The normal time for a stroke victim to recover enough to leave a hospital is six months. I stayed at the Rehabilitation Center, for all purposes a hospital, (though it was the most different hospital I'd ever stayed in), for three and a half months. I don't know why I survived the stroke in the first place. I certainly don't know why I am recovering so quickly, though I have my suspicions.
I might be recovering so quickly because of my body's fast recovery system. It might be because I work all the time. It might be a mix of the two. Or it might be something I haven't thought of yet. Whatever the reason, rehab. helped me a lot.
The Rehab. Center was both a good place and a bad place to be in. I disliked the Center because I just naturally dislike all hospitals. They are places where sick people go to either get better or die. I needed to want to get out of there as fast as possible. On the other hand, the therapy was really good, and I knew I needed that, too. It was very confusing, especially since I didn't feel any different than before the stroke. I never came to a conscious decision to combine wanting to go home and working hard while I was 'incarcerated,' but that's what I did. 'Home' never lost it's allure, but neither did the therapy. I knew I was lucky to get into such a rehabilitation hospital so soon after the stroke, because I sometimes heard the other patients talking about waiting long periods before they were admitted. I just hated being admitted to a hospital of any kind.
As good as it was, the Rehab. Center wasn't perfect, either. Meal trays were messed up occasionally, and most meals were cold. I didn't mind this overly much, since most things were too hot for me, anyway, and who wants a meal that's too hot? However, this really troubled Don, who often ate at the Center for convenience. He didn't like his food cold at all, and the cafeteria always seemed to be closed when he wanted to eat. We quickly figured out the schedule, but at the same time, nobody ever told us about the weird rules, which in turn led to several cold meals. Who knew that eating could be so hard?
But that wasn't the only thing that was hard. If you want to get completely better, you have to work at everything, including therapy. There were times I was too tired from therapy to eat, and I really liked the food. One thing that tired me out had to be my early walking in PT. I was in the platform walker, and Don bet me five dollars to walk from the gym to my room, a total of about 180 feet. For some reason, I did it, and earned the title of 'Crazy Woman,' though I have yet to see my five dollars. Don and I joke about that every now and then, because now I often walk that distance and further, but at the time it was the farthest I could go. Was it worth it? It helped me get better faster, always a plus, but it also wore me out for days, leaving me good for nothing except crying. I don't know if it was worth the effort or not.
Something else that was tiring was communicating, especially at first when I couldn't talk yet. Back then I had to spell everything with my eyes. It took a well-trained person to understand me using the letter board made for me. A letter board is a device... a piece of paper, a clear plastic board from Home Depot... it doesn't matter what it's made of as long as it contains a printed version of all twenty-six letters of the alphabet... that help me to communicate at the beginning. Don often made frustrating mistakes. If he didn't make them, I did, and heaven help me for thinking enough to change my mind every now and then.
However, I can be as sarcastic as I wish, but I often needed help. Don stayed around a lot for interpreting purposes. He stayed so much, I was at a loss when he wasn't there, which happened every night at first as well as every Tuesday and Thursday when he went to teach his class at the college that he worked for. The therapists truly took care of me then, but I hated to eat into therapy time and the schedule while they helped me wash my hands or cleaned my glasses. Unfortunately, I didn't have much of a choice. It was either rely on someone else to help me do the little things in life, or miss therapy. I chose to rely on someone else.
Relying on another person led to more mistakes, though. Everybody was good at asking what we in academia call 'yes/no' questions. You know, like, “Do you need to go to the bathroom?” and, “Are you tired today?” Anything a person can say 'Yes' or 'No' to. But every now and then, there was a goof-up. I'll never forget the time there was a mistake made when the nurses felt the need to give me an enema.
The patients had jokingly named it 'the enemy,' and the nickname had stuck. I was to find that it was appropriately named. The suppository that the Suppository Queen (as we called the nurse in charge of that onerous duty) had given me wasn't working right, so the nurses decided I needed an enema. It sounded unpleasant, and I figured I was just constipated, which was nothing new for me, so I wasn't nearly as worried as the nurses were. But they wanted to give me an enema, so I resorted to spelling to communicate, since I wasn't talking yet. I wanted to say, “My daughter is constipated, too,” but what they got was, “My daughter is coming,” which wasn't even close to what I wanted to say. Unable to communicate, I got the enema, which was as unpleasant as it sounded, and no one understood. I was frustrated beyond belief. That was the reason I asked Don to stay and interpret as much as he could, so mistakes like that wouldn't happen again. And so started another new episode at the Rehabilitation Center.