Priorities

Before the stroke and when I had a career my priorities were:  health, family, remuneration and responsibility.  Post stroke, I “blew up” the health piece, was forced to retire but still have priorities.  They are: family, fitness, fun, and financial contributions.

The family priority hit a pinnacle this week with some key activities and exemplified why it is so important to me.

On Monday my sister, Susie, flew to Austin from Las Vegas with her 21 yr. old son John.  We planned 2 weeks ago to meet at the airport, drive to Houston and spend the night with my parents. I was particularly excited because I had not seen my nephew,   John for many years and he is beginning his 4^th year at Cal Poly. Bob dropped me at the airport and when we pulled up, Susie was in a rental car.  Bob commented “there are 4 people in her car what’s going on?”

Unbeknownst to me, two of my sister Theresa’s children, Angela (18) and Joey (14), flew from Vermont that morning to meet Susie’s plane. Apparently, Theresa and Susie began planning this rendezvous’ four days prior to their arrival.  Needless to say I was shocked when Angela and Joey popped out of the car.  I can’t remember when I felt this elated before.  We drove to Houston, shocked my parents. It’s wise not to give my Mother too much notice for these things to eliminate stress on what meals to prepare and where will everyone sleep.  We determined it had been ~7 years since my parents and John were together John was so engaging with them and he indicated he would like to come for more frequent visits. 

We returned to Austin Wednesday morning, made the obligatory stop at Rudy’s barbeque for lunch, spent the rest of the afternoon at Barton Springs.  We had Mexican food for dinner where my brother John’s son Vincent (21) joined us.   The highlight at the dinner was observing Joey and his art of conversation with his cousin 7 years his senior.  He was “holding court” at his end of the table and I was in awe.

Thursday morning, Susie took everyone home to Vegas with her where she will show them all the tourist attractions.

The conclusion is at the end of the 36 hours with my family, I can with 100% confidence say there was no place else or anything I would have rather been doing. I’m so glad to be able to still do these things that mean so much to me. My nieces and nephews will be moving on to their adult lives and these visits will fade as their responsibilities grow. It is a wonderful time in life.

I believe I combined 2 priorities this week:  family and fun my next blog will cover other priorities.

to adapt or not to adapt

Last time I wrote about living in a one-armed world and adapting.  Sometimes I’m learning I simply cannot adapt and have to ask for help.  Such was the case week ago when I wanted to try a new recipe:  carrot soup with lemon and ginger courtesy of my sister-in-law, Karen Matocha. The recipe called for 4 lbs. of grated carrots.  To my knowledge a grater designed for a one-handed person does not yet exist so I solicited the help of my husband, Bob. He graciously agreed to help and we made this delicious soup together.

This is clearly a case where I think I’m happier that adaptation tools don’t exist because as with most things, Bob simply makes it more fun.   

Another activity I cannot handle by myself is swimming. Last year Bob built a railing so I can walk down to the pool from our patio but when it comes to getting in the pool, here are the steps:  I sit in a chair Bob lowers me from the chair to the edge of the pool.  One-by-one he lowers me onto each step at the third step I can take over and swim laps.  I generally swim laps for about 30 minutes or until “pruning” sets in, whichever comes first.   Getting out is trickier because Bob has to lift me from the edge back to the chair and it requires me to stand putting all my weight on my right foot while he lifts me to the chair.  I have not mastered this step and currently failing at it because the way I’m doing it puts too much weight on Bobs back and if I not careful I will put him in traction.  I wish I could adequately describe the sensation of swimming.  I feel it works on my balance, ability to stand up straight, and works both legs while kicking in a way that my stationary bike cannot.  Even though I don’t feel my left side, it is working it in a way I cannot do with any other exercise. I need to give my friend Edie a callout here.  If it wasn’t for her persistence every weekend last summer to get me in the pool, I would not be able to swim by myself.  Thank you Edie!

Living in a world where you only have the use of one arm

Even though it is no picnic living with a stroke, it is helpful that products have been designed to allow me to work around my disability of only having the use of my right arm.

I make the mistake of forgetting about my left arm and my three visits to the NIH brought this to light. I need to do better and focus on my left side or it will never come back.  More later on what I plan to do about this.

Please allow me to share a few tools given my goal of the blog is to shortcut steps for other stroke survivors.

THE FIRST amazing tool that allowed me to maintain a passion is the Amazon Kindle It took two years after the stroke to discover the joy of reading again and it was 100% thanks to the Kindle. I now read the New York Times daily, the New Yorker magazine weekly and probably 3 -4 books a month.

You will recall I have no left-side peripheral vision; it’s called left-side neglect. While in the hospital and in my speech cognitive sessions, the therapist would draw a fat red line on the left with a magic marker to remind me to scan to the left when reading.  You can imagine that drawing a red line on each page of a thick book or document is a non-starter.  The Kindle reading space is 6” so I can pretty much see the whole page without turning my head.  Another advantage with the Kindle is during page turning, I can use my right thumb vs. having to put the book down on my lap and turn the page.  Reading is now much faster.

The two additional product categories that make living in a one-armed world tolerable are cooking products and grooming products:

Cooking essentials are:

-One-Touch can opener and One Touch jar opener (both can be purchased at Walgreens or Target)

-Immobile cutting board and electric knife

My 2010 Christmas present from Bob was candy apple red Kitchen Aide stand mixer this is a game-changer for my life in the kitchen and expanded my recipe repertoire considerably.

On the grooming side, because unfortunately, I didn’t lose my vanity from the stroke--the style of my hair is always #1 priority.  When Bob is around and has the time he does an amazing job with styling.  Just ask my girlfriends.  When he is away, I need a brush and hair dryer but what to do with only one usable hand.  We bought a tripod for the hair dryer.

I know there are other products that would enhance my life.

The last category is exercise and rehab tools for my disability but I will save this information for part 2.

My dream design product that I am waiting for is a pair of shoes or boots that I can fit over my leg brace that are not tennis shoes. Again with the vanity – sorry.

Top things that suck about having a stroke

While in Calistoga, My friend Sandra the writer and I spoke about my blog and potential future topics to blog about.  She said and I agree:  “People like lists.” So, this is the genesis of this blog.  We will likely do the same on the caregiver side in the future.

Other possible lists will include:

·        Top emotional changes you will experience

·        Top threats to marriage

·        Top things to do to stay in shape

·        Top things you can do cognitively

Here are top things (5 so far) that suck about living with a stroke and what I can do about it.  (In priority order)

1.      Not being able to drive:

For 32 years I could jump in a car and go wherever I wanted, whenever I wanted.  I have something called left-side neglect which means I have zero peripheral vision on my left side.  Driving would be lethal for me and for anyone in the vicinity of me.

To have this freedom taken away is indescribable. It is a jolt to have this taken away.   I cannot run a last minute errand. If I’m cooking and forgot an ingredient, I generally have to abandon the effort.  Instant example: My friends just called from Barton Springs. Had I been able to drive I’d have been out the door.

Bob is totally patient about helping me to learn again.  He will let me drive on short trips to the store if it is early and no traffic, while I’m driving; he generally has one hand ready to grab the wheel and one ready to grab the brake.  We made a deal, if I could make 10 trips with zero errors, perhaps we could venture away from these short trips.  I have not been successful, nor have we really practiced in months.  It tends to get to the bottom of the priority stack.  I’m ok with this because it is absolutely no fun for Bob.   So I counter this by having access to 4 -5 driving assistants during the week.

2.   Not having a job and earning an income. I started working at 15 and had a job even before I graduated from college.  I love to work and always felt satisfied that contributed to our household income. This is gone.  My sense of self-worth is low. My father taught all six of his daughters to always be independent as you may be on your own. So be sure and earn as if that is the case. Bob works hard to keep me in the lifestyle I am accustomed. This leads to guilt. He put his life on hold for the first 3 of my 5-yr. rehab plan to stay home and take care of me.  When I first came home. Bob literally could not leave me alone for 5 minutes.  It wasn’t until relearning how to walk, eat, cook, get in and out of bed etc. It took about a year for Bob to be able to leave and run errands. 

Thanks to my sister, Theresa, I became involved with D.A.R.S. which stands for Department and Rehabilitative Services.  DARS’ role is to help disabled people get back in the work force.  Over the last 3 years through DARS funded the following activities:

-     Administered a $6,000 neuro/psych test to get a baseline of my post-stroke cognitive ability. The outcome of the test leads to a list of recommended activities to address your deficits. I have been conducting the following activities since the test Also funded by DARS:

-     Attended  a 2-day  skills workshop

-     Attended 3 semesters at UT speech and hearing to address my cognitive deficits such as:

o   Vocal prosody

o   Left-side neglect

o   Short-term memory

o   Spatial skills limitations

As you can see, I had a lot to work on before I could go back to work.  Through UT Speech and Hearing, I worked 2 volunteer jobs during the semester sessions as well as participating in the local Toastmasters club, I am addressing my deficits.  I still have a long way to go before I can fully reenter the work force so for now I consult on marketing projects.  It works for me since I cannot drive.  Remember the mantra:  revel in the things you can do. 

Here is the rest of the list but since this is getting too long, I will address these areas in a subsequent blog.

3.       The lack of intimacy in my marriage:

4.       Not being able to wear regular shoes or high heels:

5.       Always having to rely on others:

NIH follow-up

You may recall a “manic Monday earlier post, this week it was “wacky Wednesday”

Let me explain, I traveled to Baltimore on Tuesday to complete a follow-up MRI for the NIH clinical trial I am participating in.

I woke early Wednesday to take advantage of the hotel’s free breakfast and opted for Total cereal, you know, in one of those self-contained packages where you just add milk. I did this and almost immediately spilled it on my pant leg and floor.  The table was about 15” round and on it was my spoon, newspaper and the cereal.  A very nice woman immediately came to my rescue and we replaced the cereal, again I poured the milk and within 2 minutes did the same thing—milk all over me.  I felt like a 2year old and smelled like an 8-month old.  The same kind woman helped me and said “go get some more breakfast, sit down, relax and read your paper.”  I said “no, I’m just going to eat a banana in my room”.  I grabbed the banana and off I went.  First things first - wipe the milk from my pants. When I got to my room, the phone rang and it was the front desk stating they were going to deliver some cereal to me.  I guess the woman from the breakfast room was worried that I didn’t get enough breakfast.  I declined.   

By now, it was time to get to the NIH for my MRI.  I took the courtesy car and arrived at 9:00 for my 9:00 appointment.  I walked as fast as I could and on the way the head guy called asking where I was and was happy to hear I was in the building. 

Once in the MRI machine, they told me repeatedly not to move for 50 minutes.  “Do not go to sleep, because often if you sleep, you twitch, remember to keep your eyes open, they inserted the ear plugs, secure your head in place and then they said go.

I tried as hard as I could to not move because I knew if I did, they would have to repeat the tests.  At the end, he said I moved a little at the beginning. They were not concerned.

Now it was time to catch the plane back to Austin with a stop in Dallas My connection was so tight that before landing had to ask the girl next to me to grab my red bag and carry it outside the plane and the man across from me to grab my cane.  I am in awe of the kindness people show and their immediate willingness to help I also did not have time to make a bathroom stop.  When I boarded the plane, I explained my situation to the flight attendant and she said you can go right now before you get to your seat which I did.  When I came out of the bathroom, a 3-yearold darling girl was waiting.  She had a pink glittery cowboy hat in her hand I told her,   I love your hat.”  She said, “I won it in a bowling tournament.”  I said, “You did, what was your score?”  She did not understand my question and by this time everyone is boarding or had already boarded so I had to curtail the questions I made the connection barely but on the way to Austin my Kindle ran out of battery life.  For the Bacon family members, there is nothing worse than being without reading material.  Fortunately it was only for 15 minutes.

Hectic day calamities averted and I never cried over spilled milk.

guest post from my friend, Sandra Miller

The day my friend  T. called me to tell me about Annie’s stroke, I was sitting on my front step in the California sunshine, lacing up my running shoes.   I will always remember the conversation.  T. described the horror of Annie’s bandaged head after the  craniotomy “She hardly looks human,” she choked.  The words were like a cold fistful of jelly in the face, and for a long time there was no sound between us but our shared sobbing.  There are hundreds if not thousands of people all over  the world who have a similar story of the fear of losing her, and the hole it created was like something in space, black, infinite, swallowing all light as it collapsed in on itself. 

There are all kinds of things you think when something so cataclysmic happens to someone you love.  I’ll save that for another guest post, maybe.  For now, I’m going to fast forward five years: my husband and I are planning a house party for the July 4^th weekend,  in the wine country.  We’re not much good at planning (to put it mildly) so the evite that was meant to go out no later than March 1^st arrived in the email boxes of friends and family in mid-June.   I was delighted that Annie said yes and disappointed that her  husband wouldn’t join. Right away Bob sent me a list of all the things Annie would need help with.  I was unperturbed – my theory was, Annie is a big girl. She knows what she needs, and she knows how to ask for it, so we’d be fine.

And we were. The most difficult part was before the trip. Annie contacted me daily – sometimes multiply – for details about the house and grounds.  Understandably, she wanted to know exactly what she was getting herself into.  My long work day, plus the two hour time difference, made it difficult for us to connect voice to voice. We exchanged a lot of messages with very little information – a telecomedy of errors, if you will.  Annie got insistent, I got crabby, she got snippy, I got pissy , but we got it planned, and on July 2^nd Annie rolled up to the house with my friends K. and M, drenched in sweat (M couldn’t’ figure out how to work it the convertible top OR the air conditioner) but none the worse for worry.

I did not give anyone any details of Annie’s condition other than “My friend Annie is flying in from Austin. She had a stroke and it sucks that she has to walk with a cane now – she’ll need some help navigating the grass.”  I figured it was up to Annie to decide what and how much to say about the stroke.  In her blog Annie  marveled at how normally everyone treated her; it could be because everyone in San Francisco is a crunchy-liberal compassionate commie, but I think it’s because Annie is all in all pretty easy to like. The stroke has not changed everything, after all.

In his blog, Bob (Annie’s caregiver husband) mentions that in the past, he avoided handicapped people, didn’t want to open a dialogue with them, afraid where it might lead.  I confess I had the same attitude, more or less, until I moved to San Francisco. I joined a writing group, and the first night we met, there was a blind girl , K., sitting  in the corner with a guide dog at her feet. She was not only blind, but, I later found, suffered from Marfan’s Syndrome. I had never seen anyone so frail-looking.  During the session she read one of her stories, and though I deeply admired her writing, I didn’t really speak to her.   After a few sessions the host turned to me one night and said “Can you take K home?”   

“I don’t think so,” I said to him nervously, as she cocked her head.  “I have a Miata, there isn’t much room.” 

“We can manage,” K. told me in a straightforward, no-nonsense way , and I blushed with embarrassment at my passive attempt to evade  her or take any responsibility for her.  She folded her long frame into the Miata bucket seat, her dog curled neatly at her feet, and on the ride home I found out all kinds of things: how she lost her mom as a teenager, her Ivy League  degree, her hyper-literacy and her  crazy acerbic wit.  Also her love of fashion.   She was so much more than her blindness, or the frailties of her body.  I’m glad I was pushed  into overcoming my nervous aversion to interacting with someone who is handicapped.  Apparently, I’d been missing out on knowing some pretty cool individuals.

When Annie asked me, “was it harder or easier than Bob and I led you to believe?”  I had to think about that for a bit.  It wasn’t ‘hard’ per se to assist Annie  with her physical needs, i.e. she needs help in the shower – it’s a fact, and the best way to deal with such facts, I’ve found is to just deal with them.   Keeping an eye out to make sure she had someone on hand to help her to the pool, across the yard, etc  was just one of those things we have to do now. 

The thought haunts me  that it could just as easily be me in that wheelchair with that cane, recovering from a stroke – it’s a thought that has a way of softening the edges of the tasks that accompany hanging out with Annie.

What I found hardest to deal with was the emotional impact of seeing her day-to-day, minute-by-minute reality.  Watching her do everything with one hand,  plotting every step –  I am acutely aware that ‘helping out’ isn’t the same as living with it as my reality.   It hurt my heart to hear Annie’s constant apologizing and thanking those who are helping her.  Thank you thank you thank you, she’d say, almost chant, when R. waked her from the pool to the house. It made me mad  - at the stroke, at  the effing unfairness of it all. 

Sorry- sorry! she’d repeat when L. and I lifted her into the pool.  Exasperated, L said to her, not unkindly “Can we all just agree that you’re glad for the help and  we’re happy to help you, and stop with the apologizing already!”  

“Ok,”  Annie said, to her credit sounding only a little apologetic. 

I hated the constant apologizing because it was a reminder – as much as her stiff foot and limp arm are reminders – which things have irrevocably changed for my friend.  I wanted Annie to feel ‘normal’;  sure the stroke has changed her, but I don’t’ want her to feel that the resultant incapacitations have defined her.  It’s a selfish thing to want, I recognize that – as much about me  wanting to feel reassured that all is well in Annie’s world as it is about Annie herself.  It’s appalling sometimes, to try and stare down your own ego. 

When I heard Annie apologizing yet again as someone assisted her to the dining patio, it was a bald reminder of her emotional vulnerability, and my own aching helplessness in the face of it.  Maybe the stroke and its aftermath don’t even have much to do with it – after all, it’s not a place our friendship took us before the stroke, being vulnerable with each other.   We were too busy travelling at high speed through our experiences together - - working in Japan, partying in Santa Fe, running in the Grand Canyon.  

 Now, post-stroke, we find ourselves navigating quieter waters.  I picture us in a rowboat, side by side (me on the left) learning a new rhythm to our friendship a we pull through waters that are quieter than the frothy rapids of our 30s and 40s, but no less deep.  

“I didn’t leave my heart”

At the end of my 4 days in Calistoga, California, my friend, Sandra asked if I was glad came? 

There was some angst leading up to this trip so it was a good question.

Could I shower? Was the step into the shower too tall? What were the grounds like, e.g., could I walk from my sleeping quarters to the dining area and pool?  Sandra was very patient with my questions and in some cases didn’t really remember the layout of the house and I was asking micro details to the point of annoyance.  In the past I regretted not knowing the details and I simply wanted to be prepared since this was my first real pure pleasure trip without a sister or sister-in-law nearby.

My angst was so unnecessary.  The home in Calistoga was to me was the equivalent of a 6-star resort.  Sandra went to great lengths to ensure my comfort.  I slept in the main house so there was only a short walk to the dining area and pool and minimum steps.  The shower had no step.  The most difficulty I had was getting down the steps to the pool or making it to outdoor dining time. There were about 13 people at the house for the weekend and always someone willing to help me get down the steps or into the pool.  In fact, I made 8 new friends, which is a true joy at my age. We are already exchanging emails and face booking. They are all from the San Francisco o Bay area and occupations range from filmmaker to singer/songwriter to food server at a popular SF restaurant. The daily activities included a leisurely coffee/breakfast, pool time, lunch, snack, pool, dinner, bed.  It was about 90 degrees during the day and air conditioning and Calistoga are not necessarily abundant; hence all the time in the pool.

What I was fascinated by was how irrelevant my stroke was with the crowd.  Don’t know if Sandra told anyone in advance but I do know that no one asked me about what happened.

What I learned about myself is do I crave attention about the stroke from strangers?

I think it is so healthy that no one mentions it nor feels sorry for me.

In answer to Sandra’s question, I didn’t leave my Texas heart in San Francisco but I sure had a great time!