The Need to Look Forward

I found a fascinating first-person story of a woman's journey through stroke and recovery. It is word-for-word excerpts from her diary, interspersed with entries by her neurologist, Louis R. Caplan, professor of neurology at Harvard Medical School. He writes this:

Those who dwell on their handicaps trap themselves in the idea that they must be exactly as they were before the stroke. They remain eternal patients and often forget to live...Successful people do not swell on this loss of capabilities. They emphasize different directions. With time comes experience and changes in goals. directions and activities. Our lives are a series of changing passages.

Progress Report!

I've been feeling tremendously sorry for myself because I can't think or type and work as fast as I used to. I am dyslexic and forgetful. I am now one of the ranks of people with ADD. If I get more than 2 feet away from the task I was doing, I get distracted by something else and wander off. I've realized that if I want to keep track of what I'm doing I have to write it down.

I drove around today to do errands. I carefully wrote out each destination, and what I needed to do or get there. After completion I checked each thing off. Guess what? Success! I came home with everything I needed to get, didn't take any wrong turns or get sidetracked! I'd even picked up some more books about stroke from the library. I didn't realize there were any I hadn't read yet. As I sat on the couch having my coffee and skimming the book, it dawned on me. I was SKIMMING the book. I couldn't do that 2 months ago. In order to keep continuity I needed to read each and every word. Today I picked out the portions I was interested in, effortlessly!

Woohoo!

Knitting Neurons

It's been a fascinating journey so far, through CVA (cerebral vascular accident, or stroke) into recovery. There are so many parts to this. The acute medical issues, the lingering physical deficits, the psychological understanding and acceptance and now the intellectual processing glitches.

Immediately after the stroke I had numbness and "lost-ness" of my left hand and arm. I really sometimes forgot that parts of it were there. I could move everything, if I looked at it specifically, but unless I consciously "inhabited" those fingers, they just dropped off my neural map. I had quite a bit of balance trouble. Having been a skater and diver in my younger years, a strong sense of kinesthetics was always a part of me. I always knew where I was in space. To not be able to stand on one foot for even 3 seconds was incredibly frustrating. To close my eyes and immediately tip over seemed ridiculous, for someone who used to be able to spin in several directions.

The sensory overwhelm was another problem. Standing in a crowded foyer at church, with all the voices and movement and bodies made my head spin. Standing at the top of the stairs and looking at the vast space of the entryway was another spin-producer.

Physically, I have improved dramatically. My fingers are all "there", most of the time. Sometimes I realize I am not using them, and then I make a conscious effort to inhabit them once again. I can stand on one foot, a necessary skill in everyday life(!) Why I consider that such a big deal, I don't know.

Internally I've had to process and accept the idea that I'm damaged goods. I really believed that I had "dodged a bullet" and would be just fine. For some reason the results of a vision test that showed I have a vision loss in my lower left quadrant was hardest to take. It hit home then that, yes, parts of my brain ARE gone. I told a friend I was having trouble with that, and that I had hoped to get through this unscathed. She said, "None of us get through life unscathed." Wow. (Thanks, Kate.) It put it in perspective and somehow I immediately felt okay with it.

Lately the challenges I'm facing have to do with intellectual processing. I've always been a very "left-brain" thinker; analytical, linear, detailed, but at the same time my subconscious was working in creative, outside the box ways. I could work at some problem methodically and step-by-step, only to have some unique solution just pop into my head. The right brain functions were doing their thing, behind the scenes. I've noticed that seems to be lacking, perhaps because the brain injury is on the right side of my noggin. I will plod along at something, working and working, even when it's not working, thinking if I just keep doing it, it will fix itself. That creative spark is not there.

I am not tremendously worried about that at this point, (for one thing, what would that accomplish),and for another, I have made enormous strides in my recovery in the other areas, so I'm sure this will improve also. Just to hedge my bets, I'm doing as much right-brain stuff as I can, to exercise that part, and as my friend Martha said, knit some neurons. (Love that phrase!