Tag: stroke

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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.

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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!

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A Room of One’s Own: strokeaversary week 9

I remember walking from Melrose Scotland, to Holy Island, England, in 2013. After some extremely hot and tiring days, the path took me up a 300-metre ascent to a rocky outcrop. (There was also the small matter of a pasture with bulls, which can happen when you have the “Right of Responsible Access” to pastureland–but that’s another story.) At the top I stopped to catch my breath. Turning to see the view, I realised that there on the distant horizon two valleys over, I could make out the ruins of the Roman fort where I’d stopped on my first morning of pilgrimage, two days before.

That’s how this week feels. The pilgrimage through my stroke is hardly over. But this week I’m seeing how far I’ve come. The parallel bars (below) that not so long ago represented the greatest distance I could possibly shuffle are now where I try balancing while standing on my left leg without support. I have more strength in that leg every day. Without use of my left hand and arm to steady myself, my balance is off. But the distance? No problem.

Although the physios aren’t recommending I do this at home, Lee is making me practise climbing stairs one per foot, like you probably walk them, instead of like a toddler does. This week she had me kicking a soccer ball back and forth with her (I had to hold on to a railing for support, but my left leg did quite well.) For the first time since my stroke I did up the button on a pair of jeans on my own. And I might only be able to “bench press” a featherweight aluminum cane. But the simple fact my left arm can even hang on is a major win. And for the first time this week, I could sometimes push my arm straight ahead on a table. “Cheers” is getting closer!

I’m thankful that the newly-conscripted neurons in my brain that agreed to take over the management of my arm and hand are beginning to sort out their new roles. But I have to be patient: I was so anxious to force my wrist to flex in my room that my hand swelled up like a balloon. I suffered painful cramps until it recovered. Sara suggested, since I am so eager to use all my time working on recovery, that I do it in other ways than “extreme boot camp” (as she put it) and instead take some time each day to be consciously grateful to my brain and my awakening left side. It’s great advice, so I’ve added that to my routine.

Lee, who works mainly with my legs, says she’s amazed at my progress. She hasn’t seen this video of me bringing my own tea to the couch at home on my “weekend pass” today, without cane or walker. I’m not sure what she’d think!

When I was watching this video and bemoaning the lack of fluidity in my step Sara reminded me that just six weeks ago it required two people to hoist me out of bed and get me to the washroom. Looking back brings perspective.

There’s no news yet about “Handcamp”…. they’re waiting on word of whether I’m eligible. But I’m booked in Halifax at the end of the month for a preliminary cardio assessment, a first step to the procedure to close the hole in my heart that may have let a clot pass to the brain.

Having a room to myself is making a world of difference. The previous week, with little rest day or night, I was looking “increasingly frazzled and worn,” in the words of one nurse. Now I sleep well most nights. During the day there’s peace, so I can read, listen to CBC, write (working on some poetry), or do my physio. I also feel more comfortable video-chatting with the kids, and I attended my own class by Zoom this week when Elizabeth Castelli graciously came to talk to them about early Christian ascetic women patrons. Now Sara can even bring her meal and share the whole evening, as her schedule allows. From a place of stress, my hospital room has become an oasis for healing.

I’m thankful to the physio team – Lori, Lee, Ria, Lina, and Abby – who are so patient with me day after day. They were the ones who pushed for a room where I would get the rest my brain needs to recover. The staff know that my dogged motivation comes from being supported by so many of you. One of the orderlies looked at my shelf of cards and said “well, aren’t YOU well-loved!” That comment gave me a physical rush of warmth and comfort.

Several of you recommended recently that I read Daniel Levitin’s just-published “I Heard There Was a Secret Chord: Music as Medicine.” Coincidentally, Levitin and I had an email exchange last spring, when he asked me something about Prophets of Love: The Unlikely Kinship of Leonard Cohen and the Apostle Paul. We exchanged books by mail. So I’m reading Secret Chord now, and feeling the recuperative power of music every day (see below). I should tell Levitin I’ve had a stroke, and how applicable his research is for me.

That healing power of music is definitely helping release some of the frozenness of my left side. I’ll sign off this week’s update with the clip below, more evidence of how far I’ve travelled with this stroke. I love to dance… and in my own room, now I can. Or better, we can. If you know me, you know this has GOT to be good for my recovery!

[Click here for my podcast about that walk from Melrose, Scotland, to Holy Island.]

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Left Neglected: week 8 strokeaversary report

I finished a fascinating novel about a brain injury called “Left Neglected” this last week. At one point the main character is afraid she’s being sent home from hospital too soon. She doesn’t feel ready. I’m starting to wonder if this is happening to me. When I’m tired, my speech still slurs, and then I have to be careful eating, or I bite my lip or tongue. My walking has improved greatly. But when I catch or stub my left foot, as I inevitably will at some point, I’m always a split second from falling, especially while using my cane. Still, I’ve graduated to being allowed a cane sometimes. And now, the nurses at St. Martha’s are starting to greet me in the hall with “Why are you still here? You should be home by now.”

However, it’s not the nurses, but the physios and the doctor who make that call. For the sake of my hand they want me around a while longer. Back in September I was predicted to go home mid-December. Now I’m hearing it might be in just a couple weeks! There’s another wrinkle: Dr. Gorman and Lori, the head physio (that’s Lori and me above), are checking whether I could be sent to a specialized occupational therapy facility in Halifax to try to help my left arm improve. Sara immediately dubbed it “hand camp.” “You can still go home weekends,” Dr Gorman assured me. I’ll know more soon.

I’m not young but I’m the youngest patient on our wing. That and my strong recovery mean I don’t need much help from the nursing staff … so they tend to ignore me. This weekend they moved me to a private room. Hallelujah! This means I’ll get a full night’s sleep without 4 am wake-ups, and blaring Jeopardy and nature shows all day.

My walking is still not great, especially when I’m tired. But it’s not bad. As of this last week, I’m officially evaluated as independent with a cane and walker. It’s ironic that the arm motion I most have to practise is the one you make when giving a “cheers” (the little arm wagon you see below helps me rebuild that muscle).

One thing I have trouble with is clipping my fingernails and toenails. Phyllis, an LPN who is the closest to a saint-nurse I’ve ever met, came on her own time at lunch and cut my toenails while we talked about Kenya and Cape Breton. I’ve never had a pedicure and it felt wonderful. There are so MANY people and kindnesses for which to be thankful: delicious Barr’s chocolates from Stratford ON thanks to Susan and Darin Jacques, letters from Rev. Aaron Billard and visits from Rev. Peter Smith, the local United Church minister, & cards from my cousin Raymond Anderson and from George Greenia.

I’m still trying, with limited success, to learn how to supinate my wrist and open my fingers. Opening jars requires almost acrobatic skill and sometimes both knees. But I’m getting better at small tasks that require closing and holding my fingers. In the physio kitchen I peeled a carrot and a potato. This Remembrance Day weekend I got to spend THREE days at home – blessed days! – and the best physio of all was holding cards for a game of Uno with Sara’s parents Shirley and Winston (I had to pry my fingers apart afterward to get the cards out).

Sara and I were given 20 spruce trees which we planted around the property. Or, I should say, which Sara planted while I pointed my cane and gave advice. This was my chance to try walking with a cane over rough and uneven terrain. I didn’t fall!

The pictures and videos perhaps make things look normal…but they’re not. I move at a glacial pace around a room. If you called me and my back was turned I wouldn’t glance over my shoulder for fear of losing balance and tumbling. When I’m tired or cold, especially in the mornings, my hand and sometimes my entire left side can go into a painful cramp. I’ve developed an itchy rash from sleeping on rubberized mattresses for two months, so Sara is putting cortizone cream on my back.

BUT….I’m so far ahead of where I was!! Every day I feel how deeply upheld I am by the prayers, meditations, and thoughts of so many of you. I rely on that support every step. I continue to know how fortunate I was to have suffered a stroke that only affected my motor skills. I get to go home more and more, and spend time with Sara. And I have an appointment at the end of November in Halifax as a first stage to fixing the hole in my heart that perhaps let a clot through to my brain.

Sometimes I feel like this crab, with one puny arm and hand that just won’t develop. But when I look back I see how far even that hand has come. I’ll learn more this week about whether I’m being transferred to Hand Camp in Halifax. Just today, for the first time since the stroke, I was able to walk – okay, hobble – with Sara down to the water at the end of our property. That has always been a life-giving place for me, and it was so good to stand there again and breathe the cool air.

I’m thankful.

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Week 6 Strokeaversary: setbacks & slowdowns

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How prescient and thoughtful George‘s card was this week! One of the dangers of making daily improvements in my post-stroke recovery is expecting that trend to continue without fault. At the outset, the health care team said there would be days of setback and slowdown. “It’s not a uniform progression,” they warned. “Don’t be discouraged when some days you find you can’t do as much, or your condition even seems to regress.”

That’s what happened this last week. “You’re dragging your foot and swinging out with your hip more,” observed Lee as she watched me with the walker Monday. Eventually she said “Just take a break. You must be tired.” My speech slurred perceptibly, especially Sunday through Wednesday, as much as I tried to mindfully keep my “s”s tight. For the first time, there was no progress in my hand – despite Ria’s, Lena’s, and Lori’s best efforts. Between physio sessions I was exhausted. I’d crawl back into bed for naps.

I asked the staff whether a change I was starting to notice in my taste buds could be stroke related. Some said yes, maybe so. But when Sara picked me up for a supper at home, and heard that I hadn’t been able to taste the maple syrup on my french toast and didn’t enjoy a piece of home-made fudge, she left her N95 respirator on for the car ride home, then pulled out the last covid test from the stash we’d built up (when they were plentifully provided), and said: here, take this.

I was positive. Sara said, “I knew it.” She still made the Mexican Bean Stew she’d planned, but we ate in separate rooms. When we got back, I told the ward. For 24 hours they didn’t quite seem to know what to do with me and said to “wait for Infectious to get here in the morning.” They administered a test that had to be sent away for analysis. They didn’t bother to protect my room-mate, explaining “he’s already been exposed at this point.” But ironically, just as I started feeling better, the infectious disease control measures locked in full force. By Wed night I was isolated to my part of the room, and staff added gowns, gloves, and face shields to their usual haphazard masks, when they checked my vitals or brought my pills. For the rest of the week members of the physio team who were not themselves sick faithfully led me through my exercises in the few square feet of room where I could still move. Things like showers and fresh bedding were put on hold. For a few days it was just me, my laptop, my book, and the window.

Sara suggested I take advantage of my isolation to write poetry, a practise I got into in Montreal, England, and Ireland. I was anxious to try this, and a bit anxious about it. The side of my brain damaged by the stroke is the side typically used for imaginative, connective thinking – precisely the kind of conceptualization required to write poetry and fiction. In my isolation room, I worked out a poem about looking out my window and sent it to Sara. “It made me cry,” she wrote back immediately. Knowing I’d been worried, she added, “It’s very much your pre-stroke style. That part of your creativity hasn’t changed.” Encouraged, I wrote the first draft of another poem, about a crow. “Even better,” she responded. “Keep on.”

By week’s end my slurred speech was closer to normal, my energy was good again and I was making progress every day with my exercises. But hospital protocols require 8 days from first confirmed symptoms, and so they have me on isolation until this Tuesday Oct 29. The physios and doctor suggested that if I could, I should go home for the entire weekend. “You’ll get more physio there than here, at the moment,” Lori told me. Sara, who ALWAYS masks in shared spaces out of concern for vulnerable loved ones, had also become briefly unwell – a “surreal fatigue” she said, and a few coughs and sniffles, although she tested negative. I was six days post-first-symptoms. Sara came and picked me up. I was able to shower both days (shower chair on loan from the Red Cross) and fall asleep in my own bed, where I’ve had my best sleeps in weeks.

Sat morning I was able to make bread-machine bread, make coffee and tea, and cook rice (although re-doing the twist tie on the rice with one hand defeated me). Saturday and Sunday I did my leg lifts and toe-points on our deck in the sun, so much better than the thin slice of my room between isolation refuse bins. Tonight (Sun Oct 27) I’ll head back to the hospital and two more days of isolation.

I can now hold myself up on my left elbow, and bend down to pick up items (with my right hand) that have fallen on the floor. My left hand remains barely responsive. But here at home I’ve used it to squeeze toothpaste and hold a jar while I twist off the lid, so that’s something. I had a very vivid dream this week in which I was going into a musty wing of a large building and turning on the lights, trying to find the thermostats, etc. In my dream I knew that I used to live there and had to make it habitable again. I think the dream was about my brain reactivating (re-inhabiting) my left arm and hand.

The more I’m learning about strokes, the more fortunate I feel that mine did not take my speech, hearing, or cognition, or in any other way cut me off from my loved ones. Apparently 4 of 5 strokes affect these faculties in some minor or major way. I’m still recognizably my old self – to my own mind, to Sara and my kids, and through this writing, to you. I’ve joined the Heart and Stroke Foundation. I finished Norman Doidge’s brain plasticity book and I’m half-way through “My Stroke of Insight: a brain scientist’s personal journey” by Jill Bolte Taylor. I’m grateful that apparently only my mobility was affected by whatever deadened the 3-cm sphere on my right brain hemisphere. I feel a responsibility to work hard on my recovery because of that relative good fortune.

This week I’m thankful for the lasagna dropped off for us by the Penners from our Department of Religious Studies at StFX, for the meal coupons given us by our Dean, Erin Morton, for Joanne, our administrator, who thought to send me a ‘grabber’ for those pesky charging cords, for visits from Lewis McKinnon, Robert Kennedy, and Rev. Peter Smith, for the magnificent flowers from my adoptive Finnish family at St Michael’s Church, Montreal, for James McGrath’s gift of a zoom lecture to my class at FX (check out James’ fascinating books here), for tea and a book of poems about walking from our former colleagues at the University of Nottingham, for prayer candles lit at Lutheran Church of the Cross in Victoria, Quebec City, and in so many other places as well, including by the Apostolic Johannite Church (the Gnostics). “Has anyone ever been so love-bombed?” teased my friend and fellow writer Ellie. I don’t know. But I know I feel that support in every part of me every time I try to extend those left-hand fingers. One of these days!

Last Monday, when I was feeling poorly, Sara took me out to St. Martha’s grotto garden to feel the sun and see the leaves. I felt a bit discouraged just then.

I played Gabrielle Papillon’s song “Go into the Night” for Sara in that garden, to tell her how absolutely loved and supported I feel by her, and how thankful I am. We both broke down and had a cry as the cars passed at end of shift. It’s a beautiful song. I’ll leave it here for you, too, in closing, in case it speaks to any challenges you’re facing. Not all weeks are easy, stroke or not.