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Author:
Kerry Wood

thursday

i am home after three days and two nights in the hospital. my right arm is working at about 15 percent capacity after my suffering a stroke monday night. that explains the absence of capital letters. remember the lives and times of archy and mehitabel by don marquis? you will understand why i identify with the cockroach archy, who typed on marquis’s newsroom typewriter at night by hopping from key to key but of course was unable to operate the shift key. thus no words were capitalized in archy’s writings. i am typing with my left hand only and thus have archy’s restriction to lower-case letters.. Since I’m working on a computer and not a typewriter, apostrophes are available to me, though they weren’t to archy. a literary cockroach, c’est moi.

Friday

Progress! I can peck with the index finger of my right hand, so the shift key is within my command. Adopting the positive attitude that doctors, nurses and therapists have been prescribing, I now think of my little ischemic stroke as an incident of growth. My right leg and arm are suddenly about three inches longer than before. Heavier, too, which accounts for the foot always catching the edge of the stair it’s trying to mount. Obviously, the right hand with the fork will have a hard time hitting my mouth, which has changed shape.

It is the morning of the fifth day since the wee embolus detached itself from somewhere and flew upward into my cerebral arterial tree. I was alone in the house, my wife being away on business. I had gone to bed early. I woke for a bathroom visit and discovered something was amiss with my right leg and arm. "Must have slept on it wrong," I thought. “It will clear itself up."

I’m unsure about the succeeding events. I broke two drinking glasses at different wake-up times. I couldn’t seem to get them up to the kitchen counter before they slipped from my grasp. One glass I had used to take analgesic PMs, foolishly thinking that sleep would rectify my mystery malaise. Those pills were a major mistake.

I awoke again in the wee hours still refusing to admit what was happening to me. I had had some cholesterol and hypertension problems, but they were under the control of prescription drugs. Seeking activities to avoid unthinkable reality, I dressed and lurched downstairs to the garage to put out the recycle baskets and garbage can for the early morning pickup—a chore I’d forgotten to perform the previous night. I had to lean against the wall of the stairwell going down and coming back up. The right leg and foot were not performing well. I attempted to sweep up the broken glass in the kitchen. My right arm couldn’t work the broom.

Keeping busy, I hauled laundry downstairs to the machine. I kept dropping items during my labored descent, leaning on and sliding down the staircase wall. Upstairs once again, I tried to brush my hair, but my right hand and arm wouldn’t cooperate. Finally I brought the cordless phone to my armchair and sat down to think.

I read carefully the telephone book’s warnings not to dial 911 unless it was a true emergency. By this time it was 6:30—not so early that I would seriously disturb anyone, I thought insanely. I unlocked the front door, sat back down in my chair, and dialed. I was embarrassed at the difficulty I had enunciating that I thought I might be having a stroke. Minutes later the paramedics were in the driveway along with a fire engine. The crew worried about getting me down the slippery outside stairs and into the ambulance. I hoped the sirens hadn’t wakened my neighbors.

At the hospital, blood pressure off the map, I grew weary of telling people what month, date, and year it was; who was President, and how many fingers they were holding up. I politely and accurately responded to their inquiries wondering why they couldn’t answer those questions for themselves. When evenings came along, I turned on the TV so I could feel similarly superior to the candidates on Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. They sent me home the third day.

Stroke plus one month.

My thrombosis was not massive. I am recovering with a speed that seem undeserved given my idiotic refusal to accept what was happening and my eight-hour delay in calling the paramedics. Sure, I knew about strokes, but I had had no headache, no loss of vision, and being alone there was no opportunity to discover my inability to speak clearly. I have much to be thankful for.

Everyone should learn about stroke symptoms and treatment of the various kinds of strokes. A drug called rt-PA (recombinant tissue-plasminogen activator) can virtually wipe out the effects of a stroke, but the patient must get to a hospital within 90 minutes of onset. (Recent medical developments have extended that time limit.) Tests will determine whether one is a candidate for rt-PA. I waited too long and may spend the rest of my life with problems that could have been eliminated by this miracle clot-dissolving therapy.

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Kerry Wood is a retired English teacher, textbook author, and award-winning poet. His memoir Past Imperfect, Present Progressive is a smorgasbord of reflections on his early life, education and profession contained in stories, poems, and correspondence. He begins with recollections of being consigned to a Catholic military boarding school at the tender age of four in 1942 and spending his academic years there until 1946 and the end of WWII. Writes one reviewer: "The hats Kerry Wood has worn are multifarious and variegated: Russian translator, secondary teacher of English in Turkey and California, world traveler, sports aficionado, editor of literature anthologies, amateur poet and essayist, stroke survivor, devoted husband and father. Those curious about why an Ivy-League graduate would devote his career to teaching adolescents need only read former students' tributes to Mr. Wood to realize that the author's choice of vocation has been amply justified." For further info, visit http://www.kerrymwood.com or email kerrywood@redshift.com

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A Quick Note From The Publisher... If you like the article above, you may be interested in the following article which is also related to Stroke Report... Why High Blood Pressure Can Be So Dangerous We all know that high blood pressure is considered serious by the doctor. But not many of us know why. The truth of the matter is this: high blood pressure, left unchecked, can have serious consequences. The dangers can range from vision problems to ulcers to an outright stroke. The higher your blood pressure, the higher your risk of heart disease and stroke. Someone with blood pressure of 120/80 mmHg is at greater risk than someone with blood pressure of 110/70 mmHg. It's as simple as that. How does this impact your heart? When the heart is forced to overwork for an extended period of time, it tends to enlarge. A slightly enlarged heart can function well, but a significantly enlarged heart cannot. In fact, high blood pressure is the number one risk factor for congestive heart failure, a serious condition in which the heart is unable to pump enough blood to supply the body's needs. The result of the heart's inability to pump enough blood can be kidney damage or even a stroke. In relation to the kidneys, if left unchecked, high blood pressure can narrow and then thicken the blood vessels feeding the kidneys. The primary function of the kidneys is to serve as a filter for the body and to dispose of its waste. When denied enough blood to function properly, the kidneys begin to filter less fluid, and the excess waste begins to build in the blood stream. Eventually, if nothing is done, the kidneys can fail altogether, requiring dialysis to do the job for them. As for strokes, high blood pressure is a leading risk factor here as well. When a blood clot blocks one of the narrowed arteries, stroke can easily be the end result. And when if blood pressure becomes so high that it causes a break in one of the weakened blood vessels, which then bleeds into the brain, stroke...