Let's get one thing straight; I resented everyone. I resented the person walking into the mall. I resented the person driving a car. I resented the nurses who took care of me. They could all walk and talk and do things normally. I couldn't. And in this world, that's what counts, no matter who you are or what's happened to you. So I was determined not to be left out of the world. That's all. I simply wanted to play a part. I'm no hero for wanting to be a part of things. Any normal human is like that, not wanting to be left out, as every teenager in America can affirm. Besides, I have personal experience that can, and will forever, convince me that being a hero really stinks. I may have recovered from a stroke quite quickly, but that is only a part of the story, certainly not a story like one in an action/adventure movie where all the loose ends are nice and smoothly tied up. On the contrary, the ends in my life are all over the place, as they should be. And it's certainly not how the story of the stroke started, either.
It all began on February 7th, of all places, on the toilet. And in bed. Not very dignified, huh? I woke up and cracked my neck. That's all I did. (I swear not to let anyone near my neck again, for all the good it will do me.) I was immediately dizzy and nauseous. I remember thinking, “This isn't good,” but I had to go to the bathroom, so Don, my husband, helped me into what in actuality is an extremely tiny room, though I had never noticed its smallness before. I don't remember dragging my left leg along, but he does. Dragging any limb is sure sign of a stroke.
A stroke is quiet. It's soft. There were no warning signs that one was coming. I felt like I couldn't open my mouth, like I had no control of what my body did. Then, my mouth opened wide of it's own accord and I couldn't breath. Next, the headache started. That's all. I had no idea I was having a stroke. With my history of migraine headaches, that's what I thought it was. Don carried me to the couch in the living room, where I curled up, wanting nothing more than to go to sleep, a normal reaction to a migraine. Unfortunately, though I didn't know it yet, it's also a very normal reaction to a stroke.
The good thing was that it was over quickly. The bad thing was that I'd had a pontine stroke and didn't know it. Neither did the young emergency room doctor. He thought I was having a migraine because that was what I told him because that was what I had been told by family members who had previously suffered TIAs (Traumatic Ischemic Attacks). That conversation started a vicious cycle that I regret to this day, one that agreed with my migraine headache theory and didn't agree with any person who believed one so young could possibly be having a stroke. However, the truth was impossible to deny. I couldn't move my left side and all I wanted to do was sleep, two obvious signs that something wasn't quite right with the theory that had stated before that I was having a migraine headache. Still, Saturday's CAT scan showed nothing. Little did we know.
What took seconds to happen took months, even years, to recover from. I'm still recovering, in fact, and may spend the rest of my life doing so, but that's another long story. The Emergency Room doctor wanted to send me to a hospital in the closest large city, because they had better imaging equipment there than at home, and I hesitantly agreed. They planned to send me in an ambulance to get me there fairly quickly, yet my penchant for frugality came to the fore, then. I was reluctant to spend the money necessary for an ambulance. I thought whatever was wrong with me would be over by the time we arrived, and Don and I would have wasted a lot of money for nothing.
However, the stroke had done its job; I was barely coherent when we arrived at the hospital, no matter how I had felt when we left the hospital at home, and only remember arriving, not being admitted or visiting with friends or undergoing tests or anything else that happened. I ended up staying in that hospital for twelve days. Luckily, a neurologist was on call in the I.C.U. at the time I was admitted, and she made sure I got the proper care. But it was already too late; I was locked in, meaning that I couldn't move a muscle, totally paralyzed. The only thing I could do was remember. My memory was intact, as is usual in a pontine stroke, at least, in a complete pontine stroke. I could still remember just fine, except those twelve days at the hospital. I don't remember a thing from when I arrived at the hospital until the first weekend at the Rehabilitation Center. Don remembers everything from then. I remember only the dreams.
Dreams, delusions, self-induced hypnosis, call them what you want, but I intend to call them dreams and always will. They came in three parts, and always revolved around Don joining a white supremacist group, for some unfathomable reason. And we always seemed to be riding on an RV bus. 'Weird' only begins to describe the events that I recall...