Recovery a long arduous road which demands patience

A photo of me probably in 2018, honored for my years of teaching at OLLI at AU

Dear friends and readers,

I began the road to recovery sometime during my two weeks at the Rehab/Nursing Home/Subacute physical therapy clinic. Yes Vierra at Falls Church combined all three functions. After about a week, I began to notice bodily strength begin to return, that “I” (my brain and whatever else in me makes me move and speak) was in touch with my left side and could do things with my leg and hand on that side that I couldn’t before. I don’t want to harrow my reader yet I would like to tell people of what my experience of stroke was like.

It was a compound of physical, social and psychological experiences. I was unable to move parts of my body, dependent on others who were underpaid, worked too many hours supposedly caring for far more patients than they could and not respected much (hence sullen, and mildly to strongly bullying), very uncomfortable (constipated) and not able to help myself, worrying about what was to be, endlessly sleepless. I was never at peace, and as an autistic person perpetually offending others. I did what I could to avoid the (loud) TV programs others watched (asked them to “lower it, turn it off at 4 in the morning please”). MRIs are misery-inducing while one endures them.

When I finally got home, I didn’t know how to handle myself with my daughters at first and wanted to cry because I could not control my environment. Many of my books ended in great disorder in order to make walking space for me. I am now taking 2 zolofts a day to still the obsessive anxiety and panicked thoughts that plagued me. At last that spigot is turned off.

I can now walk (awkwardly) without the walker (or a cane); I am sleeping again; I can type some again, my mind clearer at last, sharpness and controlled memory returns. I’m still unsteady on my feet when I first get up. I just had an episode where water went down “wrong pipe” — I felt for a moment I couldn’t breath. It’s scary. I’m told swallowing is complicated mechanism and I’ve sort of forgotten how. I did once begin to choke but frantic coughing removed the obstruction. How exhausted I was from that.

These seemingly side issues are part of what makes for misery. Part of my brain died or didn’t get enough or too much blood, and my brain has to re-attach itself to things now cut off. I do cough a great deal. I take antihistamines. It’s a drip from mucus due to too much pollen. TMI, as Laura would say. The typing exercises are to re-teach or remind my muscles and re-teach my brain or wake it up about where my left hand fingers are.

I’ve started a reading program and routine. My proposals to teach online have been accepted (See below.). I was able to do an acceptable talk at the level I used to (arduous effort), I will fight again to get my driving license back (hire a lawyer) as I cannot get to either OLLI any many other places except by car This could condemns me to staying home, ergo gradual loss of what genuine friends I’ve made. You won’t hear about museum shows, or live theatre here for quite a while. The internet is my lifeline more than ever (zooms).

You will say, it could be much worse. Yes, I could be dead, a vegetable (I was terrifically lucky to get immediate help from ambulance and hospital people); my daughters have been an equivalent of angelic; enough money has helped buy an array of things to help myself with. Now I need to practice self-control (how over these many years since the mid-1990s I’ve learned that). Do much more exercise — it’s painful, with parts of my limbs very sore.

Laura and I trying to view the partial solar eclipse we experienced in an Alexandria park

Where am I tonight? Reading the superb Austen sequel, Gill Hornby’s Miss Austen, with 2 new computers (laptop, ipad with good apps to enable me to watch movies in bed), new furniture (comfortable stable chairs), Laura uses my car & generously takes me where I need & want to go (walks in Old Town, the park, loving a course on Cornwall from an OLLI at York). I’ve renewed long-time friendships here on the Net and participating in group reads once again, I watch cheering movie TV series over and over (All Creatures Great and Small, the Durrells), excellent ones too (Mr Bates and the Post Office, on the assassination of Lincoln, Manhunt, costume drama with Tobias Menzies). I’ve joined a Mary Oliver poetry group on face-book. Hudson River paintings, cat pictures. I will go on vacation (!) with Laura, Izzy, and Rob for the last week of July on Coronada island, near San Diego. I am planning in June to adopt a rescue cat a year or so old to help keep Ian company (with Laura’s help). I want a female like ClaryCat I’ll call Fiona.

Sculpture of kitty at Chapter House, Lichfield Cathedral, UK

I’ll be teaching online this summer (Women writing and character in detectve an/or spy fiction), taking courses on line (2 on Woolf, The Waves and To The Lighthouse, one on Sayers Lord Peter/Harriet Vane), Doctorow’s Ragtime), some at the OLLIs, some from Politics and Prose, one from Cambridge). Pray for me my connectivity is stable.

Recent funny scene (I’m alive to the comedy of it): me wandering about my house trying to find where I abandoned my walker or left my cane

Ian now sitting where ClaryCat used to — he cries for company and attention a lot

Gentle reader, anything you would like to know about strokes? This blog will now return to recording my reading and other lives autobiographically, e.g.

I’m now into the second half of the fourth season of All Creatures, and discover I must’ve fallen asleep on a number of them, especially the second half. I did know I was overdoing it. Well here they are on Passport, and I’m loving them. No or Yes the war is kept in the background but what is repeatedly in the front ground is a slow moving intimate story of things not usually paid such attention to: aspect’s of Helen’s pregnancy, Mrs Hall’s distress at what filing for divorce entails, Carmody’s shyness and difficulty in adjusting to both Siegfried and James’s demands. I enter into these cases fully — Gerald’s need to care for his sister, the animals themselves. I’ve now bought the DVD for the season from WETA and have felt tempted to buy the first book in order to compare and deepen my knowledge of the source books. Samuel West is often the quietly riveting presence, but I especially love Anna Madeley as Mrs Hall

father-pregnant daughter pair from All Creatures

A widow-mother-scholar-writer-teacher-lady of 77,
Gladly would she learn, and gladly teach,
Ellen