 |
| Barb Polan Barb's Recovery |
Amy of the mycerebellarstrokerecovery blog recently wrote about becoming happy in her post-stroke life, about jettisoning those things/people who don’t contribute to her happiness. That got me thinking: When the stroke struck me, I remained conscious throughout and was aware of the facts ER and MGH personnel communicated, but I never felt afraid. In addition to being quiet, unemotional and introspective, along with having slurred speech, I had an inability to focus on anything that mattered – like having had a stroke. For example, my dinner tray would arrive at my bedside in rehab and absorb all of my attention, distracting me from my family or whatever visitors I had. Friends might drive an hour or more to visit, wheel me into the hospital’s sunroom, and then when we finished discussing one topic, I would turn my wheelchair around and start to leave the room; someone – usually Tom - would tell me that I should stay because the visitors were not planning to leave yet, and then turn my chair around and push me back to the visitors, which I imagine now was awkward for everyone. But I was too zoned out to be aware of all things at once: the Zakim Bridge outside the sunroom windows, trying to not slump in my wheelchair, following the conversation, wondering how things were going at work, trying to get my hand to function, and hearing a woman crying out in garbled speech, etc.
There was also seeing the identifying information on the back of all the wheelchairs stored in the sunroom and trying to break the labeling code; it wasn’t until I saw mine that I figured it out: first name, initial of last name, and then room number; I decided it was so that nurses chasing after a wayward patient knew whose name to call and what room to return her to. With all that going on around me, people expected me to pay attention to them too? In the first two days of my numbed, shell-shocked behavior, while educating himself about stroke, Tom stumbled along, trying to grasp what the repercussions of the stroke were. Out at dinner the other night, Tom told me that in those first two days, he wondered if he would spend the rest of his - mine, really – life caring for a me as an unresponsive and barely functioning being (but able to eat anything put in front of me), still overwhelmed by having life going on around me; and that scared the hell out of him. He admitted that, given how hard it’s been dealing with me as I am (not that I think I’m anywhere near easy, but I’m pretty independent), he could not have done it if I’d been less capable. On the other hand, I think he’d have done fine – because sometimes you have no other choice than to suck it up and decide to make your life the best it can be. Our daughter was 10 when she was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. She and I spent the first three days after her diagnosis in the hospital learning about diabetes management and proving we knew enough for the medical personnel to set her - a fragile fledgling bird - out into the world in my care. Every night in the hospital, I lay on a cot next to her bed, silently crying, on my back with tears running from the outside corners of my eyes into my ears. My running thought, like a hamster in a wheel, was, “This is not the way her life was supposed to be.” I was angry and afraid, and thought my indignation was a reasonable response. She, though, was very pragmatic, keeping track of the number and locations of her many shots. She told me many years later that she thought she’d be treated for those three days in the hospital and then sent home cured; that sounds similar to my prognosis for a stroke – four weeks working hard in rehab, then home-free. Have I mentioned that I was numb and shell-shocked? Only a few months after my daughter’s diagnosis, once we had settled into diabetes routine, I asked her how she could remain so cheerful, why she never got angry about having diabetes. Her answer? That she had two options: being sad or being happy, and why should she be miserable? In the time since the stroke, I have thought often of my wise and stoic 10-year-old. I admire stoicism for just two reasons: (1) it prevents loved ones from experiencing even more pain and (2) it works to prevent being subsumed in the self-pity abyss. On the downside of stoicism, a study I once read supported the hypothesis that cancer patients who actively seek support from others end up living longer than those who depend on themselves to cope emotionally. What I saw as a remarkable aspect of my daughter’s reaction was that she pushed disappointment off to the side and, instead of looking that way, she focused on what she truly wanted - happiness. What if we all saw disaster as an opportunity to choose happiness?
See the original article + 3 Comments:
No comments:
Post a Comment