OMG…
I’M DOING THIS!
I have wonderful friends. One of them is Bonnie, who encouraged me to start here. Never blogged before in my life, and all my genius friends do.
Learning Medium is my start… May 1, 2007 was the start of a life change that was a total reversal …a seven minute ambulance ride into seven more years of frustration and self-recrimination.
Firstly, going back almost seven years is tough for me. So much has happened since, but it’s my road, rocky as it is. Who’d ever expect a passionate lovemaking session almost kill? That the stroke it caused paralyze half your body? That life would change permanently?
I had to relearn how to see, to think, to walk, to speak. Four days of coma, another 2 weeks in intensive care. Doing the most basic things were hugely frustrating. Oh God, the catheter! Then eighteen days of constipation until they gave me something for it! Lying on my side to let’er rip! The poor nurse had to clean it up. I quickly learned how to get out of bed …then hang onto a pole while another cleaned me up after. It felt like a promotion when I was allowed to toilet myself after a month.
And then the Occupational Therapy. That’s when I had to copy squares on a piece of paper, and play really stupid games. I was still crashing into walls and doorways I couldn’t see. I’m sure I was hard on the therapists but they forbade me to walk or use stairs to get my strength back when all I wanted to do was recover… had I known what was ahead I would have told them to go to Hell and exercise until I got everything back… those Golden Days went by quickly and by the time I realized I was on my own with my recovery the time and effort needed to get better increased exponentially.
They wouldn’t let me exercise on my own. They wouldn’t let me have more than 20 minutes of physio twice a week while my ass was parked in a $1400/day hospital bed. I imagine my time in Intensive Care was far more expensive than that.
The woman I loved left me….wouldn’t take me back home. I was scared out of my wits…she was too. She cared for her mother while she died of cancer and she had no intention of watching me decline either. How the hell could she know I’d recover more?
I remember my first home visit. It was pretty clear I was on my way out the door. Knowing she was banging the neighbour was hard on me…it was some solace his wife threw him out but their girls had to suffer too.
Stroke recovery is an unforgiving process.The answer from my body is continually NO. My left arm is literally falling out of my shoulder socket. Our shortsighted government’s attitude is SAD…they aren’t interested in funding stroke research or facilities stroke survivors or disabled can use. Now I’m walking I’ll hit the gym and work on my arm/shoulder more.
