Life as a Stroke Survivor
Life as a stroke survivor is neither fun nor comfortable. However, I suspect it would have been worse if I had had the stroke and not survived.
What you are about to read is true. However, little of it is nice, nor pretty.
What does being a stroke survivor mean?
I had a minor stroke Labor Day weekend of 2018. It changed my life. Being a stroke survivor means becoming friends with pain. It means not driving, and being dependent on someone else to go anywhere or do anything. It means having my husband dress me like a Barbie doll. It means scatological matters are always at the forefront of my brain. It means your brain going to half-power. It means naming your canes. It means having more than one cane.
Pain is my new normal.
Pain and I are friends. The stroke itself did not hurt. I slept through it, and woke up to the effects: slurred speech, droopy mouth, unable to walk. I didn’t believe my husband at first when he announced I’d had a stroke. However, I can’t a remember an instance in the past 14 months when my left arm didn’t hurt. Pain is my new normal.
Lack of independence
I haven’t driven since the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, last year. I can’t go to the grocery store by myself. I can’t go to the library or the drugstore on an impulse, I have to wait until it’s convenient for someone to take me. I think I mind the dependence more than I do the pain.
My therapists
I am lucky to have the best therapists in the state of Tennessee. Shortly after I was released from the hospital, I started going to therapy. Physical therapy to relearn how to walk, speech therapy to learn to speak intelligibly (also cognitive therapy), and occupational therapy to relearn how to manage daily life. Those three therapies were automatic. They didn’t have emotional or mental therapy, which I think should have been offered. God bless the ladies in the basement of Methodist North Hospital!
Getting dressed
My occupational therapist taught me how to put on a bra and how to put on a shirt, so I could get dressed all by myself. Bras are fastened and then put on as though they were sports bras. For shirts, put the arm of the weak arm through the sleeve up to the elbow, then pull the shirt on the rest of the way.
Scatology — this section isn’t pretty
When you’re a stroke survivor, what little brain functions you have are focused on scatological matters. By the time you realize you need to go to the bathroom, you should already be halfway there. I lost track of how many times I soiled myself. When I first got home from the hospital, it took three people to get me to the bathroom, and if it wasn’t convenient for the other two people, I had to just lie in bed and fill my diaper. My son on one side, my husband on the other side, we did the “zombie shuffle” to get me into the bathroom. Once I reached the toilet, I was able to handle matters from there. I was able to change my own diaper.
Lack of focus, hindered thought, poor concentration and worse memory
You know how they said Shakespeare had small Latin and less Greek? (A year ago I could have told you who said that and given the exact quote. Now I’m lucky I can remember who Bill Shakespeare was.) Well, as a stroke survivor, I have small focus and less concentration. I couldn’t follow the plot of a TV show, let alone a movie for months. I could only read short pieces: anecdotes on NotAlwaysRight.com, fanfic on AO3 or FanFiction.net (preferably stories I’d read before). Reading a novel was impossible. Even now, 14 months later, it’s taken me days to read 2/3 of a book that I would have finished in hours before the stroke. I still remember things like George Washington was the first president and how to sing the Preamble to the Constitution, but I have trouble remembering more recent things. My fiction writing (never great to begin with) is worse; I find it exceedingly difficult to focus on a plot. I’ve only published two stories since my stroke. One was written before the stroke and the other was partially written before, and just edited after the stroke. To this day I don’t remember the ambulance ride, and given how much they’re charging for a twenty minute ride ($1,000!)you’d expect it to be more memorable.
Canes
Many stroke survivors decorate their canes. I’ve not done that, but I did accidentally name my quad-cane and then deliberately named my single-point cane. Once when I was getting out of bed and reaching for my quad-cane, it fell. Without thinking, I scolded it: “Kwai Chang, you know better than that.” My husband laughed. Kwai Chang Caine was the Shao-lin monk in Kung Fu: the Legend Continues, the grandson of the character of the same name in the ’70s western King Fu (played by the same actor). When I moved up to a single point cane, my husband suggested naming this one Peter, after Kwai Chang’s son the police detective. Never a fan of CSI: Miami, so Horatio wasn’t practical. Never a peppermint fan, so that let out Candy Cane.
Query
I’ve had several friends suggest I write about life as a stroke survivor. I didn’t think me complaining and whining (whinging as the British say) would interest anyone, especially since I couldn’t describe it honestly without describing the scatological aspects, which no one would want to read. That’s why I did subtitles to make it easier to skip the yucky parts. If you would like to hear more about rehabilitation therapy, clap or comment. My goal is to write 2–3 Medium posts every week. If this topic would interest you, let me know.
