Stroke anniversary

I don’t think I did anything on this last year; 16 years.

Seventeen long years ago, on yesterday’s date, Tuesday, October 26, 1993, I got up about 2 a.m. to go to the bathroom.
Standing at the toilet, all-of-a-sudden POW! It felt like my whole being dipped and recovered.
We turned on the light. I had double-vision, my speech was slurred, and the left side of my face sagged.
All classic signs of a stroke, but we didn’t know them. Nor did we know what a stroke was.
If we had, we would have called 9-1-1 and gone to the hospital.
Clot-busting drugs probably. Save the brain.
A blood-clot had moved out of my heart and blocked blood-supply to my brain-stem. A thrombosis.
I was 49, in pretty good health, so now we had to figure out why I had a stroke.
I only weighed 140 pounds, and was running footraces.
Although my running had deteriorated slightly since moving to West Bloomfield.
I had just returned from a weekend train-chase in WV with my younger brother-from-Boston; Nickel Plate steam-locomotive #765 masquerading as Chesapeake & Ohio 2765, which it was quite like.
It had been an extraordinary adventure, but an arduous journey back home.
Eight hours of constant driving; time for blood-clots to form in my legs.
I figured I’d go back to bed; my alarm went off at 3 a.m. anyway.
At that time I was driving transit-bus for Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs.
My run pulled out at 5:05 a.m., for which I had to get up at 3 a.m. to eat breakfast and make the long trip to work.
I was no better at 3 a.m., so called in sick; thus suddenly ending my 16&1/2 year career of driving bus.
Your brain-stem and cerebral cortex determines your personality, so my wife said goodbye to the person I had been, and welcomed the new “born-again” person I had become.
Not born-again in the religious sense, but a new personality.
Exasperated and angry with all the detriments that came with my stroke.
Fumble-fingered and “dropsy,” the dropping of things.
I also had to relearn simple things I had done for years; like tying shoes.
We called my doctor, and he said to get to the hospital right away.
I couldn’t drive, so my wife would have to.
She didn’t know the way.
Despite double-vision I directed her to the hospital.
We arrived about 10 a.m., and were told I’d had a stroke.
Into the Emergency-Room; take a number.
I was in that Emergency-Room at least 12 hours; my wife had to return home while I was still there.
By then it was dark, and our two dogs were outside.
Finally I was assigned a hospital-room, a double with others who appeared to be terminal.
I was in that hospital-room at least three weeks, and had at least three other neighbors.
Tests were done to determine why someone like me had a stroke.
Pay-dirt was ramming an ultra-sound probe down my esophagus to view my heart from inside. From outside my sternum was in the way.
I had a Patent-Foramen Ovale (“pay-tint fore-AYE-min oh-VAL-eee;” PFO).
This is a defect between the top two heart chambers; they’re not fully sealed from each other.
The top two chambers aren’t sealed from each other before birth, but are supposed to seal after birth.
About 25% of adults have PFOs.
Blood can pass through the PFO.
A clot which had formed in my legs made it up into my heart, passed through the PFO, and headed for my brain.
Normally (without a PFO), such a clot would get directed toward my lungs, where it would probably dissipate.
But it went to my brain instead, causing the stroke.
It’s the same reason New England Patriots linebacker Tedy Bruschi (“brew-skeee”) had a stroke — and at a young age.
The hospital wanted to do open-heart surgery right away to repair the PFO.
But I deferred — I was too messed up to make sense of anything.
My doctor appeared, and told my wife I’d be a vegetable.
That made me mad.
“I’m gonna prove you wrong, Doc,” I bellowed.
Probably indiscernible gibberish.
It became obvious to my wife I was no longer normal when I couldn’t reset my digital wrist-watch with the change back to Standard Time.
We started walking the hallways of that hospital; me and my wife keeping me from falling.
My left side walking worked fairly well, or so I thought.
I should be able to at least walk, I thought.
I was supposed to ring for a nurse when I needed to go to the bathroom.
I got sick of waiting.
I was gettin’ to that bathroom myself even if I had to hold the wall.
My room-neighbors loved my spunk.
“He’ll make it,” they used to say.
I was moved by ambulance to another hospital across Rochester. It had an in-patient stroke-rehabilitation unit.
They wanted to tie me into a wheelchair, but I managed to avoid it.
Be a good boy.
They also sent me home occasionally.
At home the wheelchair was put away.
I was stumbling around without it somehow.
Usually I could.
I discovered my left arm was almost completely dysfunctional.
No matter, left hand on the staircase railing — we’re makin’ that thing work.
What I was inadvertently doing was rewiring my brain; making what remained do what the killed parts had done.
The scuttlebutt was when you could make that long staircase, you were released.
I got so I could, so home I went.
My wife’s mother was there to help if needed— I would have none of it.
I wasn’t being helped by someone who had once scowled at me.
I started doing outpatient rehabilitation at Rochester Rehabilitation Center.
A cabbie would cart me there, since I wasn’t yet cleared to drive.
Returned home I would walk our road out front to avoid my wife’s mother.
She tried to play dominoes with me, but it was awful.
I started putting puzzles together — brain-work — got up to 1,000 pieces, after starting with 60.
Also played Solitaire on our Windows computer.
Got so I always won.
And my motorcycle was waiting.
At the second hospital I was told my motorbike days were over.
But no-one tells me that!
My other younger brother in DE suggested I try the motorcycle when I could ride bicycle.
I got so I could ride bicycle, so I tried the motorcycle.
Riding motorbike was a little different than before the stroke, but I could do it.
People tell me I’m a miracle because of that.
I’m not so sure.
Later I attended Rochester Rehab for a psychiatrist appointment, and one of my cabbies was just starting stroke rehabilitation.
I had rode up there on motorcycle.
“You look fine,” he said, shaking and a mess. “What’s your secret?”
“Ornery,” I said. “If you think you can do it, you probably can.”
So now 17 years have passed since that life-changing day.
I’ve pretty much recovered all my functions.
There are a few minor remaining detriments; e.g. -1) degraded balance (better since the YMCA), -2) compromised speech (difficulty putting words together for speech; I can’t argue, or talk fast), -3) lability (the tendency to cry, although I have it pretty much under control), -4) poor motor (especially finger) control, and its related -5) dropsy (the tendency to drop things), and -6) making mistakes and forgetting things. I don’t have all my marbles.
But I pass for normal — people always tell me “I’d never know you had a stroke.”
I’ve met quite a few other stroke-survivors at the YMCA; one a guy who partially lost his left side.
His stroke was five years ago.
I told him any more my efforts seem to be more fighting off old age, not counteracting the stroke.
A live Christmas tree we planted shortly after my stroke is now over 20 feet high.
When we planted it, it was about three feet high.
And we slammed it rather haphazardly into the hole; we didn’t expect it to survive.
It was mostly my wife who planted it.
I was too spastic at that time.

• “We” is me and my wife of almost 43 years, “Linda.”
• We live in the small rural town of West Bloomfield in Western NY, southeast of Rochester. We used to live in Rochester.
• My wife is also “automotively challenged;” driving is fearsome.
• I can reset my wrist-watch.