I was thirty two years old when I had my stroke. I banged on the screen door window to catch the dog’s attention; the glass shattered and severed two tendons in my arm and a bunch of nerves in my hand. The surgery was extremely successful in repairing that damage, but after I got home from the hospital I began to feel strange. Not myself. We checked with the pharmacist and learned that I was having a bad reaction to codeine, prescribed for the after surgery pain. When I couldn’t tie my shoes and didn’t know the names of things, including myself and my daughters, I was worried, but thought it was just an aftermath of the whole affair. Anesthetics and I have a track record of not getting along. By the time we realized that something much worse had occurred, it was too late to do anything about it. The doctor said that I’d had a slow bleed that had repaired itself and now I just had to recover.

It was very hard for me to fathom that I could have brain damage from a stroke at such a young age. And as I hadn’t had what I’d understood to be markers or symptoms of a stroke, I initially disbelieved the doctor. With time, it has become painfully clear that he was right.
I had to relearn who I was, what foods I liked and disliked, the names of my family, my own name and even how to use a can opener. Walking was possible as I had no muscle message damage, but I tottered as my balance wasn’t very good. In many, many ways, I had to start at the beginning as if I were a child again. I could read, but I didn’t understand what the things being described in the books were. It was very surreal. Writing was possible, but I had to exert a tremendous amount of effort to get what I wanted to say down on the page. It was as if a giant had a hold of my hand and wouldn’t let things move quickly or smoothly.
I would get lost inside our house as my short term memory was gone. I would have to call out to one of my daughters to find out which room I was in and how to get back to the TV room where they were. And forget about leaving home alone, as getting back would be impossible.
I felt so humiliated. I needed my elementary school children to reteach me the basics and to baby-sit me so I could do my regular mothering jobs like cooking, cleaning, laundry. They read to me at bedtime, not the other way around. They taught me how to tie my shoes, how to pull up a zipper, how to get the buttons in through their tiny holes. I felt such a tremendous sense of failure. I wanted to mother them, not the other way around!
By then, Christopher Reeves was well enough to do interviews and he said something so powerful about how serious disability could impact for the positive on children. He said that studies were showing that children of people with spinal injury grow up to be very whole in themselves. They have high social consciousness from having lived with someone with significant disabilities. They learn many skills like; compassion, deciphering someone’s needs and communication through their language troubles, how to pitch in when the going gets rough, and independence as they help someone less advantaged than themselves. They learn problem solving skills, as needs try to be met with someone unable to live as a normal person. He said more, but that message that this could be a blessing for my girls sustained me through many dark nights of the soul.
I think his message is central to any of us whose health died, leaving us behind as flotsam of our expectations and hopes for ourselves. Significant illness can be a Do Over for each of us. I found this to be especially true with having a stroke that left me not knowing who I was. This was an opportunity to learn what I value and who I am at my core. And I took that journey with gusto because I knew that my children needed me. Whoever me was. They needed what made me unique as their Mom.
So I let them teach me everything that they could and thanked them each time. I figured that if Christopher was right, then let’s get on with this puppy! Let’s use this to help them grow into fine adults.
They tell me that it wasn’t so hard having a mother who needed to relearn stuff. It was hard that I cried a lot. Strokes often do that to a person. I lost the ability to contain my feelings. I laughed when something struck me as funny. I raged when I felt angry. Tears would pour down my face when I felt frustrated or sad. I spoke my truth because I had no social filter to tell me what was appropriate and what wasn’t.
And interestingly enough, that has become one of my largest blessings out of this journey. I tell my truth. I like that about myself. No pussyfooting around, I just say what I feel, what I think, what I see. My family is wonderful about this. My husband says that I’m actually much easier to live with as a disabled woman than I was when being who I was raised to be. He thinks I’m also much funnier. I laugh more.
I learned the hard way that most of what we worry about in life just isn’t worth worrying about. And that life is precious and can be destroyed in an instant, so embrace it, hug it, enjoy it. Be alive! Because what was I waiting for? Life is right now, not tomorrow when I’m skinnier or better or richer or living in a better house. Life is right now and none of us are guaranteed to have a tomorrow. So live as full a life as your body will allow.
Essay written by Juanita Marshall © 2008 , butyoudontlooksick.com