Tag: family

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stroke-recovery Uncategorized

My “Year + Two Month” Strokeaversary

Somehow my one-year strokeaversary slipped by without a blog post, even though Sara and I marked it privately. Now here we are: way past twelve months. Already to 14 and counting.

I’m not sure why I didn’t push myself to post a one-year column on the actual day.

It could have been that I wasn’t emotionally ready. I was – and I still am – processing the fact that as far as I’ve come, I haven’t yet mended as I’d wished. Paralysed and stuck in my wheelchair a year ago at St. Martha’s Regional Hospital, Antigonish, I told my youngest, Gabe, that by September 2025 we’d be going for another 100 km walk to celebrate my recovery, like we did on the Celtic Shores Trail along the Cape Breton coast in the month before the stroke.

Well….that won’t be happening anytime soon, although I still hold out hope. While I can walk farther and faster than at any point since my brain damage, my best distance is a couple of kilometres with a limp. It’s hardly 100 km in a week like we did in 2024, striding into a new coastal village every afternoon in the late-afternoon sunshine.

I also dreamt that at one year post-stroke the part of my body the slowest to recover, my left hand, would be fully back in use. I imagined somehow I’d be chording smoothly on guitar, holding my mug of tea, and most importantly, typing. The truth is that yes, I can actually DO all those things, sort of! It’s a miracle. And I recognize that miracle when I’m properly “glass-half-full” thinking. For instance, I’ve typed this blog-post using both hands.

But the deeper truth is more nuanced.  Chording is still slow….usually too slow for a song to really feel like a proper song. A full cup of tea is dangerous to hold in my left hand for too long – and a hot cast iron pan more dangerous still! But I’m able to reach, and lift, and manipulate more with that hand every week. I can now screw the milk and toothpaste lids off and on as a leftie. I regularly empty the dishwasher with my left hand as therapy. I can almost snap my fingers and make the Vulcan salute. Holding a nail in September while hammering was sometimes an act of faith. But the nails got in. Eventually.

Typing is not as slow as it was. But it’s still tedious, difficult, and tends toward errors. Sara says that she can tell my typing has improved because in the last month I’ve written a lot more pieces – articles, reviews, and the like. “You must feel more comfortable composing,” she remarked. “You’re getting back to your enthusiasm for new ideas.”

I feel that too. This fall I taught an online course on Leonard Cohen and St Paul, and had a wonderful time with my adult students. My classes about early Christian asceticism at StFX are fun, and recently I took first-year kids on a tour of the Saint Ninian Cathedral, being sure to point out features I write about in my book “Someone Else’s Saint.” Sara and I each gave keynote presentations on subsequent weeks at different institutions in Halifax, which was a chance for trips “to the big city” and mini-holidays.

My public talks and interviews are happening again. I was interviewed this fall by Jesse Zink of Montreal Diocesan College in his “Principal Meets Author” Series. Be sure to listen to an upcoming episode of CBC Radio’s “The Cost of Living,” where I’ll be on a segment talking about Advent Calendars! This week I’m also presenting in the Research Chairs Colloquium Series at my university, an honour for me.

So, the one-year strokeaversary slipped by.

When she read what I just wrote above, Sara pointed out that maybe it wasn’t disappointment that stopped me after all. Maybe I let the 12-month blogpost slide simply because my fall has been so incredibly busy. True enough. But the anniversary didn’t pass completely unmarked.

It turned out that I had a follow-up appointment at the hospital one year to the day from my initial TIA – Trans Ischemic Attack, September 16th. So I ordered two cakes from our local Sobeys and Sara and I took them in to mark the day: one for the physio ward, since that’s where I’ve spent so much time post-discharge, and the other for St. Martha Regional Hospital’s third-floor hospital wing, where I lived for almost four months last fall.

Those cakes turned out to be a pretty good metaphor for the hospitalization and recovery process, and for the nature of institutions. On the physio wing, it turned out that almost all of the Occupational Therapists and Physiotherapists who’ve worked with me this past year were there. To a chorus of “oohs” and “aahs” the cake was quickly divvied up. There was lots of laughter and shared memories, and many thanks and congratulations given and received. It was wonderful.

However, when I carried my one-year cake to the nurses’ station, it was a different story. That day, none of the faces looked familiar at all, except my own GP, who was at the desk. Apparently, there’s been quite a bit of turnover recently on the ward. A nurse politely thanked me for the cake, took it, and congratulated me on my recovery. Sara and I stood around a minute or two awkwardly, then left. I’m sure the staff there that day enjoyed the sweets. But through no fault of theirs, they didn’t know me from Adam. There was no one at the desk from “my” past, no one who shared my memories, and no one to mark with me those tumultuous months that were so significant.

That’s life, I guess. In the end, our experiences change us profoundly. Sometimes permanently. But for everyone else, things can sometimes go back to normal pretty quickly.

Speaking of major life-changes this fall: in October, Sara’s parents moved back to Moncton for the winter, after a wonderful, but very busy, summer of cooking, canning, and building. I took a very quick, very short trip to Montreal to hug my kids after their own family tragedy: the untimely death of my ex, their mom. Sara and I made our first juice from our first grapes, and filled our pantry with summer’s jellies. Since then my own step-mother, Mary Anderson (Hattum) passed away, along with another good friend in Saskatchewan, John McPhail. Oh yes, and a feral cat we’re calling Theodore seems to have adopted us, on and off….

Things aren’t the same as a year ago in so many ways, some large, some small. I keep having to learn and relearn the lesson that life is beautiful, often fragile, and that the time to tell folks you love and appreciate them is right now.

I feel very fortunate to be alive, and thankful every day for the chance to experience this world in all its confusing glory. Strangely enough, I believe my life has been enriched by my stroke a year ago, and by the struggles that have followed. I appreciate you who have accompanied me through this year (plus a couple of months). As the leaves drop, the Grey Cup finishes (yay SK!) and November tilts toward Advent and Christmas, I hope you find some love and joy in these days as well.

Categories
stroke-recovery

10-Month Strokeaversary

…. in which the blogger makes a pop culture pun in each header.

“Rocky“

So, something fairly big for me happened recently. Following my stroke ten months ago, I would look out the hospital window from my wheelchair and see people–strolling on their lunch-breaks, walking their dogs, or jogging–up and down the small hill that leads from the hospital to the Bethany Gardens and farm owned by the sisters of St. Martha. At that time, I was a ‘two-person transfer’ and couldn’t walk a meter, let alone a kilometer. “See that hill?” I said to Sara. “I’m going to walk up it with you one day. That’s my goal.” There’s a small tower at the top. My dream was to touch that tower like Rocky finally able to take the steps from the iconic movie. It felt impossible, but I fervently envisioned getting to the top of that hill, giving thanks for my recovery–and being outside, right side up, and on my own two feet.

This week, it finally happened. Sara and I were running separate errands on a busy day and we both wound up in the vicinity of the hospital at the same time. We decided to meet for tea at the volunteer-run BreakAway Cafe that helps pay for new medical equipment. Last fall Sara had been there pretty well every single day to see me, and she still had a free coffee on her hospital coffee card. It had been a while since we’d both been at St. Martha’s together since my stay. After our drink and my medical appointment, Sara said, “is today the day?” and looked meaningfully at the hill. And we set off. It was surreal to make it all the way to the top.

It wasn’t entirely as envisioned. My gait wasn’t as smooth and confident as I’d imagined from my wheelchair in September. I was winded by the slope and had to stop to catch my breath. (That certainly wouldn’t have happened pre-stroke to this long-distance pilgrim!) And when we got to the top it turned out there was no way to actually touch the tower, which turns out to sit behind fences, cattle, and construction.

Even dreams that come true don’t usually do so in the ways we’ve imagined.

But – it felt wonderful to reach the top just the same! And I was thankful every step.

“Telltale Heart“

(apart from the title, what’s below doesn’t actually have much to do with the Edgar Allen Poe short story, which is frighteningly narrated here, if you’re interested)

Today I was at the hospital for another important step in recovery. I’m still doing physio at St. Martha’s at least twice a week…odd to remember how when I was new to Antigonish I used to think I should go see the place because I’d never been inside. But this morning wasn’t physio. After three tries and two different technicians, they got an IV line into my arm for what’s called an “agitated saline contrast,” or echocardiogram bubble test, pumping “bubbles” into my vein, then watching them travel to the heart to see if my surgery in April had really closed the hole between my heart’s upper chambers.

The great news: it had. No bubbles got through. This means that now no future clots can sneak through there, either. I said thank you to Dr Amy Hendricks, and told her she plays a mean piano and violin (I had been surprised to see her perform in a wonderful concert at St Ninian Cathedral). She laughed and said thank you, and that everyone needs to have a few hobbies on the side. That’s life in a small town. (Pictured are my friend and fellow pilgrim Sister RéAnne and I at the concert before it began).

“My Left Foot (and Hand)”

This week I also got my Botox shot for leg spasticity. Or rather six shots, into my left calf, as I lay on my stomach on a clinic bed in Halifax. There was no immediate change, except some mild flu-like symptoms I’m presently experiencing. Apparently it takes 4-6 weeks for the poison to reach full efficacy and (we hope) work its wonders. However, tonight I feel like my leg already swings a bit easier, which might be psychosomatic. In any case, convincing my plastic brain to accept that my leg can be trusted again is apparently part of the point. We’ll see!

I’m starting to be able to do some slow and basic typing with my left hand. Just barely. Soon the hand tires and my xpinxkixe finger (there it is, doing it again), starts drooping and hitting errant keys and I have to go back to one hand. But… it’s a start. The trick is holding my left hand in the air without the fingers curling in (spasticity) or the whole hand dropping, then adding to that the coordination of using fingers to distinguish between the “a” and the “d” keys when they are only beginning to remember their connection to my brain…

“The Gatto Came Back”

Okay, that heading holds a fairly obscure pun, but IYKYK. (If you don’t, click here for “Gatto”; and watch Canadian entertainer Fred Penner sing the song here !)

My two universities have both been incredibly supportive through these months of stroke and stroke recovery. Firstly, Concordia’s Dept of Theological Studies and its chair, Dr. André Gagné, worked to renew for one last time my status as an “affiliate assistant professor” there. I love still being associated this way with Montreal, even though the thought of a trip to the big city and taking public transit in my present condition gives me the heeby-jeebies.

Second, Saint Francis Xavier (StFX) and my colleagues here in the Religious Studies department have been nothing short of wonderful. In addition to taking over my teaching last fall, interim chair Dr Robert Kennedy dropped by with a stunning white orchid from the department after my heart surgery. You may recall that they also sent flowers and cards during my hospital stay, and Sara got gift certificates for take-out and ready-meals from our then Dean of Arts office and the department. Recently, the University also made “a big deal” of my winning a Sask Book Award with a special news release. New colleague Dr Gerjan Altenburg invited me fishing with him and his son. And this last week, Dr. Erin Morton, Associate Vice-President, Research, Graduate and Professional Studies, and head of the Gatto Chair Committee, confirmed that my application for a one-year extension of my chairship was approved. This means that the research travel and meetings for which I had funding will not be lost to my months in hospital. I’m incredibly grateful!

“Running Back to Saskatoons”

I’ve been hanging ’round hospitals” is one of the lines from the 1972 The Guess Who song “Running Back to Saskatoon,” which also mentions libraries, grease monkeys, and Moosomin SK. But it’s actually now that I’m home from the hospital that I’ve really been able to enjoy Saskatoon (or as they say here in Nova Scotia, “serviceberry”) season.

It’s a good year here on our three acres for Saskatoons, even if you’d laugh to watch how slow I am to pick them. My first attempt at a Saskatoon crumble was only okay (not enough berries). But today is Saskatoon pie day. I followed a recipe from the beautiful – and fun – cookbook Flapper Pie and a Blue Prairie Sky, which devotes several pages to Saskatoons and their place in prairie cuisine and culture.

It’s not a beautiful pie…I used a store crust, and my thumb marks disappeared in the baking. But it’s mine. And what I really wanted to say was not so much about Saskatoons (or pies!) as the feelings that arose in me this year as I picked the deep purple berries. The other evening I was out during the “golden hour” with my plastic pail. Somewhere in the near distance I could hear children playing. A rooster crowed from one of the nearby farms, and the songbirds – we have a lot of song sparrows, vireo, yellow warblers and more – were calling to each other.

Despite the mosquitoes, deer flies, and ticks, suddenly there was so much peace and joy welling up inside that I could feel it like a physical presence. Here I was, standing on my feet, reaching with both hands, however awkwardly, for berries, and tasting the sweetness of this land where I live.

I feel incredibly blessed to be living, period, and to be living in the country. Yes, the power goes out sometimes, yes, there are critters, some great, mostly small, to be aware of and learn to live with, yes, there is grass cutting and incessant yard care, and yes, there are no bakeries or restaurants or cool little take-out spots just around the corner like I enjoyed in Montreal. But there are other pleasures, like sitting with tea looking out at the little bit of salt water that fingers in at the foot of our yard, like watching herons rise up into flight or eagles float lazily overhead. Like tossing ripe Saskatoons into your mouth and hearing the soft tap-tap-tap of a downy woodpecker somewhere deeper in the bush. And feeling alive and connected to it all.

“Radio Ga Ga”

This old song by Queen actually has pretty prescient lyrics in the age of TikTok and Instagram.

Another recent highlight for me was being interviewed by CBC Radio One Montreal’s Sonali Karnick about my new book, Someone Else’s Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia. Interview HERE. Because I’ve known lovely, warm, and good-spirited Sonali for years, and All in a Weekend’s equally warm and thoughtful producer Jill Walker and I are so comfortable with each other, the interview felt like a happy reunion. My friend and fellow author Ken Wilson said as much on social media: “You two sounded like old friends. It was like eavesdropping on a fascinating conversation at the next table.” (Speaking of fascinating, Ken’s book Walking the Bypass is coming out this fall). Did I mention you could hear Sonali’s and my conversation here?

These Are the Moments

The 2009 album “These Are the Moments” by local Cape Breton group The Rankin Family contains the song “Fare Thee Well Love” – which is my wish to you, in your moments, whatever and wherever they are..

That’s a snapshot of what’s been happening. It’s been ten months since the event that overturned my life last fall. That one moment of garbled speech, of a tingle running down my arm, of Sara running for the Aspirin and calling 911, has led to all these moments since.

Isn’t it profound how a single moment can change our lives, and how often that happens, in some form or another?

And yet life still goes on, until it doesn’t. And for this moment now, I’m thankful. And thankful to you for taking a moment to read this. Tonight is garbage night. Time to head out with the wheelbarrow, and then maybe try that pie…

[Update: As they say in the Maritimes, it was some good.]

Categories
stroke-recovery

4-month Strokeaversary: Back to the Future

Back to Work

As I got out of the passenger seat with my backpack, and teetered through the snowstorm, slightly off balance, to teach my first class in over four months at Saint Francis Xavier University, Sara rolled down the window and looked proudly yet worriedly on. I went a few steps, then stopped and glanced back. “It’s like being in grade one!” I shouted. She laughed. “That’s what I was thinking!”

That first class, and those in weeks since, have gone well, all things considered, four months after a major stroke. I have over 50 lovely students for RELS 210 Bible and Film. I do find I have to stop speaking sometimes to swallow and to catch my breath, problems I never had before. And I’m exhausted at the end of the 75 minutes. When I go to leave the amphitheatre through the doors located at the top/back, I need to look for which side has a handrail to the right. But I find I can stand for almost the whole lecture. Kudos to the current chair of our department, Dr. Robert Kennedy, for suggesting that for the first part of term at least, I do half of my teaching online to save energy.

I was privileged last week to be invited by Katie Murphy, a member of StFX’s rugby team who’s been in several of my classes, to attend the Academic All-Canadian Awards breakfast as her one guest. Each Academic All-Canadian is a student athlete who maintains an average over 80% while excelling at their sport. They get to invite one favourite prof to the breakfast. Sara had the honour of being invited too, by another scholar-athlete, Myro Zastavnyy, who plays soccer. He got the highest mark in her New Testament class last term. All went fine, but a trip back and forth to a buffet table with breakfast in hand presents challenges I’ve never had to deal with before. Katie was a great help. She quipped, “once a server, always a server,” as she carried her own breakfast and some of mine back to our table.

Back to Mobility

Recently, I took my first solo drive in four months. As the kind clerk from the Nova Scotia Motor Vehicle Division assured me: “since your medical has come in all clear, there’s no reason you can’t drive right now. Just be sure to take the test again.” I have to retake both my written and road tests before the end of February, or my license will be suspended.

Off I went. It felt great – and a little scary – to be back motoring out in the big wild world all on my own like that. My first independent excursion since September. I took advantage of my first solo trip to head all the way to town to buy a pair of pull-on winter boots. I can now do up zippers fairly consistently (thanks to my friend Ken Wilson‘s gift of zipper pulls). But tying shoes? I managed to do one lace for Sara’s father’s 90th in Moncton. But it took me over five minutes, tired me right out, and even then it was loose. Pull-on boots for now.

I love two things about the photo of my prayer below from Winston Parks’s big birthday. One is that the Mayor of Moncton, Dawn Arnold, is behind me. Sara has admired her for decades, and tagged her in the facebook invitation. It was a privilege to have her there. The other is that two different members of my family, my son Daniel and my sister-in-law Barbara, when they saw the photo on the right, instantly celebrated the fact that I was holding my remarks in my left hand.

Back to the Hospital (as an outpatient)

Twice a week I drive myself to St. Martha’s Hospital. There I spend a half-hour under Jay’s watchful eye: walking on my heels, walking backwards, side-stepping, and doing high leg-lift marching that reminds me of what we used to do in high-school sports practise.

I still don’t have the left-foot strength to walk consistently on my toes, nor is my “normal” gait that smooth. But I’m getting better every week. After physio, my new Rehabilitation Assistant, Janna, takes over and guides me through 45 minutes of hand and finger exercises. I’m VERY fortunate to still be receiving this level of care! (Please, for my sake and yours, never vote for a party that has designs to privatise healthcare any more than some provinces already are!)

Back Home

This weekend, for the first time, I ventured across our driveway to spent an hour “working out” (I use that term gently) in our crowded insulated shed. Before Christmas, my brother and sister-in-law cleared space and set up the recumbent bicycle and the treadmill (from Sara’s parents’ recent move to an apartment) for me. It was great to listen to a podcast and just get my legs going. There have been both mice and a resident squirrel inside that space in the last year. We cleaned it thoroughly last summer and employed many mouse-proofing tactics, but while I pedalled I kept my eye out just in case.

I have a full home physio routine which includes wrist exercises, doing leg lifts and arm raises, and giving my left hand the “TENS” treatment of low-level electrical current at least 30 minutes a day. I can now sometimes pick up pennies off a table with my left hand and drop them into a pill bottle, arm extended. Although I still have to use my right hand to guide my left, I can now make clearer chords on my guitar. You should see me wipe a counter! It’s a messy business. A big part of my home-work is using my left hand as much as possible to do daily tasks. I think it’s funny that as spastic as I am, Sara still trusts me to wash the crystal (and so close to the cast iron).

In some ways, it’s my expectations that are now changing. Rather than being surprised (and overjoyed) simply to be able to move my arm and hand again at all, these days more and more I find myself reaching for something, say a bar of soap, with my left hand without thinking. Then I’m surprised (and slightly disappointed) when my arm won’t extend that far, or my arm won’t straighten or fingers won’t open enough to grab it. My left hand looks and acts rather like one of those arcade claw machines, like in the movie Toy Story.

On my new low-sodium regime, I allow myself to buy these salted veggie-stix on one condition: I’m only allowed to eat them with my left hand!

I can finally, sometimes, extend my arm straight forward in a “cheers” motion. But I would never be able to hold a heavy pint of German beer in that position! I’m lifting a three pound weight for bicep curls and doing tricep work with a stretch band. Laughably light loads, but a start!

And now that I’m home, I’m noticing some more subtle stroke effects. My eyesight isn’t quite as good as before the stroke. My taste buds continue to be “off” especially around sugars and bread products (that might be the COVID I caught in hospital). And my hearing is slightly, but noticeably, worse…not so much in terms of volume, but when trying to distinguish “t”s, “d”s and the like. I keep reminding myself of how fortunate I am, and how much more damage the stroke might have done. I can use both arms for a hug. That’s worth a lot! And cooking can be the most fun home therapy of all (photo below from my youngest – Gabe’s – visit with us over Christmas, which was a joy). I’m glad that Sara didn’t mind that all my (few) presents for her were from the hospital gift shop!

Back to Writing

All fall in the hospital, it was hard to concentrate on my research project on Jerome with my fatigue, frequent interruptions, and (most welcome!) intensive rehab regime. It was Sara’s suggestion that I use some of my isolation time to get back into writing smaller things, like poetry. I came up with a small collection, which I’m submitting to a provincial competition this week. I can’t share it here (since it must be “unpublished work”), but please keep your fingers crossed for me.

I also turned around the copy-edited proofs for Someone Elses’ Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia, due out in Spring 2025.

My big question mark is typing. If I can figure out a less sensitive keyboard for practise, I’d like to try typing while including my curly-fingered left hand, just to keep those left muscle memories alive. That’s on the to-do list. I sometimes use dictation, but that isn’t the way I am most comfortable composing and the results end up different!

Back to Gratitude

I’m still SO humbled for the ways I was supported all through my time in hospital by so many of you. Thank you! I get rushes of gratitude when I see the cards or when someone contacts me to check on how I’m doing. The postal strike gave us a kind of unexpected blessing, in that here we are in January and I’m still getting cards that were hibernating during the strike. Special recent thanks to Nadine and Phil for the so-very thoughtful box of individually wrapped and labelled goodies, and to George Greenia, who made it an Advent discipline last fall to mail us a steady stream of fun little cards of support, only to have them stack up with Canada Post and arrive all at once this week! Those of you who know George know that in addition to his kind heart he has a cheeky sense of humour. I’ll leave you with one of his mailings as an example!

I was also touched when our friend Amanda texted Sara the week after I got home, to ask, “When is Matthew’s weekly stroke report coming out? Mom and I look forward to it every Sunday.” What a miracle, to write one’s experiences and hopes into the ether, and have them land in the hearts of others.

Categories
stroke-recovery

Week 13 Strokeaversary: Honourable Discharge

Patience, patience, patient … now hurry up and go!

After 13.5 long weeks in the stroke unit at St Martha’s Regional hospital, my discharge yesterday seemed to happen all at once.

My overall progress has been overseen by the kind and professional Dr. Mary Gorman, Lead Physician. But this week’s physician on ward was the equally empathetic and soft-spoken Dr. Aaron Bates. In the morning, he stopped by to discuss last-minute tweaks to my meds.

He passed on a warm greeting to Sara, we shook hands, and he left.

Then, in quick succession:

a/ Thursday’s nurse, whom I know less well, immediately appeared to fill out discharge forms. She insisted on asking a long list of prescribed final check questions like: “what year is this?” and “Where are we right now?” despite the fact we’d been chatting in some depth about about provincial and federal healthcare politics only moments before.

b/ Physios Lee and Lena, and occupational therapists Lori and Ria (below) entered as if on cue with a barrage of January out-patient schedules, transit options (a mobility bus for 8 dollars a trip), prescriptions for equipment (a bar for the shower, a walker, and an electric shock device), and homework. (As well as for final hugs.)

c/ The hospital pharmacist sat down with me for a long consult and prescription check. We ditched the diuretic (for swollen ankles) in favour of a tweak in blood pressure meds. I’ll be on “baby aspirin” for the rest of my life.

d/ Like clockwork, “Ed” –an 80-year old more recent stroke survivor with a dry sense of humour– was wheeled over to inspect his future private room. (I’m glad he’ll be able to start getting the rest he’ll need to recover.)

e/ The cleaning staff started lurking around my doorway with mops and rags, asking if I was done packing up. (I clearly wasn’t!)

f/ One-handed speed-packing! I wonder if I’m the only patient at St Martha’s to have stripped their own bed on discharge? Sara was detained trying to get her final grades in by the deadline. So, motivated by the sidelong looks of the cleaning team, I went into one-handed high gear. All the hard work Sara put into making my room the most serene and comfortable place in the hospital was unravelled in minutes. Framed photos of our family and cats, Christmas quilts, twinkly lights, plants, a knitted prayer blanket, extension cords, spices, local teas and honey, books, earphones, a huge Christmas wreath, all my wonderful get-well cards … everything got stuffed into big blue IKEA bags for shlepping to the car. Sara was en route, but I didn’t wait. Everything got wheeled on my walker to the lounge. The cleaners descended like a flock of sanitizing vultures.

Processing…

“The goal of healing is not a papering-over of changes in an effort to preserve or present things as normal. It is to acknowledge and wear your new life – warts, wisdom, and all – with courage.” ~Catherine Woodiwiss

By the time I caught my breath, Sara and I were speeding toward Pomquet. Home! Once over the threshold (she didn’t carry me), she declared, “no more weekend passes — this time you get to stay!” We sat and reminisced about how she ran for aspirin way back on the night of September 16 when I mentioned the funny feeling in my arm. We marvelled at how far away that feels now. We were in the same chairs as back in September, but so much had changed. I guess a person might have predicted what happened next, but I was caught by surprise. I broke down completely and wept. Big, heaving, messy sobs.

Both Sara and I have been 100% focussed on “getting through” and staying positive for each other. We haven’t had a moment to process. The reality is that a major stroke destroyed part of my brain in September. The reality is that I now have a decreased range of mobility and an increased sense of mortality. The reality is that, between a pandemic, and a slow and frankly, sneaky privatization of public services for profit, our healthcare system is weakened. If I’d had a family doctor instead of a pharmacist, whose ability to adjust my blood pressure drugs when it was soaring out of control the last couple of years was extremely limited, things might have been different. The pharmacist urged me to go to emergency if my blood pressure hit 165, but because it happened frequently and I felt okay, I didn’t. I felt I didn’t want to take resources from people in a “real emergency.”

The emotional/grief work of processing the life changes resulting from the stroke is still largely to come. For my part, once I hit bottom and got over the terror of the initial 48 hours when more and more of me was disappearing, there was no time to fret. I understood that all my energy had to go to the things that would bring about maximum recovery. I knew I had to:

a/ work as diligently and proactively as possible with the physio and OT team during the crucial early post-stroke period

b/ do everything I could to present myself to nurses, doctors, physios, and other staff as someone to speak to, not about (the latter is distressingly common). As soon as I could, I got out of my Johnny shirt and jammies, and began getting dressed “normally”. Sara instinctively sensed this concern too, and brought a collection of books to my room first thing. Just like at home.

As those of you who’ve been in hospital for any length of time know, staying focussed and advocating for one’s needs becomes its own full-time job in a hospital. Even a good one like St Martha’s.

Another thing I did was to memorize and remember the names of all the staff who worked with me. This was not only important for point b above, and for my mental discipline — it was in search of the increased health and wellbeing that comes from forming relationships and connection.

Carers

“Safety is not the absence of threat … it is the presence of connection.” ~Gabor Maté

It worked. I soon came to feel like part of a wonderful team. Many of them are pictured below, but many others I’ll have to remember only in my heart, not my camera. The staff goodbyes actually went on for a few days. I presented each of my four physios with an acrostic poem of their name. There may or may not have been some tears. I gave the nursing and physio teams boxes of handsome ball-point pens. (Sara’s brilliant idea; good pens are coveted currency for hospital staff!)

I lost track of how many nurses and aides stopped by in my last two days in hospital to wish me well. Each of these folks became special to me. I learned to identify their voices at a distance, even tell who they were from the sound of their footsteps in the hall (as I’ve learned to walk again I’ve been paying a lot of attention to gait and stride).

Old Friends

“encourage one another and build up each other, as indeed you are doing.” ~Paul, in 1 Thessalonians 5:11

Through this journey, I have never felt alone. I’ve been encouraged and built up by all of your cards, letters, emails, flowers, prayers, candles, gifts, and visits.

Just a couple of days before discharge, my very last visitors were LCBI high school friend Brenda and her husband Alan. They drove up from their Nova Scotia farm to wish me well. What a pleasure it was to catch up! They were early Santas, leaving a gift bag of exquisite dried flowers, honey, craft beer, and more, all from their own Meander Farm and Brewery (a must-see on any visit to NS). What’s more, they ALSO brought Norwegian Christmas treats of lefse and krumkake (tastes of my childhood) from their neighbour and friend Deb, another LCBI friend and classmate who ended up in Nova Scotia. Wow!

Family

“Siblings: children of the same parents, each of whom is perfectly normal until they get together.” ~Sam Levenson

As if that wasn’t enough good fortune, my brother Mark and sister-in-law Barbara flew out from Regina, Saskatchewan for the whole week prior to my transition. Their goal was to take some of the ferrying, appointment-ing, cooking, and visiting load off of Sara during her end-of-term exams and grading crunch. They also rolled up their sleeves and took on the chores I’d intended for the fall and either half-finished or never got to. They helped me with some preparatory tasks, like getting a handicapped parking tag, picking up a shower seat from the Red Cross, and helping put non-slip stickers in the bathtub. I was completely spoiled. I’m fortunate to have siblings I so enjoy spending time with (even when they’re not cleaning air exchange filters and organizing the garage).

It takes a village

“Individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean.” ~Ryunosuke Satoro

So: after 14 weeks in hospital, I’m posting this blog from home! I don’t know if I will continue stroke-update blog posts (at least not weekly). I’ll ease back into to blogging about pilgrimage, decolonization, or writing. But my personal strokeaversaries will go on. For example, this week the biggest change I’ve noticed is that without thinking, I find myself reaching out with my left hand to do things more and more. Even when it’s slow, I’m flipping more light switches with my left hand, and opening more doors, trying to avoid the pitfalls of “learned non-use.” Today a first was managing to undo my seat belt with my left hand. This practice of reflecting weekly so I could share updates with loved ones has been good for seeing the big picture and celebrating each success. My friends Greg and Ingrid Gust just sent me the book Stronger after Stroke: Your Roadmap to Recovery. I take hope from this line: “stroke survivors can continue to make progress years, even decades, after their stroke.”

In coming weeks I’ll remember what the physio Lee said to me: “it was good working with you. You’re a survivor.” Or Makenna, yesterday, who held me up that first day as my leg stopped working, and wiped my bum when I couldn’t: “You never stopped trying, and that made all the difference. Some folks give up. You never gave up.” What Lee and Makenna may NOT know is that I had so many of you praying, lighting candles, meditating, walking, and sending me thoughts and cards reinforcing that message: “don’t give up. You can do it” that I really felt that all my efforts simply floated atop a river of love and support.

“I’ll be home for Christmas”

“Christmas reminds us to be grateful for the gift of life and to express our gratitude through acts of kindness…” ~Deepak Chopra

So: thank you. I’m home for Christmas. Here with Sara and Sweet Pea. My youngest, Gabe, will arrive Christmas Eve. We’ll all go make a festive dinner for Sara’s family. There wasn’t time for many presents this year. Nobody minds. We know how fortunate we are.

I’ll keep working toward recovery, bouncing forward toward whatever my new normal turns out to be. If I haven’t had the chance to thank you personally, please know what a tangible difference you’ve made to my recovery. There’s a lot of emphasis these days on individual effort, “bootstraps,” and success – my recovery is a reminder that instead, what’s really important is cooperation and relationality. Each of us can do incredible things only when we’re rich with relational support.

From Pomquet, Mi’kmaki, Merry Christmas — or whatever reminder of light in the face of winter, love in the face of hatred, and salvation in the face of impossible odds that you and yours may celebrate.

Categories
stroke-recovery

Sara Stedy: Week 11 Strokeaversary

This device is called a “Sara Stedy.” It’s a cross between a wheelchair and a strap-in walker. Just after my stroke 11 weeks ago, I couldn’t stand. I was a “two-person transfer.” Two nurses would use a Sara Stedy to get me up from bed so they could wheel me to the toilet. I remember how safe I felt as they carried me.

Bounce Forward

Now I’m stopping to take my own photos of Sara Stedys as I pass them with my walker on the way to the physio gym. This week, trying to find me new challenges, the physios took me to the hospital’s concrete stairwells and I went up and down with supervision. When I’m home for weekends, I often don’t bother with the walker or cane.

There were some more firsts this week – mostly subtle changes. I’m a bit surer on my feet. Using my right hand to place my fingers, my left hand stayed put long enough to make an E and a G chord on my nylon-string guitar. At home, I ventured out by myself for the first time to take some photos. Instead of ignoring my left hand, I now find myself reaching with it to flip a switch or turn on a tap. (Often I can’t do the task … but it’s worth noting that my brain is starting to think I might be able to!) I had my first full acupuncture session with a local specialist. Lori and Lee and my physio team made this “shoulder and arm” week. By the end of it I could lift my left arm in the air without help, while lying on my back. Karen, one of my supportive nurses, surprised me by saying “shake” with her left hand and I (sort of) did it.

I looked back at my journal from right after the first, smaller, stroke. I’m struck by how brief the notes are (probably because Sara was jotting them, exhausted). I notice what they don’t say: how my condition kept deteriorating, how deeply frightened I was that in my downward spiral, I’d soon wake unable to speak, or with a personality change, or in a coma.

In less than two weeks, I’ll be released back into the wild and into the care of my own Sara Stedy. I feel safe with her, too.

I know this doesn’t mean I’m “recovered.” A familiar refrain across stroke memoirs is that one does not go back to one’s “old self.”

“In the first days after the stroke, I had naively imagined that I would bounce back to being the person I had been in a few months. Meyerson’s book [Identity Theft: Rediscovering Ourselves After Stroke by Debra E. Meyerson and Danny Zuckerman] helped me realize that in life one can’t bounce back; one has to bounce forward.”

~Mukul Pandya, Stroke Onward

Reading the journal now, my overwhelming feeling is gratitude. My stroke wasn’t worse. I have a public health care system. I am surrounded with resources: personal, familial, emotional, financial, and community (folks like you) that collaborate to support my recovery.

Human Resources

I’m usually the pilgrim on the move, but for now I’m the stationary destination! Some of this week’s pilgrims included my colleague Gerjan (right, with Carly and their son Theo), who despite his heavy teaching load and precarious position, has visited me several times.

Or Tom Curry (above), the hospital’s music therapist and a local performer. I’m not sure our ward is even his responsibility. But after he heard I asked about music, Tom faithfully drops by. He asks what music I know and like, tests what I can shake the percussion egg to, and keeps encouraging me. “Ain’t No Sunshine”, “Out on the Mira” “Hit the Road, Jack.” He knows them all.

Or John. John is a north star for the entire ward. Unflappable. Always cheerful. Extremely hard-working… Checking by name on every patient, just in case anyone needs help. As Sara was taking me home this weekend, John was dashing past for an emergency, but took the time to call over his shoulder, “Hey, Sara! Can you believe this guy? Look at him go! So proud of you, Matt, so proud of you.” Once John asked if he could do anything for me, and I asked for help with a shower. “Sure, Matt,” he said, and dropped everything to assist. It wasn’t until halfway through the shower that he admitted, “this isn’t normally part of my role.” Above and beyond.

Like Phyllis. Phyllis didn’t want to take a photo. “The School of Nursing doesn’t like it.” She’s an LPN with a sunshiny face who always says hi as though to a dear old friend, lifting the mood of everyone she treats. A month ago she spent her lunch break trimming my toenails. She wasn’t my nurse this week. But she dropped by, surprising me Friday just before my weekend pass. “How are your feet?” she asked, then proceeded to kneel to take a look (my ankles are swelling from the meds). “Oh, the skin is dry! Would you mind if I put some cream on them?”

Would I mind?? What a gift! As she was walking out for her next patient she called out: “I just love feet.” And me? I just love Phyllis.

Then there’s fellow writer, academic, and walker Ken Wilson who’s been faithfully sending newsy emails nearly daily since the moment Sara announced the stroke on social media, saying it would cheer me to hear from “the outside world.” This is despite Ken’s own mad teaching, writing/editing, and grading crunch! A few days after he read last week’s blog about my trouble with zippers, these showed up on our doorstep. Thank you, Ken!

Reaping Past Writing’s Rewards

Finally, it was a week of incredible affirmation in my life as an author and academic. This feels especially gratifying during a period when I’m struggling to type with one hand.

  1. Rubbing Shortlisted Shoulders with Naomi Klein

I found out I didn’t win the Vine $10,000 non-fiction prize for Prophets of Love: the Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul. But the book was one of just three short-listed out of 60, and the winner was Naomi Klein, for Doppelganger. Pretty amazing company!

    It’s not 10 grand, but it’s certainly a prize to be considered in such company, and I will definitely encourage McGill-Queen’s to use the jury’s blurb in their marketing from now on!

    2. Rave Review in Miramichi Reader

    I was also floored when a Google alert informed me that The Good Walk received a spectacularly positive review by Michel Bryson in The Miramichi Reader.

    3. Winnipeg Free Press Most Notable Books 2024

    As if that wasn’t enough, The Good Walk also made the year-end list in The Winnipeg Free Press’s list of 2024’s most notable non-fiction. What a gift!

    4. The Author Journey Weekly Livestream

    I hesitated to say yes to appear this coming Tuesday with Anne Louise O’Connell on her weekly live videocast, “The Author Journey” to talk about my writing process. My speech still slurs when I’m tired. But Sara said, “that will all just be part of your story.” It’d be great to have you cheering me on there if you’re interested! Tuesday, Dec 10 2024, 4pm Atlantic (3pm Eastern) on their YouTube channel.

    5. Copyedits and Cover Reveal: “Someone Else’s Saint”

    To top off this flurry of reminders that writing done in the past is still at work in the present, Pottersfield Press just sent me the copyedits of Someone Else’s Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia (coming out April 2025). I had submitted it the night I first arrived in the emergency room, following the first (smaller) stroke. Sara teases me that I may be one of a very small number of people on the planet whose first task upon arriving at the hospital by ambulance is to submit a book manuscript.

    I suppose this is as good a time as any for a “cover reveal”!

    For what it’s worth, this is the story of the Nova Scotia Ninian Way pilgrimage that immediately preceded the stroke! Saint Ninian may have a sense of humour.

    Categories
    Uncategorized

    Memory Files

    Pre-K in Swift Current

    Memory Files

    Early in the New Year, for almost 25 years running, I’ve created what I call “memory files” for my family. Setting them up long ago became one of those January traditions, along with packing up Christmas decorations, transferring appointments to the new agenda, and throwing out the December eggnog that seemed like such a good idea to buy at the time. Memory files are hardly a new idea. Maybe you do the same thing. They’re nothing special – just those plain, cream-coloured manila file folders we all use. But with these particular folders, I sit down every January and carefully print someone’s name and the year. Then, throughout the twelve months, if there’s a concert my daughter performs in, a card from a special aunt or uncle, some doodling, a to-do list that really says what’s happening in our lives (pay violin lessons, call re: job offer) or maybe even a little hand-written note – “gone to the store; I’ll be back in twenty minutes”, I might keep it and, at some point, toss it in the file.
    I keep one for myself, too. Looking back, it’s interesting how the width of the folders changes, depending on the year. Which means, I guess, depending on where I and my kids are in our lives. From the halcyon years when the kids were young, the file folders are like horns of plenty: spilling with colourful bits and pieces. In those years, scrapbook pages and school drawings and construction paper in bright oranges and blues and reds and greens bulge out of the files, all fighting for attention.
    These days, not so much. The files are neater, more organized, and much, much slimmer. There might be a strip photograph of teenagers taken in one of those photo booths at the mall, or a ticket stub from a “One Direction” concert, or a ribbon from a sports event, and not much else. Actually, these days my file is looking thicker than my kids, which doesn’t mean that less is happening in their lives, only that I’m less a part of it. With my grown sons I’ve gone through, already, that awkward stage of not quite knowing why I’m even keeping a file, and then, finally, realising that our daily lives just don’t overlap enough for me to “file” much.
    The word “keep-sake” is interesting for what it doesn’t say. Keep for the sake of what? Or whom? For a couple of decades I have been keeping, I suspect, for my own sake more than anyone else’s. At some point soon, I will have to divest myself of at least some of these memories, and it will be up to my children to claim which memories they want to treasure, and which are ready to be let go.
    Only a few years ago I found a little box in the storage unit where my father keeps his things. In it were dumped all kinds of detritrus having to do with my young life: the ribbon that I won at a Science Fair in grade six, a photo of a clean-cut little blond boy with a bow-tie that I struggle to see myself in, and more school graduation bulletins than a person can ever reasonably expect a parent to suffer through. But suffer they did, and they kept the papers to prove it.
    It was such a pleasure to open that box and sift through its treasures. Some of the memories were painful, but many brought a smile to my eyes. And some of the items brought tears. Our memories of our families are so short. For all the stuff that we accumulate, precious little of it has meaning beyond a generation or two.
    But, at least for now, I will keep collecting. It may be that, years from now, some little item that I scrounged from recycling will be picked up by hands younger than mine, turned over once or twice, and with a “well, will you look at this?”, will be shared. And then the circle will be complete, and the memories not just filed, but fulfilled.