NEW
REALITIES -- HOW I LIVE NOW; LIFE IN A SLOW LANE
One of the most baffling results of a stroke is the new concept of
time that it brings with it. You leave daytime, nighttime, Eastern Standard
Time, and take on a new life time called slow time. All things
are slowed down in your life. Slow time has no minutes, hours, days,
weeks or years. There are no specific times. When you ask how long it
will take to improve some particular bodily function, the answer is
always the same one you get if you ask "How many rocks are in a pile?"
or "How high is up?" The person giving the answers is not being facetious.
This is simply part and parcel of your new life. Adjust to it. Go with
the flow.
I can put on my socks (if they have wide tops) as fast with one right
hand as I formerly could with both hands --but it took me five months
to perfect it. It took ten months to learn how to tie
shoestrings, and I still don't do it well. But I can do it now,
and I have regained one more small portion of control, of independence.
I no longer have to call my wife each Sunday to tie my shoe strings
on Sunday-go-to-meeting shoes. I wear slip-ons all other times.
My eating time is twice as long as before. I walk with a cane and not
often, but when I walk, I walk fast. Someone told me that walking is
controlled "falling forward." My control is not the best, so I hurry
up to keep from falling down. It takes me forever to read a newspaper.
Turning pages of any kind is exasperating and takes forever. By the
time I have found the song number in the song book, the musician is
already on the new song and I am probably on the wrong page anyway.
Getting dressed each morning is time-consuming, and a shower is an excursion.
Shaving the left side of my face with my right hand is a moral victory
if I cut the whiskers off and not my left ear. Tooth-brushing takes
about the same time, but getting the toothpaste on the toothbrush with
one hand is truly a learned skill and takes time. Teeth are great time-savers.
Using them is the only efficient way to open letters and Sweet 'n Low
packages with one hand. This breaks a few rules of etiquette, but teeth
get the job done. Almost all other things I can think of take two to
ten times as long. But rejoice! You probably have more time on your
hands now than you have ever had in your life. You can keep in step
by doing double time.
***
The road from total paralysis to minimum function is a long and arduous
one. It is fraught with defeats, victories, and many innovations --
mostly innovations. It seems to me that it is the simple things that
are the most perplexing. For instance, you are right-handed, with a
left side paralysis, and you are sitting on the john. You find the toilet
tissue roll is on the left side. How do you get to it? Even more exasperating
is to find it on the right side. You grasp the tissue with your right
hand but how do you tear it off? You pull it and it keeps rolling off
until the floor is full. Innovation #1: step on this tissue with your
good foot and tear with your good hand. Innovation #2: using your good
right hand, put the tissue between your teeth and yank downward. Do
not drop the tissue from your mouth or you must start all over again.
Innovation #2 uses less tissue.
Always eat the smallest pieces of your food first. By doing this you
can always push the smallest against the largest to get it on the fork
or spoon with one hand. If all else fails and you are starving and simply
cannot hem up that last morsel in the bowl, resort to a "couth bowl"
(as in "You ain't got no couth") technique. Look around you and if no
one is looking, pick up the bowl in your good hand and drink or eat
out of its edge. Do not try this at a White House reception. A CIA agent
will catch you every time. Don't even try to eat a half of a cantaloupe
with a spoon with one hand. You will never be able to cover up the mess
you will cause when it slips upside down on the table or floor. Nor
will a host ever invite you back.
If an insect bites you on your right hand or arm and you have a left
side paralysis, you have a problem scratching where it itches. Resort
to the jungle. Mules rub against a pole when the bites are bad. Those
bites on the inside of your upper right arm are murder.
It is hard to make much sound clapping with one hand unless you have
a table to pound on. I have never solved the problem of washing both
hands with one hand. I have the cleanest left hand and a very dirty
right hand. Try it sometime and let me know how you solve it. My right
hand and arm are much stronger than they were before my stroke. My right
side is being worked much harder to compensate, and that has been beneficial.
I hated my cane at first. To me, it was symbolic of my weakness and
to all who looked my way, a verification that I was a stroke victim.
I was ashamed then, but not any more. I proudly wear the brain attack
lapel pin and will talk to anybody, anytime, anywhere about a stroke
if it will help. My cane now goes with me everywhere I go, and it is
amazing how many things I use it for. It is like an extension that makes
my right arm more efficient. All stroke survivors should have a "speaker
phone." With only one usable hand it is almost impossible to write down
a message, while holding the phone. (Also, all the family can join you
on your end of the conversation if you wish and you are free to move
about and write as well as talk (small sales pitch). Besides, Ma Bell
needs the money to pay my pension.)
Pencil and tablet paper writing becomes a standard method when you
have only one hand. This then makes an electric pencil sharpener an
essential. Old-fashioned crank types just don't work with one hand.
I tried holding the pencil in my mouth. I broke the pencil and almost
broke a tooth. I don't recommend it
***
I have been surprised at some of the questions asked me by acquaintances
concerning the effects of a stroke. Most people have little conception
of how deeply I was affected mentally. One question puzzled me for some
time. I was asked if I prayed during the early part of my stroke. This
person obviously did not know me very well or he would not have asked
-- he would have known the answer.
A stroke is one of the very few human maladies where learned professionals
tell you there is nothing more that medical science can do for you.
In the most horrible accidents there is always the hope that in some
way the body can be mended, and generally today ways can be found. Almost
all diseases that affect the body can now be cured and more and more
diseases are conquered each day. Hope is always there. But with a stroke
the finality of the neurologist's prognosis cannot be misunderstood.
When you are in a state of paralysis and you are told there is nothing
more that can be done for you, you are almost immediately thrown into
a state of hopeless shock. The last bit of hope is now gone You turn
to yourself for help and realize that you are incapable of even thinking
clearly as to a course of action. Your only hope is to turn to God --
and you pray and you pray and you pray. Did I pray? You bet I did, and
I still do. Without prayer I could never have made it. It is singular
how often innovation seems to follow right after prayer.
***
Nothing about a stroke makes sense. It has no rules or regulations.
One of its deviations that still puzzles me is how a stroke, which is
only a clot in an artery in the brain, can reduce your whole body strength
and stamina to zero. I understand why it causes certain muscles to cease
functioning, but for it to reduce parts of your body unaffected by the
blockage to the stamina and strength of a baby is baffling. When I finished
cardiac therapy, I was riding the bike 40 minutes three times a week.
When I first tried the bike after the stroke I could not finish five
minutes, and then I had to be helped from the bike. This change came
about in less than an hour. I have been told that a stroke affects the
entire nervous system, though it may paralyze only certain portions
of it, depending upon the location of the clot. Everything I do is very
tiring. Some have said that the body needs all the energy it has to
heal itself and has none left over for other things. This I don't deny.
I just don't understand it. Why should washing my face, brushing my
teeth, and combing my hair, all with one hand, exhaust me to the point
where I have to rest before putting on my clothes and then rest again.
My strength is coming back very, very slowly. One doctor said the time
frame for regaining strength in the unaffected parts is comparable to
the time it takes a baby to walk and run without falling. I can't even
help my wife take the groceries from the car to the house. I am disgusted
at myself. Bah! Humbug!
***
I was worried about the possibility of stroke damage to that part of
my brain that controlled all phases of my thinking processes -- anger,
fear, memory, anything cognitive in nature. At my age, my memory had
declined before the stroke to such a point that I did not remember a
joke until I had told it the third time. When speaking, I have for many
years warned my audience that I have now reached the age where I distinctly
remember things that never happened.
Many stroke victims have told me that their short-term memory was badly
affected. Mine was too. Each night at bedtime I have to take three pills.
It has taken me a year to admit that I put a pill in my mouth and forget
to swallow. I have trouble swallowing anything that is not almost liquid
anyway. So I am later reminded by a strange taste in my mouth that I
had better swallow that pill before I put another one in my mouth. Strokes
do strange things to your thinking patterns. I must take a dozen pills
each day for one reason or another, so "pill-taking" is also time-consuming.
I am glad I don't take literally the labels on pill-boxes as Uncle Pill
Jerk Peter did in the children's book Miss Minerva and William Green
Hill. Uncle Peter got confused by a label that read, "Take one pill
three times a day."
***
My wife is a good driver. I really mean it. This is surprising because
she had so little opportunity to drive over the years before my stroke.
I always did the driving. The passenger side of the front end of our
cars was simply unknown to me. Though I drive some now, my wife does
ninety percent of the driving, and I am a nervous wreck. At first, I
thought the stroke had affected my eyesight. Even now, every time we
turn a corner with me in the passenger seat, I am sure she is going
to run up on the sidewalk. And I wonder at how smoothly the car runs
with both right wheels in the ditch. Seventy years of riding on the
left side of a car gave me a four-foot leeway on the right side that
has now been taken away from me. We have had at least fifty accidents
that never happened in the car in the last years I have always disliked
a backseat driver. I had never been one, since I always drove. And now
I am the world's worst. I thought quitting smoking was hard to do, but
even after a year I am positive the car will be wrecked and we will
both be killed every time she cranks up the car. And to my certain knowledge
she has not even scraped a fender. I have at last been able to quit
screaming while riding with her, but I grab the door handle and put
on brakes so hard, where there are no brake pedals, that I always have
a charley horse in my right leg and cramps in both legs that night.
It is so strange that I never think she is going to hit anything on
her side of the car -- it's always on my side. Strokes do strange things
to your whole memory system. (Forgive me, honey, I'm trying real hard.
But, just in case, I have just ordered a cellular phone to take in the
car. It has a special button marked Ambulance.)
***
Experience has taught me that there are
some things you do and some things you don't attempt to do after a stroke.
There are some things you can use and some you no longer try to use;
some things you can wear and some things you can't.
IN
- Slipper type shoes
- Old stretched buttonholes
- Turtleneck shirts
- New soft toothbrush
- Large soft rubber tips for canes
- Electric razors
- Pick up food requiring only one
hand
- Food cut into small bite size
- Food that can be cut with a fork
- Doors, chairs, tables only two
steps apart
- Shower baths
- Funny TV programs
- Toilet paper roll on right side
of toilet
- Spray deodorant
- Remote controls for everything
- Wide top socks
- Happy-faced visitors
- People who can convince you that
you can contribute to the good of someone else
- Cheery, laughable get-well cards
- Easy-off caps on medicine bottles
- Urinal within arm's reach of
bed
- Water within arm's reach of bed
- Light switch within arm's read
of bed
- Loud bell within arm's reach
of bed
- AM-PM clock seen from bed
- Portable radio
- Assistance in trimming fingernails
- Assistance in trimming toenails
- Assistance in shampooing hair
|
OUT
- Shoes with laces
- New tight buttonholes
- Shirts with buttons on front
and sleeves
- Old stiff toothbrush
- Hard small tips for canes
- Safety razors (never straight
razors)
- Pick up food requiring more than
one hand
- Food bigger than bite size
- Food requiring a knife to cut
- Doors and furniture widely separated
- Tub baths
- Sad TV programs
- Toilet paper role on wrong side
of toilet
- Stick deodorant
- Few remote controls
- Narrow top socks
- Long-faced visitors
- People who tell you that you
are lucky to be alive -- that the stroke could have been a
lot worse: look at how bad so-and-so is
- Tear-jerking get-well cards
- Push-down and screw bottle caps
|
