Thursday
I am home after three days and two nights in the hospital. my right arm is working at 15 percent capacity after suffering a stroke Monday night. that explains the absence of capital letters. remember the lives and times of archy and mehitabel by don marquis? You’ll understand why I identify with the archy roach, who typed on the Marquis newsroom typewriter at night hopping from key to key but of course couldn’t operate the Shift key. therefore, no words were capitalized in Archy’s writings. I am typing only with my left hand and therefore have Archy’s restriction to lowercase letters. Since I’m working on a computer and not a typewriter, the apostrophes are available to me, even though Archy wasn’t. a literary cockroach, that’s me.
Friday
Progress! I can peck with the index finger of my right hand, so the Shift key is within reach. Adopting the positive attitude prescribed by doctors, nurses, and therapists, I now think of my little ischemic stroke as a growth incident. Suddenly my right leg and right arm are about three inches longer than before. It’s also heavier, which explains why your foot always touches the edge of the ladder you’re trying to climb. Obviously, the right hand with the fork will have a hard time hitting my mouth, which has changed shape.
It is the morning of the fifth day since the little plunger broke off from somewhere and flew into my cerebral arterial tree. I was home alone, my wife was away on business. I had gone to bed early. I woke up to go to the bathroom and found that something was friends with my right leg and arm. “She must have slept badly,” I thought. “He’ll clear himself up.”
I’m not sure about the subsequent events. I broke two drink glasses at different waking times. I couldn’t seem to get them up on the kitchen counter before they got out of hand. A glass that I had used to take PM painkillers, foolishly thinking that sleep would rectify my mysterious malaise. Those pills were a big mistake.
I woke up again in the early morning still refusing to admit what was happening to me. He had had some problems with cholesterol and high blood pressure, but they were controlled by prescription drugs. Seeking activities to avoid the unthinkable reality, I got dressed and headed downstairs to the garage to take out the recycling bins and trash can for the morning pickup, a chore I’d forgotten to do the night before. I had to lean against the wall of the stairwell going up and down. The right leg and foot were not working well. I tried to sweep up the broken glass in the kitchen. My right arm couldn’t handle the broom.
Keeping myself busy, I lowered the clothes into the machine. I kept dropping objects during my laborious descent, leaning and sliding down the wall of the stairway. Upstairs, once again, I tried to brush my hair, but my right hand and arm wouldn’t cooperate. I finally took the cordless phone to my chair and sat down to think.
I carefully read the phone book warnings not to dial 911 unless it was a true emergency. At that time it was 6:30, not early enough to seriously disturb anyone, I thought madly. I opened the front door, sat in my chair, and dialed. I was embarrassed by the difficulty she had in stating that she thought she might be having a stroke. Minutes later, paramedics were in the driveway along with a fire truck. The team took care to get me down the slippery outside stairs and into the ambulance. I hoped the sirens hadn’t woken my neighbors.
At the hospital, with my blood pressure off the charts, I got tired of telling people what month, date, and year it was; who was the president and how many fingers they were holding up. I politely and accurately answered their questions wondering why they couldn’t answer those questions themselves. When night came, I would turn on the television to feel equally superior to the candidates on Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. They sent me home on the third day.
Stroke plus one month.
My thrombosis was not massive. I am recovering with a speed that seems undeserved given my idiotic refusal to accept what was happening and my eight hour delay in calling the paramedics. Sure, I knew about strokes, but I hadn’t had a headache, no vision loss, and by myself I didn’t get a chance to discover my inability to speak clearly. I have a lot to be thankful for.
Everyone should learn about the symptoms of stroke and the treatment of the various types of stroke. A drug called rt-PA (recombinant tissue plasminogen activator) can virtually eliminate the effects of a stroke, but the patient must arrive at the hospital within 90 minutes of onset. (Recent medical developments have extended that time limit.) The tests will determine if one is a candidate for rt-PA. I waited too long and may spend the rest of my life with problems that could have been eliminated with this miracle clot busting therapy.
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