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| Steven H. Cornelius Music and Stroke |
The psychiatrist Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, an expert on death and dying, developed a model in which she outlined five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Other thinkers have modified the list or brought in additional aspects, including (for those having passed through nadir of depression): reconstruction and hope.
Perhaps it is self-centered for me to frame my stroke in Kübler-Ross’ terms, but losing control of half of my body and mind was plenty traumatic.
With that caveat in place, in this post I work through Kübler-Ross’ categories in terms of my own recovery. Perhaps the exercise will offer some useful insights.
Stage 1: Denial. Clearly I experienced denial. On the night of the Big Event something was definitely wrong, but it didn’t sink in for me that it might be serious. After all, I was in perfect health. Wasn’t I?
Even at the hospital, at the point they tried to give me an MRI, I was semi-functional. Refusing to go inside, I pulled myself out of the machine, found a way to sit up on the gurney, and threatened to leave the hospital.
I wasn’t as functional as I thought, however. My next clear memory comes three days later.
I basically picked up where I had left off. Now in a hospital bed and with plumbing filling every available orifice (plus a bunch of newly created ones), I sat up and pushed my legs over the edge of the bed. Tubes or not, I was going to get up. My wife and a distraught nurse insisted I lie back down; they said I couldn’t walk.
How did they know what I could or could not do? I could walk last time I tried. Nevertheless, after looking at my tubes, I desisted. Even so, I was determined to try so as to prove them wrong.
A day or two later I got my chance. In the ceiling of my room there was a winch strong enough to support my weight. After being strapped into a harness like a parachutist, I stepped off the bed.
Alas, my caretakers had been correct. Even with the winch supporting me, I could not hold my balance.
Though I felt a bit foolish and quite self-conscious, I kept trying to walk. (I even remembered summers in Madison 50 years earlier when fishing with my grandfather on Lake Mendota. Now, however, I was the hooked perch flopping on boat’s bottom.
Maybe this was payback time. But still, I kept trying to walk.
Then I shifted my gaze from my strong wife to my youngest daughter, who had come home from her first weeks as a freshman at UW-Madison. The horror in her face told me everything. I had thought I would support her always. Now I couldn’t even support myself. Stage 1 denial was over.
Kübler-Ross’ second stage is anger, but I didn’t go there next. My Stage two was failure. I had let everyone down—my friends, students, colleagues, but by far most important, my wife and daughters. I sought solace by thinking about my deceased parents and ancestors. After all, I had forgiven them for dying and deserting me, might my family forgive me for tripping on stage rather than just getting off?
Another lousy performance.
Nothing about life is neat, certainly not the Five Stages. They all linger and overlap, feed of each other and inform each other.
The main brunt of Stage Two was extremely short. My mother made sure of that.
Since dying wasn’t an option, recovery became the only alternative. Almost with first consciousness I had been developing bi-lateral movement exercises, but now the exercises took on a sense of urgency.
Here, a modified return to Stage One (denial) served my needs. Anything I couldn’t do today, I would accomplish tomorrow, or next week, or in the next couple of months. (It simply didn’t occur to me that recovery might take longer.)
Kübler-Ross’ last three stages are bargaining, depression, and acceptance. I never tried bargaining, though maybe I should have. Anger (Stage Two) and depression (Stage Four) and have long been so closely intertwined that I cannot separate them effectively.
As soon as I was released from Spaulding, I stopped taking anti-depression meds. I did so for three reasons. First, I hadn’t wanted the meds in the first place and remained annoyed that the psychiatrist prescribed them. Second, I seemed unnaturally happy. Geeze, this experience was a real bummer. Shouldn’t I be feeling bummed out? In being so unperturbed, wasn’t I missing an important ingredient for coming to terms with my situation? Stopping the meds made life even more difficult for my wife, but at least I felt more honest. Last, but probably not least, I already felt emasculated by my incapacity. The idea of relying on anti-depressants exacerbated that feeling.
Earlier I mentioned two additional stages that others have contributed to Kübler-Ross’ list: reconstruction and hope. These pragmatic and emotional aspects supposedly develop after the griever experiences the nadir of depression.
But human consciousness doesn’t work with the predictability of a chemistry experiment. Step 2 doesn’t necessarily follow step one. What unfolds in one situation might not unfold in the next. Rather than being linear, consciousness develops in webs of meaning. Tugs on one part of the web are simultaneously felt (albeit with from different perspectives and varying levels of fidelity) in all other parts.
Which brings me back to music…
Tomorrow.
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