I went home from the Rehabilitation Hospital on May twenty-eighth, three and a half months after my arrival at the hospital. The doctors allowed me to go home a few days early because it was a holiday weekend, and I wouldn't be getting any therapy anyway. I was never so glad to go anywhere in my life. No more strange coffee shops, no more crowds. I was ready to go back to the much smaller town where I was from.
The house we had at the beginning of the summer was a rental, but it was full of memories for me. I had spent an entire year at home with Ellie before the stroke, making many memories, and I was ready to make new memories outside in our backyard, under the Maple tree, with the quilt spread over the grass, sitting with Ellie. Because of course, I would be magically cured and it would all be singing birds and green grass. Sounds nice, doesn't it?
That's not what happened. I stayed inside except to go to more therapy, the quilt was on Ellie's bed to stay for good, Don got to take care of Ellie since he could and I couldn't, and the outside world was almost impossible for the wheelchair that left the the Rehab. Center with me. I didn't even like the outside world anymore. The biggest blow had to be that Ellie had transferred her affections from me to whoever was taking care of her at the time, in this case, Don. She didn't even like me anymore. It had been almost four months, and Ellie was only two and a half when I'd had the stroke. It made sense that she would like whoever was doing the things for her that I used to do, such as changing her diaper and playing with her. But it was a blow to my psyche, I'll admit.
Not only did I lose that contact with Ellie, but I had to change all my therapists, too. Those friends I'd made at the rehab. hospital were now in my past, two hours away. In essence, I had to start all over. I left the Rehabilitation Center as a hero, the fastest recovering stroke patient, and I arrived home a nobody. It was another unexpected blow. My poor old psyche! But at least we had the summer to get reacquainted with our hometown, our friends, and Ellie.
We started that reacquaintance by going to our favorite restaurants, like the coffee shop and a pizza place. We also went to the movies while Ellie was in day-care. Beyond that, and being surrounded by my favorite things, life wasn't much different than it had been at the Center. I still went to therapy every day, I still fed myself even if it was Don who cooked the meals now, and I still went everywhere with my wheelchair in tow. But, in the mornings, I saw my bedroom instead of my institutional room at the Center. I was in charge of my own transfers. In fact, my first fall was during a transfer from the bed to the wheelchair one morning. I got caught on the wheelchair, and Don had to rescue me. That was the first of many falls.
I marked the passage of time by my falls. My new PT, who doesn't like me to take chances, is probably cringing right now, but the truth is that I fall all the time. I fall in the living room, the hallway, the bedroom... I had to walk sideways with the walker to take a shower in the mornings, and I fell once in the hall. By then, I knew how to get up by myself, and I did, using the bars Don had
intstalled for me. Fred had taught me how to get up from the floor during my last week at the Center, and I often used his advice. That is, unless I cried first.
I cried all the time at home. If I was tired, which was nearly every day, I cried at night before bed. If I fell and hit my head, which happened several times, I cried. Not that I hurt anywhere on a permanent basis, but I was just too tired to go on anymore. Luckily, none of the falls were all that awful. I went to the hospital for an x-ray once when I landed on my hand and it swelled to the size of a softball, but nothing happened. We walked a long way, and that's how I found out that my endurance had grown, but my hand was only swelled, not broken. Lucky for me, that time I landed on my hand instead of my head. But the falls didn't stop there.
During the summer we bought a new house. It was built by a Physical therapist, and we even heard about it at therapy. It was only a mile from our old home. In fact, I had seen it being built, but never thought for a minute that we would one day own it. That house was beautiful, the doors were wide, but the carpets were really springy and thick because they were new. I always fell just as I was on the edge of the carpet in the living room and hit my head on the edge of the bar separating the living room from the kitchen. Falling became so usual that Don didn't trust me to walk by myself while he was gone anymore, and he requested that I use the walker at home. That was alright with me, as long as I got to use canes when we went out. I had changed to canes one Monday when the walker became too unwieldy and caught on packing boxes all the time at the old house. But this was the new house, and I had to bring back the walker if I ever wanted to be alone.
And I was left alone quite often. By then school had started and Don was too busy to help me. So I was on my own while Ellie was in day-care. Being alone so much might have made some people worry about going crazy with boredom, but in this house, which I totally loved, I had no memories. Heck, I didn't even know where everything was. So I spent my time reading and knitting and writing letters when I wasn't typing stories and finding things in the cupboards. I couldn't go anywhere because I couldn't drive. I didn't have a car to drive even if I could drive (We were supposed to sell my old Mustang ourselves. However, it's been two years and the Mustang is still sitting at the edge of the driveway.) Still, it was clear that someday I was going to recover enough to return to work. So I planned on returning in the Spring Semester, and I worked towards that. Personally, I looked forward to teaching again, but not to grading all those papers! It was only after careful thought and a bunch of humility that I decided not to return to teaching at all; the students would never be able to understand what I was saying, and what kind of lecture could I give if the students would have no idea what I was talking about, literally? No matter how much I was improving, the average person would have no hope of deciphering my speech. I couldn't do that to the students, so I decided to forgo the return to teaching, but it was never a decision that I came to very easily or one I reached very lightly.