Road to recovery
August 7, 2004 | 12:00am
It is early in the morning. We head for Makati Medical Center, make straight for the emergency room, straight for the x-ray section deep inside. I am with my two daughters, Sarri and Panjee, and they are in charge. I go in for all manner of x-rays. I take an MRI and sleep in it. Dr. Banico, my neurosurgeon who I am meeting for the first time, arrives. She is young and pretty. I like her immediately. Apparently, the night before they came to see me, my daughters spoke to my former therapist and described my weird behavior. "I think your mother has had a stroke," she said. "Bring her in." Then she lined up cardiologist and neurosurgeon. Now I know that if you’ve had a stroke, it’s your brain that goes haywire so you need a neurosurgeon. If you’ve had a heart attack, you need a cardiologist. How do you know if you’ve had a stroke or a heart attack? I suspect you don’t. The people around you just guess.
Dr. Banico requires me to return to the MRI. She follows at a respectable distance apparently observing the way I walk. Later she interviews me about the way I feel and does an examination of my body sides with a small hammer. Yes, that feels different from the other, I say, and both are painful but differently and one side feels more remote than the other. "You’ve had three pops in your right brain," I think she said though I know the word "pops" is mine. "It’s covered with blood. We have to clean it. You have to check in. But you know what? You should be more damaged than you are. Thank God you are doing very well," she said. I did not know what she was talking about.
We go to the room on the eighth floor. My daughters dislike it, object, demand a change. If there is anything wrong, I don’t see it and am dying to lie down and sleep. No. We must lunch at Floating Island and return to another room, one they liked. I settled in slowly as one does into a hospital, surviving all the intrusions, the IVs, the thermometer, the medicines, the 1,001 check-ups of various people you don’t know. You can sleep all you want but you are sure you will awaken at least once every two hours.
I do not have many vibrant memories about the time I was recovering. My stroke was on September 7 and I know I was not well until much later, until April maybe. No, even now I am not well if the standard is my old self. At least I accept that I will never be like her again. My brain changed. It popped and drowned in blood. I am alive and well but a totally different person from the one before the stroke. What do I say about her? I think she died.
Right after the stroke I was dumb, lifeless, or maybe someone pressed a button and put me on hold. Panjee took me home with her. At her lovely house I woke up early every day and had breakfast with them after which they went to school and I went back to bed to sleep a bit again. Then I would shower and try to read for a while, then sleep again until lunch after which read and sleep again until around six when it was time for dinner and then I was asleep again by eight. I never slept so much. I think my body was making up for all the late nights I spent ever since I grew old enough to date.
Panjee has a wealth of books at her home. So first I looked and then wanted to read. I helped myself to two big novels of Isabel Allende and two of Tom Robbins. I don’t remember what they were and have a very vague sense of what their stories were. I could understand while I was reading but after I finished everything left. Every once in a while a picture or a recipe would drift through my mind. I could not tell if it was Allende or Robbins. I decided to stop reading and began to knit again. I began with a green cotton sweater for me. That worked well, so I did a pink one. Hmmm, very pretty, so I knitted a red one. I am now knitting my eleventh sweater for the year, an expert knitter, better than I’ve ever been. Panjee asked me to set up a knitting club where I might teach. She even brought me needles to teach with. They’re sitting on my shelf waiting for the right time.
As soon as I got home from the hospital Panjee sent me off to eurhythmy, a sound and movement exercise class. I think that did me well, except that the teacher soon had to go and so I had to stop. I went out to lunch with friends twice and dinner with friends twice. I guess they could tell I was sick because I was slow and not really there. This is still one of my problems. I am never fully present. There’s a part of me that stands to one side and watches. She makes no comment, no criticism but she really belongs inside me, is part of me. Why isn’t she with me? The strange thing is, I watch her too. We look at each other sometimes and that unnerves me.
But in September 2003 for the most part I stayed at Panjee’s home sitting and staring out the window at the beautiful homes and trees. It was getting hot. I noticed two sparrows sitting on electric wires some distance down the road. They were bright orange. I looked again, looked so many times. Yes, there they were, what lovely birds! Such fiery colors! I watched them every day. On the third day, I took my pens and drew them, how colorful they were and how loyal to be always there, always in the same position. Ten days later I sat staring at the birds again. How beautiful, awesome, always there. . . then something in my head popped. I looked again. They weren’t birds. They were Meralco switches. Suddenly, all alone I burst out laughing. I think that marked the beginning of my way up the difficult road to recovery.
I am teaching writing again. Please e-mail lilypad@skyinet.net if you’re interested in joining the class.
Dr. Banico requires me to return to the MRI. She follows at a respectable distance apparently observing the way I walk. Later she interviews me about the way I feel and does an examination of my body sides with a small hammer. Yes, that feels different from the other, I say, and both are painful but differently and one side feels more remote than the other. "You’ve had three pops in your right brain," I think she said though I know the word "pops" is mine. "It’s covered with blood. We have to clean it. You have to check in. But you know what? You should be more damaged than you are. Thank God you are doing very well," she said. I did not know what she was talking about.
We go to the room on the eighth floor. My daughters dislike it, object, demand a change. If there is anything wrong, I don’t see it and am dying to lie down and sleep. No. We must lunch at Floating Island and return to another room, one they liked. I settled in slowly as one does into a hospital, surviving all the intrusions, the IVs, the thermometer, the medicines, the 1,001 check-ups of various people you don’t know. You can sleep all you want but you are sure you will awaken at least once every two hours.
I do not have many vibrant memories about the time I was recovering. My stroke was on September 7 and I know I was not well until much later, until April maybe. No, even now I am not well if the standard is my old self. At least I accept that I will never be like her again. My brain changed. It popped and drowned in blood. I am alive and well but a totally different person from the one before the stroke. What do I say about her? I think she died.
Right after the stroke I was dumb, lifeless, or maybe someone pressed a button and put me on hold. Panjee took me home with her. At her lovely house I woke up early every day and had breakfast with them after which they went to school and I went back to bed to sleep a bit again. Then I would shower and try to read for a while, then sleep again until lunch after which read and sleep again until around six when it was time for dinner and then I was asleep again by eight. I never slept so much. I think my body was making up for all the late nights I spent ever since I grew old enough to date.
Panjee has a wealth of books at her home. So first I looked and then wanted to read. I helped myself to two big novels of Isabel Allende and two of Tom Robbins. I don’t remember what they were and have a very vague sense of what their stories were. I could understand while I was reading but after I finished everything left. Every once in a while a picture or a recipe would drift through my mind. I could not tell if it was Allende or Robbins. I decided to stop reading and began to knit again. I began with a green cotton sweater for me. That worked well, so I did a pink one. Hmmm, very pretty, so I knitted a red one. I am now knitting my eleventh sweater for the year, an expert knitter, better than I’ve ever been. Panjee asked me to set up a knitting club where I might teach. She even brought me needles to teach with. They’re sitting on my shelf waiting for the right time.
As soon as I got home from the hospital Panjee sent me off to eurhythmy, a sound and movement exercise class. I think that did me well, except that the teacher soon had to go and so I had to stop. I went out to lunch with friends twice and dinner with friends twice. I guess they could tell I was sick because I was slow and not really there. This is still one of my problems. I am never fully present. There’s a part of me that stands to one side and watches. She makes no comment, no criticism but she really belongs inside me, is part of me. Why isn’t she with me? The strange thing is, I watch her too. We look at each other sometimes and that unnerves me.
But in September 2003 for the most part I stayed at Panjee’s home sitting and staring out the window at the beautiful homes and trees. It was getting hot. I noticed two sparrows sitting on electric wires some distance down the road. They were bright orange. I looked again, looked so many times. Yes, there they were, what lovely birds! Such fiery colors! I watched them every day. On the third day, I took my pens and drew them, how colorful they were and how loyal to be always there, always in the same position. Ten days later I sat staring at the birds again. How beautiful, awesome, always there. . . then something in my head popped. I looked again. They weren’t birds. They were Meralco switches. Suddenly, all alone I burst out laughing. I think that marked the beginning of my way up the difficult road to recovery.
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