Brain, meet hand: Strokeaversary week 7

I’m home on a weekend pass, and Sweet Pea is telling me she likes having me back. She jumped up & claimed my walker seat and looked quite pleased to be chauffeured back to the living room. (Click below image for video.) Every time I nap, she settles in right by my head. Sara thinks she’s saying: “I want you here. Not wherever you get to when you’re gone.”

The big news for me this week was not really measurable or quantifiable in any objective way. It was more of a feeling – but no less real for that. Sometime near the beginning of this week I realized I felt like I had my left hand back. Not that it suddenly recovered. I’m still struggling just as much to open my fingers, rotate my wrist, or do anything else that would help me, say, pick up a spoon. But somehow – I can’t quite define how – I now feel connected to my hand in a way I didn’t before. It’s part of my body again. A frustratingly uncooperative part of my body, maybe. But very much me.

I’ve learned I can do a lot with one hand. Even make and spread pizza dough (click on image):

This week the head physio, Lori, turned to gamification as a strategy for my occupational therapy (see videos above and below). Apparently, I’m motivated more when I have a ball to hit, a broom to sweep, or a cone to knock over. Who would have guessed? Ria had me batting at a small plastic soccer ball. Lori dumped a mix of rice on the table along with a hand broom and said: “sweep this.”

I lost my former roommate J this last week. J is a reformed brawler, and a self-professed “tough guy” who says his right hook has gotten him in too much trouble in the past. I know there were nurses and orderlies who avoided coming into our room because of his quick temper. But J liked to sleep, respected me as I respected him, and didn’t talk much. We got along quite well…even had a little pizza party to celebrate his going home. I think he benefited from my politeness with the staff, and I certainly benefited from his take-no-nonsense. This week my new roommate B arrived. B, a Vietnam veteran, is much more chatty. He likes late evening baseball games on TV, but unfortunately the poor man has to have dialysis several mornings a week. This involves nurses snapping the lights on at 5 am (once at 4) to prep him. When they leave around 6, I’ve had to call them back every time to turn the lights off again so I can try to catch at least an hour’s sleep before the day shift arrives. Through no fault of B’s, later in the day while he snores with the TV on, I’m in physio, where they remind me that my brain heals best when I stay rested.

We’re hamming it up in this photo but after every home pass it’s hard for Sara and I to say goodbye and for me to go back to the craziness of the ward. I feel I’m already at a stage where I could be discharged and probably be okay. But outpatient rehab is only once or twice a week. It’s hardly the 3-4 sessions a day with the devoted team I get by staying at the hospital. I want the rehab badly. AND I need it. So I’ll stay in hospital as long as I can. But by the end of this week I was exhausted.

The physio team really makes this place. On Oct 31st they all dressed as historical Maritime figures (like Sidney Crosby, Maud Lewis, Alexander Graham Bell, Natalie MacMaster) and trooped up and down the hall wishing us patients a Happy Halloween.

In addition to being heartened by the many of you who let me know you’re praying for me or who send me messages of encouragement (believe me, it really does make a difference), I’m thankful to Joanne, who fought off the scavengers after a departmental luncheon so a care package of fresh veggies, hummus, and brownies was delivered to the hospital, and to the folks at University of Regina Press for a card with so many different hand-written greetings, and also to Dr. Francis Borchardt, who zoomed in to give my students a wonderful guest presentation – despite being in the middle of international travels and grieving his father’s sudden passing. That was exceedingly generous, Francis.

Before the stroke I had planned a special promotion for November. Sara’s encouraging me to stick to it, with her help. I’m offering a signed copy of Pairings: The Bible and Booze (or of Apocalypse et gin tonic, the same book en francais), holiday gift-wrapped and mailed with whatever inside cover note you request, to any address in Canada, for $20 by e-transfer (to matthewndg@gmail.com) or by paypal (@MatthewAndersonBooks). A portion of every sale will be given to the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada. Here is the order form: https://forms.gle/U5atSZk279GXpeGx6

On All Saints’ Day (Nov 1), I try to think of those who have died during the past year or so. This year I wore a tee-shirt with a photo of my old friend Kay Rasmussen from Montreal’s South Shore. Kay is now gone, but dearly missed. I reflected again about how fortunate I am simply to be alive after my stroke, and how lucky that the stroke only took my left side mobility and that I’m recovering well. A nurse whom I haven’t seen for a couple weeks came in to my room and asked me if I was still a “one person assist” to the toilet. I said no, I can go anywhere on my own now. Seeing her surprise made me realise with a shock how far I’ve come.

THANK YOU for your prayers, thoughts, meditations, messages, and support for my recovery. I don’t take them for granted. Life is precious, our schedules and routines are fragile, and your solidarity is a treasure to me. I carry that solidarity with me each time my pass is over and I find myself walking back into my “real world” for now, the hospital.