The BS Aftermath

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It’s been three months since this stupid BS (my affectionate nickname for the stroke I had back in October). And now that I’ve been back at work for a little over a month, I’m ready to admit to the nagging daily interference of BS. I’m not saying who, but some people might have had an inflated sense of their own superhumanness, and some people might have needed more than 10 weeks’ recovery time after a stroke before jumping back into the fray…

Ongoing Challenge #1: Balance. I’m always just slightly dizzy (either from the stroke or all the new BP meds, I’m not sure which). Not long after classes began, I realized that while I’d been home on leave, if I felt especially off-balance, I sat down or took to my bed. But standing in front of 24 students, if the room starts wavering, I have to muster extraordinary concentration and nonchalantly inch my way—while simultaneously explaining the advantage of an unreliable narrator in a feminist reading of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper”—to a desk, a chair, the whiteboard, or anything I can hold onto.

It only occasionally feels like a T-Rex ate my brain.

Challenge #2: Coordination. At home, I keep a clear path, since my left side still doesn’t always know exactly where it is in space.  My left arm & leg sometimes overshoot or undershoot their mark. Ray and I are used to the fact that I will occasionally side-swipe, knock down, catch on, or slam into things. Ray tries not to startle when I suddenly grab for a railing, a wall, or his hair in order to steady myself. But if you’re a daydreaming student, it can be alarming when your teacher sends notebooks and handouts flying across the room with an accidental fling of her wacky left arm.

Challenge #3: Fatigue. At home, my rule since the stroke has been, if I’m tired, I sleep. But I can’t really pull that off at school. And the more tired I get, the clumsier and achier I get. I find myself in my office hours, stabbing at the keyboard as I type things like “Please make sure you drift fodders contin the dfellowin: 0#b8. Tink you.” Sometimes those two hours in class are so exhausting that I go home after classes, take a nap, wake up for dinner, take another nap, and wake up to go to bed.

Challenge #4: Muscles. Back in the hospital, when the neurologist said, “Your left side is affected,” I don’t think I realized just how much stuff I have on my left side. On especially wonderful days, I get up in the morning feeling like if I only had a cape (maybe teal lamé with silver sequins), I could save every gadget-head, non-reading, apathetic late teen soul in the universe. But by evening, I feel like someone has strapped a giant Slendertone belt around my middle, set on “constant punishing contraction.” My stomach muscles hurt from breathing and holding myself upright, my right hip throbs from compensating for my clunky left leg, my eyes ache from trying to focus together, I’m hoarse, my throat is sore, and my left hand wants to curl into a little ball. In one short day, I can go from Wonder Woman to Kwasimoto.

Challenge #5: Brain. This is the hardest one to admit to. I’ve always liked and appreciated my chatty, over-analytical brain. So I really struggle some days with the fact that right now at least, my brain is not the same. It’s hard to describe—I wouldn’t call it “damage” exactly; I can’t say I’ve lost one iota of my cognitive function, though my memory is a tad spongier than before. And other things are certainly different in there. Some things I used to think (obsess?) about—Yeats’ poem “Vacillations;” writing a cycle of poems that re-imagines the “stations of the cross” in terms of mundane daily activities; writing a book-length collection of prose poems about a modern-day Joan of Arc; working out a “stuck” chapter in the novel I’m writing about an alternative healer who stalks Dean Stockwell—I don’t seem the least bit interested in anymore. And my vocabulary wasn’t affected, but the timing of word recall was—it takes me a split-second longer to dig through the brain files (or travel the new neural pathways?) for a word I want, so I tend to pause, stutter, and uh-uh-uh-uh more than before BS. And in spite of my new friend and savior, the SSRI (clinical depression--as opposed to the frequent and perfectly normal WTF-happened?-ohhellno! post-stroke response--is quite common after a stroke), my “new” brain sometimes switches on an emotional shit-storm (beg pardon) that reduces me to a steaming pile of blubbering mush because I didn’t get a pony when I was 12, or because my black shoes need polishing, or because Ray left an orange on the counter.

Lest you think BS turned me into a big whiny baby, you should know that I’m constantly, completely grateful to be in the shape I’m in—I shared the stroke ward with folks who showed me just how lucky I am. I get that. So, as my mother says, “Head down, plow forward.” And thankfully, one thing hasn’t changed: I still love a good challenge.

P.S. Blogging is another good way to avoid grading papers.