Hemorrhagic stroke

Dear friends and reader,

Here’s why I’ve not posted for weeks: I wrote this to a literary women, Anne Boyd Rioux, in answer to something she wrote to me on her substack newsletter: I had sent one of my foremother poet postings: Muriel Rukeyser.

Very unfortunately since I last wrote on this substack newsletter, I had a stroke (Jan 30th, 20240) and now find myself painfully trying to recover. Among the abilities I seem to have lost is typing. I have many ” side” problems like this (insomnia, constipation); centrally I cannot walk w/o a walker and am in danger of falling. I’m physically weak. Where I was for many years (until Jan 29), a rapid touch typist I cannot get my left hand to type anything but slowly and inaccurately. I have been trying to get access to therapy for typing, and as yet have failed. I discover Kaiser might not have such a service. I am again waiting to see — now next week. They provided therapy at the rehab (I was in one for a few weeks) and now at home; but hardly enough. I discover I don’t have medicare but medicare advantage paid to Kaiser– and nothing else. I find nothing on the Net; if this new offer by Kaiser is another sham, I shall try AARP, but feel I will again confront no living services.

To a friend at Olli at Mason: I can read and this isolation is bad for me so I am going to try a mini-course (4 weeks in June at OLLI at AU), using all I had created at that last OLLI at Mason. Going to try to do a Trollope talk using handwritten notes. I walk a little better but still need a walker and in danger of falling. Yes a dearth of literature at OLLI at Mason so I signed up for women’s rights and the Sayers Lord Peter Wimsay and Harriet Vane course at Politics and Prose (though they are pricey)

I’m told of complicated software I probably cannot operate without an at teacher. It is a kind of death for me.

************ — Update several days later — in a letter to a good (internet) friend who told me of an online class from Cornwall on Corish literature and culture:

It’s 2:50 am here and I’m up (unfortunately) as usual. Trying hard not to feel sorry for myself, but simply frustrated, I’m in a bad place just now. I can’t go out (can’t walk alone) and yet can’t talk to people as I’ve been doing for 35 years (via typing words) . I seem not to be getting better, and doctors are helpless against what the stroke has done to me — why I am so grateful for this Cornish class via zoom as a lifeline. My older daughter is trying to help me learn to use this Otter-AI, but I am here so bad with digital manipulation.

To facebook friends on my timeline:

I’ve had my first explanation as to why I feel I’m not improving anything when I do typing exercises. It seems the stroke disrupts neurological connections such that my brain does not know where my fingers precisely are and fails t control their movements. There’s a space gap. This is part of why I lose my balance — why I need the walker. I’m failing to situate larger parts of my body parts of my body too. So I hardly feel I’m coming closer to walking by myself and feel am often near losing my balance and falling hard.

A couple of hours later. I just finished participating in 4 classes on Austen with Maria Frawley (Politics and Prose online) and felt radiant when it ended. (really 8 because I watched 4 recordings of what I’d missed) For me life has long been worth the “cost” of it because of my literary studies. I can still read and enjoy with others. The opening picture is Emma painting from Andrew Davis’ BBC Emma.

I hop this is not my journey’s ending

Ellen