Week 3 Report: Stroke-A-Versary

Before anything else, THANK YOU to all of you who’ve said a prayer, sent up a thought, done a meditation or walk, hoped a hope, or lit a candle for my healing. I’m strengthened and encouraged by you. Thanks. It helps me tremendously. Folks have sent me photos of candles they’ve lit for me in Scotland, in Germany, in Norway, and all over Quebec and Canada.

Oddly, even though my prestroke agenda has emptied, my days are full. The ingredients of those days are basic, and familiar to anyone who’s been stuck in hospital for an extended period: did I have a bowel movement ? (which sometimes means: was there a staff person around when the urge hit?), am I standing enough to take pressure off my derriere and keep myself healthy? Did I do my hand movement visualization exercises? Did the nurse forget to move my table back after taking my vitals, necessitating a 10-minute-carefully-planned maneuver to recover it, along with the call bell? Can I get a bowl with warm water to wash up, or will breakfast arrive early, which will mean no space for the tray on my table and the impossibility of fetching my food off the chair later? When did I last change socks? When is shift change, which will eliminate help for a half-hour? If I forget to charge my earbuds, how will I be able to sleep when the man with dementia across the hall breaks free from his two security accomplices and roams the hall cursing in the night?

It sounds worse than it is. For every aid who empties the urinal then slouches out of the room leaving it 20 feet from the bed, there is another whose warm greeting is sunshine, and who out of the blue offers to wheel me to the patio for some sun or to change the water in the flowers. Or the nurse who said to us “you mean you haven’t seen your test results? They’re your property…let me fetch them so you can take a photo or scan them!”

Speaking of tests, mid-week I was taken by ambulance the 2 hrs to Halifax for a TEE test of my heart. It turned out to be positive: I have a “communication” (a hole) between the upper chambers. Apparently this is more common than most people know and affects about a fifth of the population. The problem is that it can allow clots to pass from the legs directly to the brain. When I asked the ward doctor what this meant in terms of next steps, he didn’t know.

To this point I’ve been sheltered from many of the ill effects of institutional care by Sara, who has been both cheerful caregiver and steely-eyed advocate for me all along. Unfortunately she was brought low this last week by a terrific cold none of us wants me or other patients to catch.

The good news is that this last week also brought improvements for me that have helped that situation. When I’m not tired, my facial droop almost disappears. Mid-week the physios declared me able to transfer from bed to chair and back again by myself. I don’t really need spotting even to the toilet anymore with my walker, so I expect that requirement will be lifted soon as well. The doctors have written me “passes” that mean, as soon as Sara recovers, that she could take me out of hospital for short periods – although neither of us wants me to miss any physio. Yesterday and today I walked twice the full length of two wings of the ward to the small chapel, where I could look out at the changing leaves. Once I got out myself to the small third floor patio and just enjoyed the sun on my face a long while. I’ve learned to move my body so that I can sit up myself on the edge of the bed and can now give myself a sponge bath. The nurse couldn’t believe I can put my own socks on. Not pretty, but do-able.

(video below of walking)

My left leg has moved from being unresponsive to generally going roughly where I want it to, which is fantastic. It’s draggy, but coming along. Arms and hands recover more slowly, they say, and I’m no exception. But there have been changes: I can now put a bit of limited weight on my elbow and arm, I can make a reasonably tight fist now, curl my bicep and curl my fingers with much less concentration than before. I lifted my index finger once. I can curl my fingers around the margarine and use my other hand to pocket it into my left thumb to help spread it.

My brain seems to have forgotten where to send the “move” messages to my left hand. Lori, my cheerful and steadfast OT, has taken to tapping the muscles which need to work with her finger…this helps my brain know what to focus on and works surprisingly well. My triceps were hardly my strong suite even before the stroke…I search my mind in vain for them now, until the tapping begins.

It’s been encouraging that several of my earlier writing projects came out this last week. My piece on Aware-Settler Hermeneutics with the Society of Biblical Literature’s teaching resource Bible Odyssey, the proofs for my article (right beside Sara’s) in the upcoming volume Judeophobia, and my essay in CrossCurrents about walking in north Dublin, Ireland and saying goodbye as we headed back to Canada. I can’t celebrate these with Sara as I would at home. But I’m thankful nonetheless.

So: every day some small improvements. It’s interesting that relationality, so important to our thinking about planetary crises, and about justice, is also so crucial now personally, to the body’s working. The unaffected parts of my brain and my left side are building new relations. As in every new relationship, that takes time, patience, good humour and a willingness to celebrate every new connection, no matter how modest.

photo of two student nurses who took excellent care of me last week.