Reconnecting

A few people wondered why he seemed so he was for it in the hospital. I spend more than a month they are recovering from a stroke. One thing that amazed many people, including my family, including me… was my unusually good mood. Here I was – no income, in the hospital, paralyzed on the right side and unable to walk or use my right arm or hand. You would think that would be a very depressing thing. But I wasn’t impressed at all. My kids and my mother attributed it to some really good rugs they must have been giving me. It wasn’t until I got back home that I realized that I was now taking the same drugs that I was taking in the hospital. There were no magic mushrooms to perk up my mood. Just stuff to keep the blood pressure down, fight off blood clots and keep the gavel under control. That’s it.

What accounted for my usual attitude in the hospital? If you couldn’t walk or use your right arm, if you were scooting around a wheelchair, if you had been fiercely independent and were now dependent upon the people around you – that would seem like a prescription for depression.

After talking with my stroke doctor is, Dr. Hayes, I figured it out. I had lived a high-pressure lifestyle. The highs were enormously high. The lows were cavernously low. Very little time was spent in the middle ground. Although I love my kids and my kids love me, my relationships managed to alienate them. My romantic relationships were volatile. I was an all or nothing person.

The euphoria that I experienced after my stroke wasn’t due to drugs and wasn’t experiential. It was because, for the first time in my life, a really treasured those simple things in life that we forget about when we are busy – family and friends. Disabled as I was, the workforce would have to wait. My kids, my mother, a few of my close friends were the most important things in my life. Their presence, their happiness and their companionship was what made me happy.

It’s a good thing too… while I was sick I lost my house and most of my personal possessions! I had a couple of van loads of stuff. But I had family and friends. As time went on – I realized who my real friends were. My partner at them had been my friend for more than 20 years and he stood by me. My friend and business associate Arnie, ditto. As my recovery progress, I found a few more of those old friends. Bill, Tara, Andrew and Sheila, Jonathan, Mimi, Charlotta, Adam2 and Zannell, Frank, Manny, and more than I can even remember (hmmm… there are a lot of women in there, aren’t there?) have stayed in touch and supported me throughout my ongoing recovery.

That’s worth more than cash.

The first days

I was in Brandon Regional Hospital for the first week or so, where I was rushed by ambulance that Sunday afternoon. The hospital staff's objective in their was just to keep me alive. My kids tell me it was touch and go those first few days.

Thoughts, images, memories float in and out of my head like short movie clips, but not a whole day; nothing durable, concrete, that I can latch onto and say I remember. I can remember a few incidents, but that's all.

My first solid memories are of my rehabilitation at Tampa General Hospital, where I spent over a month. they took me by ambulance. I remember my youngest daughter, Kelly, riding next to me. My oldest, Kimberly, followed us over in the car. I don't remember much about my arrival. But much of my time there is indelibly etched into my mind.

Every day was a great day. It was probably all the drugs they had me on. At home, now, I take 11 pills every day. In the hospital, I'm sure it was even more. I was so drugged up that I had no time to be depressed. In retrospect, I can see how people become addicted to drugs.