 |
| Barb Polan Barb’s Recovery |
On Nov. 12, I woke up and got ready for work as usual; nothing was amiss until I got downstairs and tried to walk across the kitchen to where my husband, Tom, was standing; at that point, my left ankle started curling out so that I was dragging my left foot across the linoleum floor. I was wearing Dansk clogs, which I sometimes roll my ankles in, so I dismissed the problem. I got my make-up bag out of my purse and immediately dropped it on the floor. When I picked it up, it immediately dropped to the floor again. "What's wrong?" Tom asked. "Nothing." I definitely considered nothing wrong.
I picked up the bag for the third time and dragged me and my left foot to the half-bath near the kitchen, where I applied my make-up. Those of you who know me or see me regularly know that the make-up application could not have taken more than two minutes. At the end, I straightened up and fell over to my left, knocking my head into the window trim and knocking the toilet paper roll onto the floor (the toilet paper holder in that bathroom does not involve a spring or any complicated rod - it's just a bar that curves from against the wall forward to create a place to slip on the roll; it's the toilet paper holder that is absolutely the easiest onto which to replace an expired roll - no excuses for leaving the next user without paper!(one of my pet peeves)
At the sound of my fall(or was it the very loud "shit!, shit!, shit, shit!, shit!" that followed that tumble?), Tom appeared at the bathroom door and asked if I was okay."Yes, but can you please put the roll back on the holder?"
"No," he said, "I want to see what's wrong with you."
"Nothing's wrong with me. I'm just having a little trouble with my ankle. Do me a favor, please, and put the roll on, okay?" No, we have a bigger problem than the roll not being there. "What do you mean? What if someone uses the toilet and there's no paper here? I hate that. It's a simple request - can't you just put the roll on?" Now I was getting mad.
Tom straightened me up, one hand on each of my arms, just below the shoulders and he peered into my face, looking for something. I was baffled. "There's something terribly wrong, Barb - the left side of your body is not working, Smile at me." I did, even though I was still irked that he wouln't replace the roll.
"Something is definitely wrong. The left side of your face isn't working right either."
"I'm fine. Can you please put the roll on before I head for work?"
"You're not going to work today - you've had a stroke. You're not going anywhere except the emergency room."
That was not an option. I'm the general manager of a weekly community newspaper and I had a very expensive consultant coming to the office that day to work with our sales reps. I am as reliable as the sun, which is why I had, over the 11 years I'd worked at the paper, gone from being a reporter to being general manager; not going to work was not ever an option. I didn't miss a day, ever.
In fact, before that day, I'd had a perfect life and I was very grateful for it: a wonderful, interesting husband and two grown children (our son lives on Long Island and has a job he loves and our daughter is a senior - a music major - at Columbia; we live in a lovely old historic house in Gloucester, a house that requires endless improvements, but is well worth the effort - stucco exterior, slate roof, beautiful yard with granite outcroppings and a view of the sea.
Tom took me to the ER after all, by promising to drive me to work (to get me to the passenger seat of the car, I bought it because my commute is more than an hour and my car is a standard, so I wasn't sure the left leg was going to be able to push in the clutch.) After the ER at Addison-Gilbert in Gloucester, I was transferred to Massachustts General, then to Spaulding Rehab-Boston for four weeks. While there, I learned more about my condition and how to walk with a quad-cane. I also learned what compassionate, supportive friends and family I have - everyone I know stepped up to help me through the ordeal.
One strong cheerleader is my boss, who encourages me to identify progress every single day, which now, six weeks later, is sometimes a challenge.
A niece gave me the book "Julie and Julia" for Christmas and when I finished it, I thought that since starting a blog when she took on the challenge of working through every recipe in Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" was such a good idea for Julie Powell, it could also work for me as a way to look back and see progress during my recovery journey - no less daunting, I think, than mastering French cooking.
See the original article:
in
No comments:
Post a Comment