On Growing Up

I wrote this after I had a stroke in late 2012. I never published it and shut down my blog soon afterwards.

Chris took this picture on Sunday when we were on our way out. It was his first real night off in almost 2 months, so I hollered for him to hurry and snap a couple so we could get on the road. Kind of wishing I had a shot of my face now.

That night we had a nice, long dinner at our favorite place and went to see The Master. It was the best.

What I’ll always remember about that day was laughing, how aware I was of how relaxed I felt, thinking it was so weird to have a sprig of Douglas Fir in my drink, and how happy our friend looked when he talked about recently getting married and his great string of luck work-wise. I felt like I was catching up, like maybe the stars were finally aligning. It was good grown-up stuff and I thought maybe I’d turned the bend.

After we got home I woke up in the middle of the night because my cheek was twitching. I tried to lift my hand to touch my face, but couldn’t. I tried to turn my head toward the clock to see what time it was, but couldn’t do that either. The right side of my face and arm were paralyzed and I couldn’t open my eye or move my tongue. It was really scary. I couldn’t talk, move or even make a sound. In a deep, groggy haze I struggled to stay awake, but couldn’t even manage that. I remember thinking if I was going to die, I’d rather just drift off in that direction.

In the morning I woke up with what I thought was a very bad migraine headache. My right arm and the side of my face and neck were, and still are, incredibly weak. I’m having a tough time walking and remembering simple, everyday things I’ve known for a long time. All day yesterday I tried to tell myself I was all right. I think I’ve been doing that a lot lately. Telling myself everything is going to be okay.

Well guess what? I AM NOT ALL RIGHT AND THINGS ARE NOT GOING TO BE OKAY.

I don’t want to be bald, I don’t want my hair to fall out, I don’t want to have sparsely grown eyebrows, I don’t want to get injections in my head anymore, I don’t want to feel tired and stressed and sad all of the time and I SURE AS SHIT DO NOT WANT TO HAVE A STROKE.

But as it turns out, I did.