Part 2 – The Whirlwind Year

The Whirlwind Year

Looking back I often call the first year of my rebuilding journey the whirlwind year. All the ups and downs, figuring my medications, canceling plans over and over again because I didn’t feel well, lots of doctor visits, and back again a couple times to the E.R. at the hospital. It was a chaotic year.

The next trip to the hospital happened about a month after my stroke. I had a headache that wouldn’t quit. After a couple days of this, I decided to have it checked out. At the ER the doctor came in. He was the same doctor that was there when I had the stroke. He looks at me and he stops. “I remember you” he said, “Man, you are looking good”. 

The last time he saw me, I was paralyzed, incontinent, unconscious, and was carted off to surgery. I wonder what he expected to see?  And I realized what had happened, or maybe better, didn’t happen, caused the doctor to comment how good I looked. 

I would see people who had a stroke in wheelchairs at the rehab hospital with their caregivers carting them to appointments, people who didn’t talk or walk, or even hold their heads steady. It was brutally hard to see. I knew someone at church too had a stroke, went to the hospital and he never woke up. How did I survive, when others didn’t? I had a pretty good dose of survival guilt, and it gave me some perspective into what happened. 

Bad Things that Could’ve Happened

There were a lot of bad things that could’ve happened but didn’t. If I had gone to the bathroom that was attached to our bedroom. I wouldn’t have switched the light on, I wouldn’t have known my left eye was blind. I would have just gone back to bed. The bad part of my stroke would’ve happened in my house while my wife slept. If my stroke happened when I was at camp. Geez, with no one around, someone would’ve found me dead maybe a day later.  The ambulance company that services this area generally parked in the parking lot at the church next to our house while they were waiting for a call. It took two minutes until the ambulance arrived and maybe ten minutes after the call, I was at the hospital. All that to say, I think I dodged a bullet. 

In the first few weeks as my friends dropped by to see me, not knowing what to expect, there was a sense of relief. And “you’re looking good” was often the greeting. I am thankful that what happened wasn’t worse and wasn’t visible. And I’m not complaining, but what happened inside me was still traumatic.

My Heart is Alive

Those first few months a lot was going on, my mind was working non-stop trying to connect the dots. Trying to connect everything that was broken. Along with that, my heart was alive, alive with hope and peace. I’m not talking about my physical heart, thankfully that was doing well as well.  What I’m talking about is that thing that defines who I am, my spirit, my soul, my heart. Yep, my heart. Man, a lot was going on in my heart.

I realized, early on, that I had something to say. But I just couldn’t say it. The words weren’t there. I mean, I could talk a little bit, but talking about something substantial, I couldn’t do it. And my writing was worse. I couldn’t write at all. Although I had something to say, for almost a year it stayed locked in my mind. I couldn’t express what was happening in my heart.

But my brain was still working non-stop. And things were slowly starting to rebuild.  

Welcome to Aphasia

When I was released from the hospital to go home, I didn’t know if I was stable enough on my feet to actually walk without help.  My wife had gotten me a walker and a shower chair. But after a day at home I realized my balance was good, I could walk fine, I could shower without sitting and I could dress myself easily.

At the same time, my two kids, Bryan and Holly, gave me an Ipad with some therapy apps. The first one was about name recognition with pictures of common things. An airplane, a toaster, etc. The first picture that came up was of an elephant. How easy is that, I thought. But all that came from my mouth was, uh, uh, uh. That day I realized, although I knew what an elephant was, I couldn’t name it. The word elephant didn’t appear in my brain, it was gone. The picture after that caused the same response. Then the one after that. I realized all the words were gone.  Welcome to aphasia. 

When I went to outpatient therapy, I went to physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy. During that time, they okayed me to drive, they realized my balance was good, and my one good eye worked well. The OT and PT ended pretty quickly. But the speech therapy continued on for a year. Most of my therapy dealt with my language woes. Speaking, reading, and writing. 

When the therapy actually ended, I was working on writing, trying to make sentences with a verb and a noun. It was grueling. All of all the therapy I did, this was the worst. I hated working on it. But I realized I could do it on my own, so I did. I kept working on it. I worked on it even after my therapy ended.

Support Group Goal Setting 

In the last session of speech therapy, my therapist Kandi referred me to a program at a local college for people who had brain injuries. And I enrolled with the program for another year of therapy, not face to face with a speech therapist but working on a computer for different things like memory and executive function. Part of the program was a support group. And some of what they did was to encourage us to set goals. I remember we were setting goals for the winter quarter. I said my goal is to plant a tree in my yard, a pretty lame goal, and then for some reason, I added, and I’m going to start a blog. A pretty robust goal for a man who doesn’t write. 

Well, the ups and downs of that first year started to level out some. I survived my stroke, I survived this year. The whirlwind year had passed. The next year of my recovery became the blog year.         

Tomorrow, the rebuilding journey takes off. Maybe, slowly takes off?