Twenty-five years ago......

.....October 26th, 1993, I got out of bed about 1 a.m. to go to the bathroom. My alarm would go off at 3 a.m. so I could put on my uniform, eat breakfast, then drive 35-40 minutes to Regional Transit Service in Rochester, to pull out a bus at 5:05 a.m.
All of a sudden, POW! It felt like my entire being dipped. My wife and I weren’t stroke-savvy back then, but that’s what it was.
Facial droop, double vision, wonky balance = the usual symptoms. I thought I’d get better if I went back to bed.
I tried, but soon called Transit to report sick, so ending 16&1/2 years of driving bus. Also beginning my long recovery, at least two years.
The weekend previous I’d been in WV chasing a restored railroad steam-locomotive, Nickel Plate 765, with my kid brother. “Jack, you gotta see this thing — it will blow your mind! 70 mph!”
To get there was at least eight hours of non-stop driving. Plus another non-stop eight hours returning. No longer possible, but possible at age 49; my brother was 36.
I was in pretty good shape back then; I’d been running since age 34 or 35. But unknown to me I had a patent foramen ovale, an Atrial septal defect. Prior to birth a passage between the upper two chambers of your heart allows you to use your mother’s oxygen. After birth this passage is supposed to grow over and close. Mine didn’t, a defect common in my mother’s family. Her father had a stroke, and my mother had a “heart-murmur.”
Many have the Atrial septal defect, yet nothing happens.
“Why in the world would a runner have a stroke?” my hospital doctors asked. Tests were done, including a Transesophageal Echocardiography (TEE) (esophagus ultrasound), whereby an ultrasound probe is rammed down your esophagus so your heart can be better looked at.
They found my patent foramen ovale. It passed a clot that probably formed in my legs driving back from WV. My stroke was a thrombosis, a clot-caused stroke.
My hospital wanted to operate right away, open-heart surgery. I apparently was aware enough to tell my wife to “not let them tear me apart. Some day, but not until I’m not so messed up.”
I think I was hospitalized two weeks. All they could do was observe; I arrived too late for clot-busters.
My speech was a disaster, and I was still ultra-excited from chasing that steam-locomotive. A hospital speech-therapist showed how to measure my speech per self-made arm-beats.
Doctors felt my stroke was serious due to my overly-excited speech. I also remember my wife getting mad because some hoity-toity young resident used me to display stroke symptoms.
She also helped me walk.
My general-practitioner came and told my wife I’d be a vegetable. That made me mad. “I’m gonna prove you wrong, Doc!”
“He’ll be all right,” said a dying roommate. “Ornery as Hell!”
After hospitalization I became an inpatient at a rehab hospital. “You gotta set goals,” a therapist told me.
“I’d like to be able to ride my motorcycle again.”
“Are you kidding?” she laughed. “Your motorcycle days are over!”
That made me mad. No one tells that to a Hughes.
Years later I was told my return to motorcycling was miraculous.
Discharged from that rehab hospital I was sent home — with a wheelchair.
“Put that thing in the closet,” I told my wife. “I’ll get around, holding the wall if need be. No wheelchairs for this kid!”
I was allowed home as long as someone was with me. My wife’s mother came up from FL to stay with me. No way is someone who growled at me first visit gonna take care of The Keed. “I’ll take care of myself.” Finally she returned to FL after a month or two of nothing to do.
I began outpatient stroke rehabilitation at Rochester Rehab. An assistant noted she was from Webster, NY. “Where life is worth living?” I snapped. “He can talk!” she cheered.
Within a week they had me cross-country skiing again — on borrowed equipment.
They also had me do carpentry. “Next time you hit Chase-Pitkin for shelving lumber, you take me along. Them boards were so warped I couldn’t nail ‘em together well enough to look decent.”
Rochester Rehab ended after I was cleared to drive. “Don’t clear me if you don’t think I should ride motorcycle,” I told them. But I was still visiting Al Sigl Center for post-stroke psychiatry. (Rochester Rehab is part of Al Sigl Center.) —I rode there on my motorcycle.
“You look fine,” said a cabbie who earlier drove me to Rochester Rehab. He’d had a stroke. “What’s your secret?” he asked. “O-R-N-E-R-Y,” I said. “If you think you can do it, you probably can. You may have to engineer to offset disabilities, but you usually can.”
So now 25 years have passed. I returned to work, but not as a bus-driver. I went with the Daily-Messenger newspaper in Canandaigua after starting as a post-stroke unpaid intern.
It became the BEST job I ever had. What I was looking for before Transit = a word-geek.
My pay was peanuts, but I was having fun. A Rochester Rehab job-counselor wanted to try getting my job back driving bus. I refused. “You’d make a lot more money,” he said. “Yeah, but it wouldn’t be fun,” I said.
Years ago my P.F.O. was closed with open-heart surgery. No more Coumadin.
My beloved wife who stood by me 20-25 years ago died of cancer six years ago. She missed her 50-year high-school reunion, and also our 50-year college reunion — we were the same class.
She also missed The Donald being elected prez — to her that woulda been sickening.
I retired from the Messenger 13 years ago. And just in time, since it quickly changed owners. Newspapers were dying already.
Long story here: they woulda laid me off. My computer-tricks retired with me.

• “Transit” is Regional Transit Service (RTS) in Rochester, NY, a public employer, the transit-bus operator in Rochester and environs. I drove bus for them 16&1/2 years.
• Back then “Chase-Pitkin,” a one-time Rochester lumber-yard, was a locally-based seller of home-improvement stuff. It was allied with Wegmans supermarkets, and has gone out of business.