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| Robin Rocky Mountain Stroke Survivor |
Sometimes I start to wonder if maybe I’ve always been like this. Most of the time, I am reasonable about it and know that it just started in January. But sometimes, like tonight, I find myself thinking…”Maybe I’ve always been like this…”
We’ve been really working to pare down my life to something manageable (hence the silence here on my blog). We’ve discovered that I can manage about two hours of productivity twice a day. We’ve had almost two weeks now of gradually cutting back my activities and I was just starting to feel human. Then today an exceptional amount of work that could not wait meant that I pushed myself to my limit…which is a frustratingly short four hours of work.
I am sitting in my chair on the porch waiting for supper. My right visual field is grey. I feel as if the entire world is spinning and I am willing myself to not notice. My right hand and arm are excruciatingly achey. I can’t hold my water in my right hand…I just drop it. And I think: maybe…maybe…maybe I’ve always been like this and I just didn’t notice. I start wondering if my past was really as alert and busy and functional as I imagine it to be. It’s the pit of strokiness…not despairing, just stuck.
When I look at photos from before the strokes, I get a strange familiar feeling…I recognize those people in those photos. I had a dream…a long time ago…with those same people in it. In that dream, I was happiest when I was busy. I rarely sat still. I never did nothing. I had two children…a tiny baby and a little boy just growing out of toddlerhood. I worked long hours and played long hours and stayed up until the wee hours of the morning to catch up.
But this is reality now: pushing myself hard and planting three tomato plants, needing a nap after two hours at work, watching my children grow into independent people while I sit quietly in a chair observing, needing to hold someone’s hand to walk outside in the dark. Sure, I can do a lot…for a strokey person. But as I wait for my husband to fix supper, and interrupt him every few minutes to help with the kids, I think about that dream person and her life and wonder…perhaps I haven’t always been like this. Perhaps that life was real.
I suspect this period of my life will someday feel dreamlike, intangible, not quite real. I’m glad I’m writing about what it’s like so that someday I can look back and remember the experience of recovering from a stroke. I hold on to the belief that this will not always be my reality.
Does your life before stroke seem real to you? Does your life now? How has your perspective changed over time?
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