Tag: occupational-therapy

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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.

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Uncategorized

11-Month Strokeaversary: an update in 9 gerunds

What better therapy than dancing with Gabe? (video below)

As the ONE-YEAR anniversary of my stroke approaches – wow! – my recovery continues to follow the quick rise and flattening curve (see below) that the medical staff predicted for me, as for other stroke survivors. And it’s true – eleven months in, the changes are more subtle. However, every week there inevitably still turns out to be some marked improvement. My physio supervisor, Jessica, tested me last week and told me I’m much stronger in my leg than just a month ago, and my left arm has also strengthened considerably in recent weeks. The Theraband exercises must be helping.

My recovery has gone far, far beyond what many of my doctors and medical team initially predicted in the dire days of last fall. With Sara’s urging, I continue to believe that the curve will never flatten out completely. As the book Stronger After Stroke maintains, there never needs to be a complete plateau to recovery, for a stroke survivor who is fortunate enough to have good support, a stabilized health condition, and dogged determination to work together with the brain’s natural plasticity.

So on this 11th-month strokeaversary, here’s some of what recovery has looked like!

Theraplaying

The wonderful physical therapy and occupational therapy folks at St. Martha’s Regional Hospital are starting to hint that I can’t be an outpatient forever. Of course, they’re right. “As much as we like you and look forward to our sessions,” they tell me, “we have to make room in our case load for new patients…” The hospital has been incredibly generous, and I’ve come to really love my outpatient team. I moved from two sessions a week to one only this last month. Colin, the smart and thoughtful tech who took over from the equally helpful physio tech Janna, is now regularly kicking a soccer ball with me. The catch: I have to use only my left foot. I’m finding that soccer and the funny-face bean-bag toss are my favourite therapy activities. Like a toddler, I’m improving my balance, coordination, and hand movements through play, which makes it seem (almost) easy.

Medicating

After my heart surgery in April to close a PFO (the hole between the upper chambers of my heart), the Halifax surgeon put me on precautionary Plavix, to guard against post-operative complications. I just came off of it and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve been bruising after every blood test (one time the blood actually spurted out) and also when I bump or ding myself as so often happens in summer gardening and construction season. I remain on low-dose Aspirin and a suite of blood pressure pills. But my GP and the cardio team at the hospital have dialled back even these a bit, and now I can crouch and stand up without threatening to black out. Sitting on my haunches to look in a cupboard reminds me of my old self.

Straightening

It was Lindsay, the incredibly gifted and helpful Occupational Therapist at the Nova Scotia Rehabilitation Centre in Halifax, who suggested “Oval 8 Finger Splints” for my left hand’s fingers most reluctant to recover – my ring finger and my pinkie. My pinkie has been broken a few times over the years of basketball and tended to go its own way even before the stroke. I find the splints helpful at the end of a busy day when my fingers tend to curl and stiffen. My typing is improving slightly, although when my left hand quickly tires, those two fingers droop and tend to type their own messages.

Hearing

Of the many effects of the stroke, one of the most subtle has been a slight alteration in my hearing, or more accurately perhaps, my brain’s processing of what I hear. I’ve noticed more trouble understanding Sara when she’s in another room, or there’s ambient noise.

At the same time, my need to focus more carefully on whatever I’m doing so as not to lose balance, trip, or drop something, means my ability to multitask, including “listening, while…,” has diminished. And, I’m not young anymore.

So my audiologist appointment finally came through. The audiologist took me into a sealed quiet room, ran tests on both ears, then gave a series of tests I had to respond to.

The results? Apart from the normal post-stroke inability to multitask because of increased need for concentration, my ears are typical old guy’s ears: some age-related hearing loss, and that’s it.

I actually enjoyed the challenge of having four numbers spoken at once into both ears and having to try to correctly identify them!

Canning

When Gabe, my youngest, came to visit in August with Ray, they said they wanted to do some jelly-making like we did last year. The Saskatoons were done and it was a bit early for the chokecherries, but the jelly turned out well.

Our place is prolific for berries despite the scary and record-breaking drought. I spent hours picking Saskatoons earlier in the season, and our strawberries and grapes are plentiful.

Holding boughs with my left hand while picking berries with my right turns out to be good therapy, too.

Dancing

Gabe’s visit this month also gave me a chance to re-learn and re-try the swing steps we’ve done so many years together, and also to re-learn some of the guitar chords my fingers have forgotten, from all the songs we used to play together. I’m thankful.

If you watch the video (click on the photo below), you’ll see how my face goes mask-like (not direct stroke damage but because I’m concentrating on not falling), my left arms wants to pull in and tighten, and I lose my balance briefly. But overall, what a joy, and what an improvement! Sara has been keeping up my dance therapy since Gabe left…

Reading

My worlds overlapped recently when The Canada Lutheran asked Sara to write a column for their regular Q&A feature. As usual, Dr. Sara Parks, who is a consummate teacher and communicator, produced something interesting, academically solid, and pitched perfect for non-academics. Have a read below.

I recently finished Tanis MacDonald’s wonderful book Straggle. I highly recommend it – it’s full of beautiful writing and profound observation. And Tanis’s thoughts on “ungainly” walking fit my new post-stroke life so well….

Travelling, Walking, & Celebrating

This was also the month that I took my first solo plane trips. I’d been invited west to celebrate the tenth anniversary of our Wood Mountain – Cypress Hills trek in the summer of 2015, featured in my book The Good Walk (URP, 2024). The Saskatchewan History and Folklore Society, which has spearheaded the walks since, was having its board meeting at Wood Mountain in conjunction with the event.

Even though Sara could not accompany me to hoist bags, hold my hand and generally be my security blanket, I was lucky that my brother Mark and sister-in-law Barbara (a recently-retired physio) were there to meet me in Regina. We stayed in their camper at Woodboia Camp near the Wood Mountain Historic Site (the NWMP Fort at Wood Mountain). That’s where Hugh Henry, Richard Kotowich, Hayden Thomassin and I started out 10 years ago to walk the 350-km North-West Mounted Police Patrol Trail (Traders’ Road) across Treaty Four territory.

10 years later, posing with Hugh Henry of the Sask History and Folklore Society

Among the highlights of my trip was visiting the Badlands in the “East Block” at Grasslands National Park. If you ever have the chance, be sure to visit this incredible place.

One of the most significant tests of my recovery was putting on my hiking boots (this time, with elastic laces) and re-walking a portion of the trail from Wood Mountain to the Lakota First Nation. Ten years ago, we did the three miles easily in the morning. This time, I cut out when the trail got muddy and hard to walk, and rejoined later. I managed to walk about a mile and a half in total.

Another highlight was meeting Dr. Claire Thomson, who led us around the historic site at Wood Mountain and gave both an academic and a personal history of the area. Dr Thomson is a descendant of one of the early North-West Mounted Police officers, and of his Lakota wife. Her PhD research on the Lakota history of Wood Mountain won the prize for best doctoral thesis in Canadian Studies recently…I quoted her in The Good Walk and was delighted to meet her in person.

Authoring

At the Regina Chapters-Indigo store I spent an afternoon meeting old friends and new, and signing books. It was great that my western trip gave me that chance. Also this month I had a chance to sign books and present Someone Else’s Saint: How a Scottish Pilgrimage Led to Nova Scotia (Pottersfield, 2025) at the wonderfully-full and fascinating Dartmouth Book Exchange. It’s an incredible place, well-worth a visit!

My life as an author looks like it will keep me busy into the fall as well. In September the Atlantic School of Theology is hosting me for a series of six online lectures on Leonard Cohen and Saint Paul, following up on my book Prophets of Love (MQUP, 2023). You can find more info on those lectures by clicking the “Almost Like the Blues” link HERE.

This week my interview with CBC Radio One Cape Breton’s Wendy Bergfeldt came out on the afternoon show “Main Street.” God bless the public broadcaster! I was excited for my first Nova Scotia CBC interview…and our talk went so well it was broadcast over three separate afternoons! It was wonderful meeting Wendy – it turns out we have LOTS in common: growing up from Scandinavian settler grandparents in SK, attending the U of S in Saskatoon during the same years, living in the UK for a while, and then settling in Nova Scotia. Oh, and did I mention? A shared interest in decolonization, history, and pilgrimage! I’ll post the links to the interview soon. (In case you missed it, my earlier CBC Montreal interview with Sonali Karnick can be heard here).

Next Month: One Year

Soon it will be a full year since my stroke. I’ll be marking the occasion, for sure. Will I be celebrating? I’m not sure what to say.

My stroke cost me a lot that I haven’t yet regained: my sense of secure balance, my ability to walk long distances, to run, to dance smoothly, and to play songs smoothly on the guitar. And crucially, I can’t type with both hands like I used to, which is how I’ve written my essays, lectures, and books.

BUT: the stroke helped me realize what a community of support is around me, how good so many people are, what an incredible partner I have, and how precious life and health is. I’m thankful every day for just being able to walk and speak (and pee and shower!), teach, read, think, and do what passes for a “normal” life for me. Much less all that’s listed above.

In the end, it’s all gift. Because of my stroke last fall, I realise that now more than ever.

So, see you next month! I wonder what surprises await?

Sara found a more elegant solution for dripping juice than the complicated ladder-thingy I typically used.
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

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
    stroke-recovery

    Walking & Chewing Gum: Strokeaversary Week 10

    This week Lori and Lee from my physio team have been keeping an eye on my left hand. It’s going on two weeks that it’s been swollen. (I promise that’s unrelated to using it to peel and grate 3 cups of carrots for my first carrot cake since the stroke.) With the swelling comes cramping of my wrist & fingers at night. “I want you to try wearing this to sleep,” Lori said, pulling out a brace that looks like a plush toy octopus. “If it hurts, take it off.”

    The brace actually helps.

    Reflecting on the cramping coalesced some thoughts about my left side. This stroke has caused me to observe my own body as an outsider, to put it mildly.

    Here’s what I’ve noticed: at first when I started being able to almost imperceptibly budge my hand, those left-side movements required massive exertion. After we got over crying with relief that my brain connected to that hand at all, Sara and I laughed that just to wiggle my thumb a millimeter made me sweat and turn red. I had to tense my whole core like I was doing sit ups, bend all the fingers of my right hand in support, and even curl my toes. My tongue stuck out like a focused toddler. It seemed that every muscle in my body was involved in those first miraculous thumb movements!

    I now think that’s because they all were.

    Now that my left side has limbered up considerably, this “sympathetic movement” is still common. If I lift my left arm up, my right toe unconsciously lifts in sync.

    Other mystifying aspects of my recovery seem to support this. Why did the ice bath they gave my left hand hurt so badly when my right hand could frolic like a happy Scandinavian amongst the cubes? Why, when I go to use my unaffected hand, does my left hand go into spasm? Why does it take my whole body to shake that egg in music therapy? (See below.) And why, when I yawn, does my left arm sometimes rise from my side like some unbidden ghost?

    I’m calling it the “walking and chewing gum” problem. I think the reason everything moves is because, when it comes to creating action on the left side of my body, my brain is shouting at every neuron in the house. My rearranged “command centres” don’t yet know (and maybe the newly-conscripted neurons don’t know either) which of them is now responsible for, say, my third finger. So every neuron gets every order to move and they can’t all do everything at once.

    Getting well, then, is not as simple as just strengthening my arm, hand, and leg. It means training a new command chain. I want the extraneous twitches to drop away. I don’t want neighbouring neurons and their muscles to jump to attention every time I scratch an itch. Increased use can also harden those apprentice neurons to things like cold ice baths!

    Of course, I know that in the end, I’m fortunate my left side is moving at all! The fact that on Friday Lee had me breaking down the micro-movements in climbing stairs tells me a/ I can climb stairs, and b/ I’m at an “improving” rather than just “doing” stage thanks to brain plasticity.

    Firsts!

    Speaking of which, here are some of this week’s “firsts”:

    1/ a belt. I can wear a belt again, mostly because I can fasten it for the first time since my stroke. Not pretty, but it gets done. Works best with pants slightly too large, which is easier these days. (No glass of wine with dinner in the hospital!)

    2/ a wax manicure. Ria helped me dip my hand in molten wax. Then she wrapped it in a plastic bag and then a towel. Afterwards we all agreed that even if it didn’t heal anything, it still felt pretty darned good!

    3/ zippers. After attaching a twist tie and paper clip to my winter coat I can do it up, most of the time. I never before realized that those little fabric extensions on zippers are an accessibility feature.

    4/ first solo excursion. Sara was teaching Wednesday evening, but I really wanted to hear the “Women of the Antigonish Movement,” lecture by Prof. Robin Neustaeter and StFX student Sophie Gallant. So I put on my coat, signed myself out, took the elevator down to the entrance, got security to call me a cab, and off I went to the Antigonish Heritage Museum. I was momentarily stymied when the cab driver never got out to help me with my walker. But I managed to hoist it into the back of the van and back out again all on my own–another first! (No tip for this driver.) Sara came after class to drive me home. She packed the walker, and didn’t even ask for a tip.

    5/ that carrot cake. It turned out perfectly, and Sara miraculously made cream cheese icing, with no cream cheese in the house! The physios and nurses got most of it, as a small token of thanks.

    6/ “driving” test! This week I also took an initial driving test. Well, it wasn’t really driving, but a little plastic accelerator and brake pedal in the physio room, designed to check my reaction time. There were also some sequential logic tests on paper and an “identify the traffic signs” quiz. I passed them all without problem. This means I’m now recommended to retake the provincial driver’s exam as a one-handed driver.

    7/ most importantly: for the first time this week, I can consistently raise my left index finger, and spread my left-hand fingers so I can pick up and let go some objects. I can also swing my left arm into the air and hold it there (see below). In the long arc of my recovery these are massive developments. Yet I actually used my fingers a few times before even realising it, maybe because I’ve been “visualizing” doing it all week!

    Home for the weekend.

    I’m also finding it somewhat easier to manoeuvre around the yard with a cane. This weekend, we planted garlic. Or rather, Sara did, under my “Green Acres” style tutelage. But I did manage to shovel a little earth, mostly just to try. A gaggle of marauding Guinea Fowls watched us. They started visiting recently, and Sara’s in love and wants to adopt them or get some of our own.

    Surprise visitor.

    One visitor this week was local artist and activist Sara avMaat. She had just launched her latest ‘zine project, Rat Tales, at the StFX Art Gallery. It’s a tale of two “philosophically minded” mine-sweeping rats named Wesley and Trevor, based on real-life African giant pouched rats who do this work. Since I missed the launch, Sara dropped off a signed copy! I used her previous comic, Hope Unleashed, as a textbook when I taught “Religions and The Environmental Crisis.”

    Back to the “office.”

    The fact that Sara and I sometimes slip up and say that I go “back to work” or even “back to the hotel” after a weekend pass is a sure sign of how at home, productive, and rested I feel in my private hospital room. Sweet Pea seems to have internalized my schedule too. Today when it was time to go back she let us know she wanted me to stay….

    There are so many interesting carers at St. Martha’s I’d love to tell you about all of them. Today, Dionne comes to mind. Dionne is a thoughtful, experienced, and smart LPN who has lived in Greece and Germany – prompting us to converse about German pastries and Greek spanikopita and olives. Thursday evening she dropped by the room and said: “I need to write some kind of inspirational verse on the white board. What have you got?” I said, “Never ask a writer a question like that,” to which she replied, “That’s exactly why I’m asking you.”

    When Sara dropped by after class, she quipped, “How about: ‘Well, at least you’re not dead’?” and Dionne laughed. Eventually I came up with something to share. I never paid much attention to it after that until Friday afternoon, as I was preparing to come home for the weekend. Then, one of the elderly patients was shuffling by my room with her walker. She exclaimed, “oh, look at that!” and then read the saying out loud. I’ll end with it here, since it encapsulates how I feel about all your support:

    “Many hands make light work – and many hearts make good healing”

    Please keep praying, meditating, and raising thoughts, especially for my hand and my shoulder … and my neurons … as I go into the final stretch of my hospital stay: I’ve been told my discharge is scheduled for December 18th! Sweet Pea will be pleased.

    Categories
    Uncategorized

    Strokeaversary week 10: Handcamp Antigonish

    Here’s a slice of hospital life from Nova Scotia:

    Three elderly men, two with walkers, are standing in the hallway outside my room. “I was going to go home,” one says, “but all my neighbours are here.”

    The second man, Jack, pulls out a photo developer’s envelope he carries everywhere. “Jack was attacked by a bear,” the third explains, pointing.

    “Got photos?”
    “Yeah, there’s five of ’em.”
    “Five photos?”
    “No, five bears!”

    Jack hitches his pants before he regales them with the story: “I was working in the yard. Didn’t see him. He knocked me over the woodpile.” The second man takes the photo. Peers at the bear, then at Jack. “Prob’ly lookin’ for work,” he pronounces.

    A visitor walks by, muttering to herself: “How many Donald MacDonalds are there in this hospital?”

    Another visitor is about to walk into the room opposite when a passing orderly points to the “Contagion Precaution” sign requiring mask and gown. The woman dutifully dons a paper gown, calling out to someone deep in the room: “Donald, you’re on quarantine? You musta’ been a bad boy!”

    I’ve been fortunate to hear from some of you who’ve also spent long periods in hospital. Many of your experiences were similar to mine: the frustrations of wheelchairs and bedpans placed out of reach, the fatigue and the ennui of having to strategize everything from blankets to bowel movements in ways the able-bodied don’t have to think about. The way that occasionally, new nurses who don’t know me ignore me, standing there with pen in hand to sign myself out for the weekend, and speak right past me to Sara as if I’m incapable of my own decision-making.

    But there are also unique positives to being hospitalized in rural Nova Scotia. Overhearing the bear story, or Sara texting me to say she saw a bobcat at the end of our driveway on her way home one night, after her usual routine of tucking me in. What a gift to have her fussing around my room straightening things, reading to me, or sitting working alongside. (I am back into writing my Jerome project, part of my work as Gatto Chair at StFX. More than once, Sara and I have slipped and called my room, “the office”!) The atmosphere at St. Martha’s Regional Hospital is relaxed and humane; there are no set visiting hours–Sara is free to come whenever she can, stay as long as she likes, and to decorate my room with plants, lights, quilts, and art on the walls. Once last week four nurses came in just to see my room and breathe deeply. “It’s beautiful in here,” one remarked, “it’s the most relaxing room in the hospital!” I said only one word in response:

    “Sara.”

    Another distinction is delicious local food. I order from a small menu that includes a tasty seafood chowder that would cost quite a bit in a restaurant. You can have fresh poached haddock, or roast turkey with mashed potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce on demand. There’s excellent lemon meringue pie in the volunteer-run cafe. If you forget your wallet as I did one evening, they’ll just give you the item and tell you to pay it forward.

    The portions do tend to be geriatrically small. Combined with the lack of snacks, butter, or oil (I’m on a cardiac diet), very few breads and pastas, and no glass of wine with dinner, I’ve lost 20 pounds since my hospitalization. All good – the weight loss puts me where I should have been anyway. But I wish it hadn’t taken a stroke!

    Big news this week: I’m not moving. The Halifax rehab centre only takes Haligonians. When they learned I wasn’t eligible for “Hand Camp,” my incredible team here (Lori, Lina, Lee, and Ria, above) swung into action. Lori produced a binder labelled “Matt’s Handcamp” and teased me, “it’s going to be hard work from here on in.” My binder has daily check-mark columns for the next three weeks, with slots for shoulder, arm, and hand therapy, physio on my leg, “magic mirror” visualization (fooling the brain with a mirror image), and other homework.

    Lee has started me on the “big” exercise bike and treadmill. She’s doing gentle acupuncture on my left arm. I’m supposed to take weekends off, but weekdays until discharge are dedicated to more intensive therapy, whenever they can get me in.

    Lori has been researching some new OT techniques out of Japan that involve massaging and “slapping” the hand tendons alternatively to shake them out of cramps. (The hand has been seizing up a lot.) My new music therapist dropped by for the first time, getting me to tap a pen with my affected hand while he played the blues. Thanks to my friend Nadine from Montreal (herself a music therapist), for suggesting ways to use familiar music to improve my walking speed and gait!

    Improvements: I can now lift my arm into the air while lying on my back and touch my right hip with my left hand (I should be good at that – it’s a disco move!) I can “curl” a one-pound barbell and raise a washcloth up to my face or under my arm, using my left hand. But I have no strength yet to scrub. I can move a cloth around a counter more freely – wiping cupboards is clearly in my future. I managed to pick up a marker and draw lines with my left hand on a sheet. Sometimes I can pick up and drop wooden blocks, although straightening my fingers afterwards continues to be difficult. Like a baby bird on its first solo flight, I’ve ventured out on my first walks down the hall without cane or walker. Sara and I danced a real two-step, and she’s doing less lifting to keep my left hand in the air. I took my first standing shower at the hospital, holding the support bar for the first time with my left hand.

    Last week I had another left-side dream. I was in a large underground garage where an old muscle car, a 1970s Barracuda, had been left behind piles of boxes, old mattresses, and junk. In my dream I was putting oil into the rusted engine and trying to clear a path to drive it out. Speaking of which: not saying anyone did this, but IF a person had tried to drive their automatic transmission car just around their yard last weekend using their unaffected right hand and leg, it may have worked out perfectly! For myself, it looks like I will have to take a drivers’ test before I’ll be allowed on the roads, which makes sense.

    This week is the 9th anniversary of Sara and I meeting, so she picked me up from the “office” after work one night this week and we went out to eat for the first time in months, with a Gabrieau’s gift certificate from our departmental colleagues! I was also blessed with delightful visitors: Phillip Kennedy, a fellow walker along the Annapolis Valley, Tonya Fraser, who gave me some hand-picked Labrador Tea and a stone from the local beach, Leona English, another walker and a professor emeritus at StFX, and Andrea Terry, who in addition to leaving me several blueberry-themed gifts, reminded me that it was exactly one year ago that we had so much fun co-curating Philip Szporer’s and Marlene Millar’s art show “1001 Lights”! Many thanks also this week to my friend Dr Meredith Warren in Sheffield, UK, for providing a lecture for “my” class on “The Ancient Hellenistic Novels.”

    Speaking of small-town advantages, those who come to visit have to pay to park at the hospital. The whopping sum for a full day or any part thereof is … a twonie. (The first time we realised this, we laughed out loud, comparing it to big city parking costs.) While I was a little disappointed at first not to be going to Halifax for fancy therapy, I feel incredibly fortunate to be right here in Antigonish, where an entire talented physio team has taken me on as a project, and where I can focus on my recovery (and my StFX research) from such a warm and hospitable room. I am sure that much of this good fortune comes from the prayers, meditations, thoughts, and intentions so many of you are keeping up for me. Thank you!

    P.S. I was surprised and very, very thankful to get the news this week that Prophets of Love: the Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul is one of three non-fiction works short-listed for the 2024 Vine Canadian Jewish Book Awards! What a gift to my spirit to receiving an honour for past writing at a time when I’m typing with one hand!