another seizure.

Carolyn Routh 29:59
And I have another seizure. Seven years post stroke, I had been fine, no problems at all, and all of a sudden, I just seized one day, but I was not on any medication. I wasn’t on any kind of suppressors, because I had gone for several months and not had any strokes that I kept pushing my neurologist to not be on it, because my mom has seizures, and she had been on Dilantin all of her life, and it had really played a number on her body with several things. And I didn’t want to do that, because I felt I’m still so young, I don’t want to go there.

Carolyn Routh 30:33
So he agreed to take me off of it, he said, but you can’t drive for three months. You can’t do this. You can’t do that. We got to make sure that this isn’t going to happen again. And it didn’t. I had no problems after three months, not three months. It was six months. After six months, I was fine, no sign of any any abnormalities. And then seven years later, I just had a seizure. That was another one that happened at the perfect time. I was in the bedroom, and I was walk, fixing to walk out of the bedroom and back into the living room, where Daniel was at.

Carolyn Routh 31:06
I started, for some reason, I just felt my legs start to tighten up, and in my mind, I thought, you’re going to have a seizure. And I launched myself onto the bed as I screamed for Daniel. And He came in there, and I’m half on the bed and half off season, and he got me to the floor and called the ambulance for me. But again, that could have been very bad. I could have fallen. I could have hit my head on or hit my head on a piece of furniture. Had a head injury from it, so I was really lucky. But even now, even now that I’m on seizure medications, because that happened again.

Carolyn Routh 31:41
I want to be on them now, because I don’t want that to happen again. There’s still that place in my brain that sometimes I’ll still go to, I’ve got a headache. Is this okay? Or or have a weird headache, like my pre stroke headaches were where they actually move. They’re in the back of my head, and the headaches would actually move. And I’ll have those occasionally, and I always tell Daniel, I’ve got this headache. It’s doing something else so that, God forbid if something else happens. He knows, he knows the symptoms that were happening before the incident.

Bill Gasiamis 32:15
Yeah, I have headaches all the time. It’s my I mean, it’s such a conversation. That’s all I bloody talk about, is the headache this, and the headache that, and I’ve been talking about it for years. I think I’m trying to remember when I first started sort of really talking about headaches post stroke, and it’s taken me, probably, I don’t know, maybe four or five years to discover that it was high blood pressure.

Carolyn Routh 32:41
Wow.

Navigating New Battles After Stroke Recovery

Bill Gasiamis 32:42
Yeah, so recently, I got diagnosed with high blood pressure because the headaches were so severe. They were taking so that they were around for so long that I couldn’t do anything. I was, you know, my whole days would go in, you know, thinking if I do this, if I do that, or if I avoid this, or if I don’t go there, or all sorts of things.

Bill Gasiamis 33:03
And became high blood pressure was the issue. Took the meds, and then, as a result of that, the headaches go away. The blood pressure is under control. But when I was being die, when I was going through it for five years, or whatever it was, there would be spikes of high blood pressure.

Bill Gasiamis 33:19
So it wouldn’t last for days. It would last for a few hours, and then it would settle down. It would last for half a day, and then it was settled down for a few days. And I had days in between where everything was fine for a long, long time, and now it’s just ongoing and constant. So now the battle is, how do you you know, Can I do something to improve my blood pressure? But I’m not overweight, I don’t smoke, I don’t drink, you know? I haven’t got any of the risk factors. And it’s like, well, I can’t cut out that stuff to improve my health and well being.

Bill Gasiamis 33:52
So what do I do? What else is there? So now we’re doing a barrage of tests to discover, is it because my blood vessels are closed up. Is it because of some other condition? Is it a liver issue? Is it a kidney issue? What are the issues? So we’re trying to get to the bottom of it, and it’s a bit of a blow to me. Like, I kind of said to my wife, I had a bit of a pity party moment. I said, like, how much more shit Do I have to deal with? What else has to go wrong? You know, like I’m over it. I just want to have a smooth run for a little while.

Bill Gasiamis 34:25
I don’t want to think about another headache. Could it be this? Could it be that? But it is not my journey. Obviously, I don’t get to choose, but I get to take action and respond and be proactive about, how? About how I might be making things worse. So I get to have a opportunity to reflect like, okay, am I I’m not, but if I was, I’d be able to go like, am I smoking? Should I stop that? Am I drinking? Should I stop that? And so on, but, and now it’s like other things, so looking deeper to find more things that might be and all.

Bill Gasiamis 34:59
Also accepting the possibility that maybe it’s just me and my body, and the fact that I am here on the planet where, if it was any other generation of mine, you know, before us, medical help for Brain Hemorrhage wouldn’t have been available in the way that it was for me. So maybe, you know, maybe I’ve dodged one bullet, but in but I have to deal with all the stuff that comes with life, the gift of life after stroke, and that part of that is you have to jump over more hurdles, I don’t know.

Carolyn Routh 35:34
It’s the great mystery of life.

Bill Gasiamis 35:35
It certainly is. And that’s, you know that’s, that was my little philosophical rant. You know that my lovely philosophical rant to try and wrap my head around, because that’s what I find myself doing all the time. And my mum’s favorite question is, how’s your head? And it’s like, it’s good today, Mom, it’s good. Ah, thank God, she always does that. Oh, thank God.

Bill Gasiamis 35:57
And as I we’re on top of it. I’m handling it, I’m taking my meds, and I’m making sure that I’m that I’m not being slack about it, because I’ll tell you what it’s I don’t want to go down that path again. We’ve been there, done that. We just want to move on, right? We want to get on with our lives. Did Did you have a rock bottom moment where things felt like real bad and you didn’t know if you were going to be able to get back to life.

Carolyn Routh 36:25
I don’t think I would call it one rock bottom moment. There were a lot of days, there were, there were a lot of days through that entire time period that I felt like that. You know, am I ever I’ll give you an example, and this is, this is minor compared to everything else, but it was major to me at the time. It’s amazing how many things really aren’t that big of a deal, but when you’re going through that physically and mentally, it becomes a big deal in your mind. So not long after I came home, I had gotten lots of emails and well wishes from a lot of family and friends and some people.

Carolyn Routh 37:04
Just from that I’ve met on the road with the band, and I told my family, don’t answer any of those emails. I want to be the one you know. Don’t delete anything. I want to go through. I want to read every email, and I want to respond. When I came home, I couldn’t sit up for very long. There were no laptops. There was just the desktop computer. And so sporadic times I would feel like sitting up for a while, and I would go, go through these emails, and I would read one and “Oh, it’s so sweet” And I want to respond to it, and I couldn’t type.

Carolyn Routh 37:35
Anyway, I’m a hunt and peck or typing. So I would think, Okay, this is what I want to say, and I’m looking at my fingers very, very meticulously and hitting the letters and the numbers, and I finally get this sentence all the way out, and get my hand working, and I would look back at the screen and there were no spaces in the sentence. And I’ve always told everybody, the space just fell out of my head because there were no spaces in the Senate.

Carolyn Routh 38:00
And I got so frustrated at that, and that was another thing. Am I ever going to be able to put these pieces together? Am I ever going to be able to sit down and write a letter to somebody or type something to somebody, you know, just the normal things that you don’t think about in life. You don’t think about when you want to write something down, you just write it down. There’s, there’s not really a lot of thought process that goes into that, other than composing it in your brain. And I couldn’t do those things the the simplest things in life. I had to struggle with eating.

Carolyn Routh 38:32
I still had to struggle picking up a fork. I could eat with the fork myself, but I still had to think about every movement of my hand and what I was doing. And that was very frustrating, because I had always been very independent, you know, leave me alone. I’m going to go do what I want to, and it’s my life. I’m going to I’m going to go do this, and I couldn’t do that anymore. I had to kind of be chained to my circumstance. Yeah, that was really tough sometimes.

Bill Gasiamis 38:59
You know the no spaces thing? That I get a lot of comments on YouTube with no spaces.

Carolyn Routh 39:06
Yeah, hey, somebody else is dealing with this too.

Bill Gasiamis 39:08
Yeah, they definitely are, because and typing and rewriting and all that kind of stuff becomes a challenge, and it was for me for a short amount of time. But, yeah, it’s very interesting to come across a slab of writing with no spaces whatsoever in between.

Carolyn Routh 39:25
Yeah, that’s how I felt when I looked at my own writing. I wouldn’t let it go out with that. Now I got to go back through and I got to find where the space is supposed to be. Some of those times I would, I would just work on one thing, and then I had to go lay down, because I still had trouble sitting up for long periods of time. Then, because I just, I mean, you know, your hope it has such a great effect on your entire body. You’re just exhausted all the time. At least I was. I had no strength. And I don’t know if that was totally because of the strokes, or if it was just.

Carolyn Routh 39:56
I just been down for so long, and even then, y’all couldn’t get up and. Exercise. There’s a lot of things that I wasn’t able to do. I was walking, but I wasn’t walking very well, and there was just so many components going on that I’m trying to piece together and make work again. So it was very challenging to go through that.

Bill Gasiamis 40:18
Yeah, but absolutely, it doesn’t never stop getting challenging. That’s what’s really interesting. What What have been some of the strengths that you’ve discovered in yourself that that you didn’t know you had?

Carolyn Routh 40:28
I always knew that I was a very determined person, but I think I learned just how hard headed I was just pushing myself. Obviously, Daniel was pushing me a lot, but pushing myself to try to get beyond mentally and physically, and I found I had a lot more strength than I thought I had to be able to do that and get there. And I’m a really emotional person, and I let my mind play a lot of tricks on me, and I don’t smoke or drink either. So it’s not that, you know that I’m doing something that’s causing that. It’s just my brain, and I am a what effort person.

Carolyn Routh 41:10
So my mind gets to going and all that stuff, and I just really have to take a step back and not do that. And a lot of times I’ll go back to the point that I was at when I had my strokes, and think, you know, I feel like I didn’t die then, because I still have a purpose in life. And I try to remind myself of that all the time. You know, you this bad stuff didn’t happen to you, because you’ve still got to be here.

Carolyn Routh 41:36
So that’s a that’s a strength, I think that I’ve found somewhere to go when I’m in one of those emotional moments and I’m strong enough to go there and bring myself out of that place that I’m at that was a big deal for me. That’s still a big deal for me, because I just I get so upset over the least little thing and trying to hide that’s tough too.

Life After Stroke and Band Activities

Bill Gasiamis 41:58
Yeah, that’s important to be able to go somewhere and just stay there uncomfortable and just alright, I have to be here for a little while, and then I’m moving on. I’m not going to stay there forever, but I’m going to experience the feeling and then work it out later. That’s the thing. Being comfortable with being uncomfortable is kind of how I sort of see it, and then going, okay, alright, I may or may not have learnt something from that.

Bill Gasiamis 42:24
I’m moving on now, and we can let it go and then tackle the next thing when it comes when it comes up. So the band I’m looking at the website, NU-BLU.com (nu-blu.com) that’s a good looking band there.

Carolyn Routh 42:41
Thank you. I’m really proud of those guys. They’re just awesome. They’re family, now traveled together so long and experienced so much of life together.

Bill Gasiamis 42:51
So how do you guys go about getting gigs? It seems like also you’ve got a section for free music. You’ve got a, I imagine a paid section like, how does the band work? What in this day and age when the music game is controlled by Spotify and iTunes and people like that? How do you guys create a successful career or a band?

Carolyn Routh 43:16
Touring. We tour very heavily. Daniel does a lot of the booking. Primarily booking that he does is for more bluegrass events, because he’s done that for so many years, and he’s got so many connections in that field. We have a booking agency in LA called Harmony artists, and they do a lot of PACs and fairs and like business conventions and things. And they have really, they, they’ve really come on and sort of taken us into an entirely different circle working than we were at. So that’s that’s a big thing. It’s just touring for income. Streaming, that’s where it’s at.

Carolyn Routh 43:59
Now the sad part? Well, the good part about streaming is more people hear your music, which leads to more people coming to shows, which leads to more ticket sales, more income. However, the challenging thing with streaming is streaming pays very, very little per stream. I mean, it’s like hundreds of a cent or less that you get for each play on most of these streaming platforms.

Carolyn Routh 44:23
So you’re not really, you’re not really making anything off the music, unless you’re one of these huge, mega stars that you know, sell millions and millions and millions of records. When you used to have physical product, we do still have physical product on our table. Hold on a minute. I got somebody calling in. I’m trying to get away from this. We still do have physical product on our table, but we don’t sell as much of that now that’s one of those things that has just kind of fallen by the wayside.

Carolyn Routh 44:52
Daniel always said, when CDs finally went away, it would be when car manufacturers stopped putting CD for. Players in cars, and that’s about what happened, because people would come and they would buy they would come to the table and meet the band and buy a CD, and then they would stick that CD in the player on their way home and listen to the music. And now there aren’t CD players, and a lot of cars and people, people resort to streaming.

Carolyn Routh 45:20
It started with the younger generation, for lack of a better way to put it, but it’s really spread, and most people are going to streaming platforms now to hear their music.

Bill Gasiamis 45:31
Yeah. So what’s really cool is, I’m looking at your upcoming today. What is today the October the 16th, where you are, because it’s October the 17th, where I am, it’s the 16th. So you, you’re playing a gig tomorrow, the next day, six days after that, seven days after that, and so on. And you guys have got shows booked out until February 13, 2026

Carolyn Routh 45:57
Yeah, and that’s a light schedule right now. They’ll still please to fill in on that. They’ll they’ll still be more shows to to fill in on that schedule. So and I, I never know when something’s going to show up that he’s booked. I don’t. I always tell everybody that my job in the band is to be on the bus at the right time. Know when to get off and play a show and then get back on the bus again. He does all the routing and all that fun stuff so that I don’t have to worry about it. Yeah, good partnership like that.

Bill Gasiamis 46:28
How much time do you guys spend away at any one time? What was the maximum amount of time?

Carolyn Routh 46:33
When we first started back in 2003 we actually went full time in 2011 we we quit our day job, so to speak, and went full time in 2011 and when we did that, we would make seven week runs at the time. We go out for seven weeks, we’d come home for three or four days, and we were right back out again for five, six or seven weeks. So it was a very, very grueling schedule. We spent, we live on the east coast, in North Carolina, we spent more time on the West Coast, in California and Washington and Nevada and all those states than we did on the East Coast those first three or four years.

Carolyn Routh 47:10
Again, very grueling schedule. Now that we’ve been at it for a while, we finally come to a point that the most we ever go out at a time is usually two weeks or less, and then we come back home, we’re home a week or so with just, you know, weekend stuff. And then we’re we’re out on the weekends, but we’re not out on these really long trips like we were before. We average about two 200 – 250 days a year on the road, give or take.

Bill Gasiamis 47:39
Wow.

Carolyn Routh 47:40
Yeah. We travel in a bus, though. So it’s my home away from home, and that makes it a lot easier. I don’t think I could do it, having to fly and hotel hop. I just don’t like airplanes. I hate to fly. I’m not very fond of Heathrow is a big Air Force. There’s a lot to navigate, especially when it’s international.

Bill Gasiamis 48:04
You guys are amazing. So life after stroke is pretty full on for you.

Carolyn Routh 48:09
It is, and I that’s really a good thing, because it does keep my mind occupied with positive things, because I love to go play. I absolutely love what I do. I don’t think there’s a lot of people in this world that get to do what they love for a living and just just be out and go and do and I love the travel. I’ve got to see so many things, so many things that I never thought I would get to see in this country. And I was in Paris two years ago, and I never thought in my life I would stand under the Eiffel Tower.

Carolyn Routh 48:41
So, that was a real rush. We saw Stonehenge. We actually were driving around London the day of the Queen’s funeral. So that was, we talked about going to it, and I just, I could not get there’s crowds. I absolutely could not so, but it was, it was pretty neat to know that that was going on and we were right there.

Unknown Speaker 49:00
Well, yeah, what’s the deal with crowds? Just overwhelming.

Carolyn Routh 49:04
The time that it takes to get in and get out, and just so much chaos. And I knew that that was going to be chaos and standing that long. And I love people. I love being around people, but when people are shoved in like sardines, I get really uncomfortable. I always tell everybody I don’t mind crowds. I just love them more when they’re in front of my stage than if I’m in them. That’s all it is.

Carolyn Routh 49:33
It’s just a discomfort for me, just being packed in so tight for so long. And, you know, covid came along and it was the six foot rule. And I’m like, you know, I don’t mind this so much. I still have my space, but I can see people. I can talk to people.

Bill Gasiamis 49:48
That worked well for you. What sort of crowd sizes attend the shows?

Carolyn Routh 49:53
It varies depending on where we’re at. I would say average for most like theaters. Or something like that. We play a lot of 300 – 400 seat theaters. They’re not huge, but they’re really nice size. You know, sometimes there might be 100 people in the audience, sometimes there might be 300 people in the audience. We’ve played venues that there’s like, eight to 10,000 people at some outside venues. So there’s a really broad range. And we also occasionally do house concerts where you might have 20 people in the room or 30 people.

Carolyn Routh 50:27
And believe it or not, those are a lot of fun because it gives you a chance to get more personal with people and connect. And I like that. I like doing some of the small stuff too, and being able to make new friends and actually get to know people a little bit.

Bill Gasiamis 50:42
Some of my most favorite things that I’ve attended were small, intimate, whether they were musical shows or theaters or whatever they were and plays. And it’s because you get to really feel like you’re part of the action. And then you get to meet your you know your hero, and you ask them questions, and they answer your question. And it’s really fun. I love it. We did. We had an opportunity to go and watch a theater in Melbourne quite a few years ago, which was about the famous Greek American opera singer Maria Callas, who lived in the 50s, 60s and 70s, and kind of.

Bill Gasiamis 51:23
She even married Aristotle Onassis, who was Jackie Kennedy Onassis husband. So, like, it was a she was a big deal. She was the biggest opera singer in the world. Anyway, the play about her was done in Melbourne, and we went along and saw her, and the actress that played her was just phenomenal, like it just felt like she had embodied this person. And we were sitting in the front row of this theater, which maybe held, I think it might have held maybe 200 – 300 people.

Bill Gasiamis 51:53
And what was and is, if the show and her performance and the performance of all the other actors wasn’t amazing enough. There’s a part in the in the presentation, where she picks a few people out of the crowd and interacts with them, as if it’s part of, you know, a live teaching so, so the way it was set up, she was pretending to be the show is about her teaching some students how to be artists, opera singers, etcetera. And it was done like as if you were at a university and then you were in the audience.

Bill Gasiamis 52:30
But you were a student listening and learning from her presentation, that kind of thing. And then she picks me out, and she points at me. She goes, you seem to have a laugh on your face all the time, and somehow she made that part of the show. And what a treat that was. It was such a, you know, it takes, and I’ve been to heaps of shows, but that one is even more special, you know, because you become part of it.

Bill Gasiamis 52:54
You interact with the audience, and it’s just brilliant. So I know what you mean about those home shows? I couldn’t imagine anything better than having my favorite band in my backyard. That wouldn’t be anything better than that, even if I and if I could do it without anyone else, then I just had them to myself. That would be amazing.

Carolyn Routh 53:16
You can make that happen. If you have enough money, they’ll come.

Bill Gasiamis 53:18
Well, one of my favorite bands is ACDC, so they probably won’t need to, but they are touring in Melbourne in about a month, and I’ll be going to see them for about the sixth or seventh time.

Carolyn Routh 53:29
That’s awesome. My son, we were on the road somewhere, and I get this phone call from my oldest son, and all I hear is this really loud music, and I’m like where are you at? He said, ACDC, I’m going to kill you. I didn’t get invited.

Carolyn Routh 53:46
Axel Rose was singing with him. We got a big treat there, getting to see Axl Rose along as ACDC.

Bill Gasiamis 53:54
Wow. Okay, yeah, so I think this is probably going to be one of their last tours. Angus Young is just like an old man. Now, Brian Johnson’s struggling with other challenges. So if they pull it off, I mean, it’s going to be amazing, and maybe the last time. So we’re, I’m sure it’ll be great. Ah, it’ll be sensational. I first time I saw them, I was a teenager, and it was for the money talks to her. I had never seen anything like it. I just, I was just blown away. I couldn’t believe that I was there. And then that particular album cover had a fake American dollar with Angus on the in the middle.

Advice for Stroke Survivors

Bill Gasiamis 54:32
They threw them down from the top of the ceiling, and everyone was running around to pick up the Angus money. And it was sensation. I still got a couple of those in my album cover. Now, maybe it doesn’t matter. I’m not getting it, rid of it. I’m keeping it right. So, yeah, fantastic. I love it. I love it that you are able to perform and do the tour and be on the road as much as you can, and you’ll live. And you know, you’re living your life, and I love that it probably is more meaningful for you now than post stroke. I have a sense, it is.

Carolyn Routh 55:09
It absolutely is, because there’s, there’s things that I didn’t think I’d ever get to do, especially after the strokes. You know, who would have thought, who thought that I would be able to go to Europe and just travel all over this country, go to Mexico, you know, the Bahamas, just all those fun things that I get to do on a regular basis. Now, just a bonus, right? Absolutely, absolutely.

Carolyn Routh 55:34
The Grand Canyon, that’s probably my favorite place of any place I’ve ever been. I’ve been there multiple, multiple times, and standing on the rim of the Grand Canyon and looking out across it. No movie, no photograph, does that justice. It’s a totally it’s the Grand Canyon. Isn’t just a view, it’s a feeling. It’s a feeling that kind of reminds you just how small.

Bill Gasiamis 56:00
Yeah, and how insignificant you are and what and how it’s necessary to just tell your head to be quiet and forget the stories and just move on. Absolutely, yeah, if you if there’s something that you could share with people who are listening or newly diagnosed that may have come across this about your journey with stroke, what would you like to say to them? What would you share?

Carolyn Routh 56:22
Try as much as you can to stay positive, and that’s that’s a big thing to say, because the negativity will eat you alive from the inside, and that’s just going to add more difficulty to everything you’re going through. Something I like to tell people is, find your happy. And some days, that’s a lot harder than others. But if you look forward, if you’ll just find one little thing every day, just one positive thing. It doesn’t have to be major. Just one positive thing, it will help you through the rest of your day. Inevitably, that one small thing can help you through the rest of your day.

Carolyn Routh 57:01
So find your happy life is too short. I used to be horrible. When something would go wrong, I would say, I hate my life. Hate my life. This happened, and I hate my life. And then I had my strokes, and I figured out, I don’t hate my life. I love my life. I’m thankful every moment to still be here. And since then, I never say I hate my life. I haven’t said it since then. I will never say it again. I might hate the circumstance that I’m in at the moment. You know, I might hate something that’s happened, or I might hate a bite of food that I just ate. But I never say I hate my life.

Carolyn Routh 57:40
I think that’s very important, and the finding you’re happy is very important. If you just remember those two things, just put one foot in front of the other figuratively, and just push on to the next thing. Just keep pushing on. Don’t give up. Don’t feel like you’re at your end and there’s nothing left, because there is something left. It may not be what you expected it to be, but there’s something else out there.

Bill Gasiamis 58:07
You know, that allocating a word like hate to your life because of a moment, it’s such a trap that we find ourselves in. So that whole because that moment was shitty, you know, my life is shitty, and we don’t realize, I think most of the time, we don’t realize that we’ve done that. And to be able to have the distinction to go that moment was shitty, or that food was shitty, or that person was shitty, not all people are shitty, or not all experience are shitty. That’s it lifts a massive burden off your shoulders.

Bill Gasiamis 58:37
It actually is more accurate as well, because moments are shitty, but all the moments in between, they don’t have to be sort of wrapped in the same attitude that you had to the moment before, even 24 hours ago or 48 hours ago, or whatever. So that’s a really great distinction, I think, like people in recovery might have a lot of shitty moments, but pay attention on the moments in between that are not shitty, and do not tar them with the same brush, because then it films feels overwhelming, and that’s one way you can improve your mood.

Bill Gasiamis 59:14
Really simply, is just by being specific with what’s happening right now, rather than generalizing Yes. Carolyn, thank you so much for joining me. I thoroughly enjoyed our conversation. I really appreciate you reaching out. It’s great to hear your story, and I’m going to see if I can get some of your music, I think.

Carolyn Routh 59:35
Okay, great. Do you need me to send you any links? Because I can do that.

Bill Gasiamis 59:39
Well, why don’t we have a discussion about that right now? If someone went to get some of your music, where’s the best place for them to get it, where you guys get a little bit of the revenue, and it doesn’t go to the streaming services.

Carolyn Routh 59:56
Pretty much everything, pretty much everything right now is streaming, unless you want. You order a CD and order that from our website, new blue com, n, u, dash, b, l, u.com, so you can still order physical product directly from us. That’s where we get the biggest bang for the buck. But you know, if you’re going to listen to streaming Spotify, Pandora, Apple Music, I’m sure those others, those are the big three for me personally that I’ve got on my phone.

Carolyn Routh 1:00:24
But I know there’s a lot of other streaming services. Everybody’s got their favorite platform. So, you know, just go there, and even if it’s just a 100th of a cent, I want you to listen to the music. I want you to enjoy it. I hope you love every minute of it and pass it along to all your friends.

Bill Gasiamis 1:00:41
Yeah, do you guys ship internationally?

Carolyn Routh 1:00:43
Yes, we’ll ship internationally.

Bill Gasiamis 1:00:45
Wow. Okay, so the CDs start from 9.99, which is a mega deal, like, that’s a sensational and there’s, at least there’s six albums, and then there’s the way you’ve been vinyl and the way you’ve been CD. So there’s seven albums, and one of them is a vinyl.

Carolyn Routh 1:01:03
Yes, it is. That’s the first time we’ve pressed vinyl. That’s kind of exciting to us. You’re growing up. That’s all I listen to my ACDC. Vinyls are right over there. So vinyl was a big thing, even when it scratched. You get so mad that your your favorite vinyl scratch. So when we decided to press vinyls. It was so exciting. I remember we got in. They send you the test pressings that don’t have any of the artwork, just to approve them. And we got in the five test pressings.

Carolyn Routh 1:01:29
We had to buy a turntable. We didn’t even have one. And my husband went and got a turntable and put it on. And he was like a school girl. He was so giddy. There’s just something different about a vinyl, and hold it in your hand and to realize that, hey, we have a vinyl of us.

Bill Gasiamis 1:01:45
It’s tactile. You get to see it spinning, you know, you put the little needle on. It’s not like a CD where it goes into a little box and it disappears and you don’t really see it. It’s tactile. You know, you have to touch it a lot. You have to be careful with it, you know, you have to position the needle, you have to close the lid on the turntable. There’s so much to it. It’s brilliant and and then you get that, you know, crackly sound that the vinyl makes just before the track starts.

Carolyn Routh 1:02:11
There’s a lot more tone in vinyl. A lot of people catch that, but that whole process, it’s just different. It’s just old school. It. It it brings back a past era of when that was the thing, and everybody was so excited to go down to the local record shop and buy a record. So I think I like the where things are now. I like music being so readily available and people can listen to it, but I kind of miss those days of going to the store and buying a record.

Bill Gasiamis 1:02:42
Clicking through all the album covers and just going one at a time until you find something that you looks interesting. So for anyone watching and listening, go to NU-BLU (nu-blu.com) and go to the store, where you’ll be able to see those CDs and get them, and get one or two.

Carolyn Routh 1:03:04
And we’ve got, we got new music coming out. We’re working on a new CD right now, so it would be great. You want to listen to it. Go on to Spotify Pandora, any of the streaming platforms, Apple Music, and go ahead and like, join our page there, and that way, when the new music comes out, you’ll be one of the first to hear it.

Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:21
Fantastic. Of course, we’ll have all the links in the show notes, so people can go there and find them and follow you guys on socials. Thanks so much for joining me. It is an absolute pleasure to have you on the show.

Carolyn Routh 1:03:31
Nice meeting you. Enjoy talking to you, whole lot.

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:33
That was Carolyn J. Routh, sharing her powerful story of fear, faith and determination after stroke, a huge thank you again to Banksia tech for helping make this episode possible. Their ongoing support and the hands and rehab glove by Cerebro keeps hope and progress within reach for stroke survivors everywhere. If Carolyn’s story spoke to you, remember, recovery isn’t about being fearless, it’s about moving forward despite the fear.

Bill Gasiamis 1:03:59
You can find my book, The Unexpected Way That A Stroke Became The Best Thing That Happened, at recoveryafterstroke.com. And to support the show, you can go and join our Patreon at patreon.com/recoveryafterstroke. Thanks so much.

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