[Note: This segment is a two-part (maybe three?) story because it stretches over a year. The second part will appear next week, God willing.]
By thirty-one, I'd realized that I had made a huge mistake when I married at twenty-five but I was determined to make my marriage work because having watched my parents' nasty breakup, I truly didn't want to go through that ordeal.
I was a full-time wife and mother of my beautiful son and daughter, ages four and two respectively, and I mostly liked my job and was never bored. I played tennis twice a week and bridge once a month and belonged to several women's groups -- not the kind that liberated us; the kind that got us out of the house -- and served on their boards. I had no time to watch soap operas -- I was busy entertaining, raising kids, sewing clothes for my daughter and myself, volunteering in the community, assisting at my children's co-op nursery school, and assorted other things.
I had started getting nasty headaches just before Christmas and mostly ignored them. I didn't go to the doctor because he'd just tell me that the kids were driving me nuts and write me a scrip for tranqs despite that I have never been one to get headaches -- not even the fake ones to avoid sex. LOL!
One morning in late January, I awakened with the headache from hell and almost called my friend Betty to tell her not to come over for lunch with her little guy, Gregg, but decided that maybe company would help and took a pill and kept taking them, unknowingly, throughout the day -- another instance of uncharacteristic behavior as I rarely take pills for pain. Those of us who knew Betty usually referred to her as "the late Betty W." because of her grievous lack of punctuality. That day was no exception except that I kept calling her and asking her to get moving. I usually just blew her tardiness off and put lunch in the oven until she finally arrived.
We ate lunch, sent the kids to play in the family room and settled down to work on a crafts project with which Betty was having a problem. Through this, my headache was getting worse, and while tearing out the part she had messed up, I became nearly blind and told her I wanted to go upstairs and lie down for a bit. It didn't help and only got worse so I called Betty upstairs. She took one look at me and called the paramedics who whisked me to the ER.
They misdiagnosed me, at first, as an overdose -- never mind that I couldn't hold a pen to sign the admitting papers -- and put me in the psych ward. My husband came up later and saw that there was something terribly wrong and went screaming to the nurse's station and kept screaming until some one listened and I was rushed to the Intensive Care Unit. Several hours later, the doctor came to the ICU waiting room and told him that I had suffered a massive stroke that affected the entire left side of my body and that if I lived through the next twenty-four hours, I would be in a wheel chair the rest of my life.
I spent five days in ICU and barely remember the first three days. The fourth day I was reasonably lucid and communicating with the doctors, who seemed to be legion in number, and nurses and I knew what had happened to me. I had no idea what the ramifications of a stroke was and thought it was going to be like my neck fractures and I'd go through therapy and be well.
When my handsome, Venezuelan, neurosurgeon came in he introduced himself as I guess he had on previous days with little or no response.
Doctor: Good morning. I am your neurosurgeon, Dr. Gonzalez.
Kay: Gonzalez? Como esta?
He freaked and we talked a bit more in espanol about how I knew espanol. For the rest of my stay he gave me the weather report in Spanish every morning.
My beloved Dr. Wilkins, our family doctor, came in and said that the legion pretty much thought there wasn't much hope for me but he had decided that I was ready to be moved to the neurological floor and have the entire Rehab team turned loose upon me and see what would happen.
Meanwhile back at the ranch, the troops, my friends and family, were doing their mightiest to help and give support. My kids’ favorite babysitter, Rhonda, was out of work and was happy to take care of the Dynamic Duo and my in-laws paid for her services as my handicapped mother-in-law wasn't up to wrangling two toddlers on a daily basis. Still, she stopped by often and took them to lunch or shopping. Girlfriends dropped off supper, came to clean (yikes!), and made sure the little ones got to nursery school.
Even my mom kept her mouth shut and came and got the kids every Saturday so my husband could go to the grocery, etc. I think my brother, who was about sixteen, at the time helped a lot, too, as he delighted in his niece and nephew.
Back at the hospital, I was still very weak, had a limited attention span and tired easily. Friends were totally disconcerted when they called that the original yakker would say, after two or three minutes, "I'm tired and I'm going to hang up." and I would. I needed help with everything I did. You see, I was left-handed so everything I knew had to be re-learned with my right hand. I've never been a huge TV person in the first place and I couldn't even stand to watch it so I was really bored. The inveterate reader couldn't read. The compulsive scribbler couldn't write. Eating was a huge challenge -- especially the lo-fat, no salt, lo-cholesterol crap they fed me. This for the girl who thinks the four basic food groups are salt, grease, ketchup and beer. (Chocolate isn't a food group -- it's a deity.)
My husband told my friends to wait a few weeks before they visited because I wasn't ready for company yet. He was right. After a couple weeks, some of the therapy -- physical, occupational, etc. -- was kicking in and my husband started bringing the kids to visit on Sunday afternoon. I was thrilled! He surprised me by making sure that they were all dolled up so I could show them off to the nurses and the friends I'd begun making on the floor. The mental image of him putting tights and mary janes on a two-year-old still gives me a smile. Eric was delighted to see me and was full of questions. It became obvious that Kate wasn't happy with me and that hurt but I understood that she thought I had abandoned her. Eventually she seemed to understand that I hadn't and delighted in playing with the control on my electronic bed and trying to turn me into a pretzel. I didn't care -- I was just happy to have them there.
As I started making progress I spent more and more time in the rehab unit with the therapists. The sweet occupational therapist, Jane, started looking for crafts I could do one-handed because of how bored I was. My dear Buffy, the physical therapist, kept trying and trying to get my left leg and arm moving and was frustrated that my arm wasn't responding as well as my leg was. I actually was making amazing progress considering the prognosis of the neurosurgeon and neurologists. I reached a point where I could walk a few steps with help. I think my tennis playing helped a lot with that. Most of the time I had to keep my left arm in a sling or propped up on a pillow to avoid a shoulder separation.
In between all the therapy, the neuro docs continued looking for a cause for the stroke and kept sending me for tests to look for a blood clot. I had EEG after EEG and countless EKGs as well as the one I hated most: the angiogram where they put needles in my throat and shot dye into my brain and made me feel like my face was melting and set me screaming despite anesthetic.
The rehabilitation doc decided that I needed to have a brace on my left leg over Buffy’s protests. I was appalled when my husband brought the truly ugly brown oxfords to which it would be attached. At that moment, I added a new brick in my philosophical wall: Life is too short to wear ugly shoes. And my goal became to lose that brace pronto!
I had been there about eight weeks, when they decided I could go home. I graduated to a cane and Buffy made sure I could manage stairs. Jane the OT armed me with a few gadgets to help me with some chores. Cyndi, the rehab nurse brought me a stack of literature with helpful hints and resources.
The docs ordered that I had to come back for therapy three times a week and I had to practically carve my name on blood that I wouldn't be alone with the children so we kept Rhonda on until I could manage without assistance. All my legion of docs came by with caveats and admonitions for my homecoming.
Dr. G. stopped by and told me to come back in a month for another angiogram. I looked him straight in the eye and said, "Look, you guys have given me test after test and haven't found the damned clot. Either it isn't there or it's somewhere where you can't get at it. I am NOT having another angiogram! I'm just gonna bop 'til I drop!" I meant it. He gave me the order anyway but I never went back for that test and thirty years later I am still here.
The next day I went home, to my children's delight, and my husband broke the rule of not leaving me alone with them by running over to Burger Death and bringing home Whoppers and fries!!!!! Sheer heaven!!!! You don't get junk food in the hospital. Sigh. Giggle.
I'll be back with what Paul Harvey calls "The Rest of the Story . . ." next week.
Happy Blogging!!!!!!!!!
Kay
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