Still standing tall after my stroke

Look at me. I just turned 72 but I still stand as straight and tall as ever.

When I typed the date Sept. 3, 2016, suddenly I realized that it is the 13th anniversary of my stroke. I was only 59. In 2003, Sept. 3 was a Sunday.

What caused it? Cholesterol? Hypertension? All the brouhaha doctors  prescribe preventive medicine for? No. It was caused by stress.

 My mother was always a wonderful jolly chubby woman. She had a great sense of humor and wonderful laughter. Finally she decided to come home from Vancouver to visit for a while. I met her at the airport. I saw this very thin wobbly woman whose hair was all white heading towards me. I was jolted. It was my mother — thin, white, wobbly. That put me in a state of shock.

When I began to talk to her, it became stranger still. She wasn’t the cheerful, intelligent woman I knew. Her thoughts were disjointed though she was still somewhere there. Sometimes she would make sense, other times not. You have to understand. I am an only child. Most of my life I have had only my mother. My father was killed by the Japanese when I was six months old. To see your only parent in this vague state is like being clubbed with one of those huge lumpy pieces of wood carried by cave men in the comic strip B.C.

To make matters more difficult I had to take care of her alone. I had no maids. I only had a driver. Then I lived in my beautiful home in Calamba and I was giving writing classes that required alert lectures from me. I was at a total loss. Nevertheless things went well and we found ourselves in Calamba.

We seemed to be comfortable there. We slept well and I woke up Sunday morning feeling very energetic. I did my laundry then set the table for lunch that my son was bringing. My mom was lying down and resting. My son was late so I decided to go to the dining room and check the table I had set. I heard a male voice say, “Everything has changed.” I looked around. No one was there. I know now that that statement was the precise moment of my stroke.

I felt no pain, no dizziness, no numbing of anything. My son arrived. I was going to say  — “You are late, I’m hungry “ — but something else came out of my mouth, something I can’t remember. But I remember the funny look my son gave me and my sense of giving him an equally bewildered look. We had lunch then I got very sleepy, so sleepy I couldn’t make it upstairs to my room. I slept on the nearest sofa.  Not one of us suspected I had a stroke.

 From that moment on I felt erased, a light shadow of me. I did not feel like talking, though I could but it felt like I would do it from a distance, so I didn’t want to talk.  Didn’t laugh either. I had meetings to go. I would get dressed, get there on time. When it ended I would sleep again, regardless of the hour, but I would set an alarm to wake me in time for the next meeting.

Apparently I texted my daughters though I don’t remember.  On Thursday night they woke me up at 8:30 p.m. They had been to see a doctor friend of mine who looked at my text and told them I had a stroke. They should bring me to the hospital immediately.  I was too sleepy to go. I asked them to pick me up the next morning.  They had no choice but to obey me.

I really did not get healed from the stroke for a long time. I always felt I was there but not there. Of course as time went on I would talk and converse but not like I used to, not smart and somewhat witty. I was just okay. I was like that for six years, all through the years of my mother’s most serious Alzheimer’s.

Now when I look back I think God sent me the stroke to see me through my mother’s terrible Alzheimer’s. If I had been the person I used to be, which is the person I am now, I would have lost my mind during my mother’s disease. I would not have been so informative in my writing about her disease. To this day people email me for more information on Alzheimer’s.

In the end, on its 13th (a lucky number for me) anniversary, I thank God for my stroke. It taught me and it protected me from much pain. I did not discover the capsule (StemEnhance) that cured me until a few months after my mother died.   After that I got much much better.

Look at me now still standing straight and tall, like I didn’t have a stroke at all.

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