It's been about a month since Jon had his stroke. He's home from the hospital, and walking, talking, cooking, and conversing pretty much back to his usual self. Except for some cognitive memory recall, and numeric calculation abilities, he's regained a lot of his outward appearances of his old self, that most people would not know the difference. Because his injury was cognitive/linguistic, the healing and recovery is more subtle. It's the part of the iceberg you can't see from the surface.
And everything is different.
I think it's time to write about the event itself, which I've been putting off, and dreading, but is a necessary part of this story.
Sunday, April 23 was a long and busy day for each of us. It was the usual shopping, cleaning, cooking, errands day. It was much more the norm that we ran errands separately, since Jon long ago gave up the boyfriend requirement of sitting in "men's chairs" while I looked at shoes. I also had an evening dinner with friends, so I got home later than usual. Jon was in the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner, and I asked him if he ate, and he said no, which I thought was odd. He went to bed early and slept through until morning. I assumed he was coming down with a virus.
On Monday, he dropped off the boys at school, then went out to run errands with his brother, Alex, stopping to have lunch. Alex noticed he didn't look well, and that he kept falling asleep in the car. During lunch, he had little appetite, which is unusual for Jon. When I saw him in the evening, I asked him about summer plans, and whether we should plan to go to New York. He repeated the question back to to me, almost verbatim, looking at me blankly. What I interpreted as irritation with the subject was probably interference from a growing edema, as a slow leak was likely filling the area around his brain with blood. He went to bed early, and the next day, he seemed much clearer.
Tuesday night he told me that we had a building problem--the unit upstairs that we were prepping for rental had a sudden crack in the ceiling and then the plaster had crashed down, leaving a hole and revealing rain damage. I figured his "down" mood was also due to the problems of the repair, which made sense to me.
Wednesday, April 26, we kissed goodbye in the morning, and I went to the office. He got ready to take the kids to school. The kids made it to school, so sometime between 10-2:30, the slow leak in Jon's brain must have suddenly burst. By around 2:30, he got into the car and started on the route to pick up the kids. Around the corner from our home, he got into a fender bender, putting the car into reverse instead of forward.
The other driver, by luck, was a really, really good guy, and a Good Samaritan. He noticed Jon was not speaking, moving slowly, but was taking everything out of the glovebox in an effort to get his insurance card. He called 911.
When the police arrived, the other driver insisted on getting EMTs, "There's something medically wrong going on with this guy," he later told me by phone, "he doesn't seem drunk, but he's having a hard time standing up."
At the same time, Casey was wondering what had happened to Dad, why he never answered his phone and texts, and why he never showed up to pick him up. He walked over to his uncle Al's, and Al happened to pull up at the same time. They went to look for Jon together, and saw the ambulance in the neighborhood. Casey recognized Jon's car, and Al intervened with the EMTs. Jon was taken to the local ER, and Al called me on the way, where I met them in the hospital.
The rest of the afternoon, from around 4:30 on, was surreal. Jon was quickly placed on monitors and sent for a CT scan. The nurses kept doing what I realized later on were motor and cognitive tests. By the time the ER doctor told me he had a pretty large brain bleed, and that he would probably need a shunt, all I could think of was how quickly we could get him into surgery.
Now to say that emotions run high at a time like this is an understatement. Al, Roger and I were all making the calls we felt we needed to make. I don't even remember how the kids got to the ER, but I didn't want them in the trauma room, so I sent them home. In the ER, Jon was able to remember his first and last name, the year, what city we were in, my name, and who I was. Over the next few hours, all that would fade away into the distance.
By the time USC EMTs came to transfer him to a specialized neurology department, it was all I could do not to break down. I was so relieved to see them load him onto the bus and take him to Keck, and he was conscious the whole time, so I kept talking to him. After rounds of tests, it was clear he had a hemorrhagic stroke, and he needed to have a shunt to relieve the fluid and the pressure around his brain. I immediately agreed, and answered a slew of questions I had never thought I would have to answer. What religion is he? Does he have a living will or advanced directive? Is he an organ donor? In the event of brain death, do you want to keep him on a ventilator?
The evening is a bit of a blur, but I remember being told the MRI was to look for a tumor that might be the underlying cause of the bleed (and subsequent radiation or surgery), and the scheduled angiogram that would look for additional aneurysms or tangled blood vessels (and possible additional surgery), and going home for a few hours of sleep before coming back in the morning. I remember breaking down when they gave me his wedding band, which they took off for the MRI.
And the rest, so to speak, has been what this blog has been about.
If there are any lessons to be learned from this experience, I would say it boils down to a simple few things.
If someone is acting strange, confused, emotionally "vacant" in a way that is not themselves, this may indicate a biological cause, NOT an emotional cause. Jon didn't have any of the classic signs of stroke--no facial droop, no tingling or motor dysfunction, no slurred speech, no asymmetry on either the left or right side. Because of the location and type of stroke, Jon's symptoms were much more subtle. If I had administered a simple memory test (not that I knew this at the time) instead of "giving him his space," it would have been clear he was having a neurological event.
By instinct, I drew a protective circle around myself, choosing people who I could draw strength from as my safety walls from the millions of questions, decisions, problems that would arise over the next days and weeks. So many wonderful friends and family were there for me and the kids, but I needed proxies to handle as much as they could so I could focus on Jon. I needed my guardians too, and I am blessed they were there. Everything from driving me, giving me a recommendation for my next call to make, providing sympathy, a kind listening ear when I would have my crying jags, were all acts of generosity that I'll never be able to repay. I am grateful in every possible way.
Today I asked Jon how much he remembers from the last month. "Nothing really," he says.
Jon: "I just woke up in the middle of the night I didn't know where I was, and I tried to go to the bathroom and a bunch of people came running in."
Me: "I think that was the nurses, when you were getting up and turning off your bed alarm."
Jon: "Yes, that's when they put me on suicide watch, parking me in the hallway."
Me: "You weren't on 'suicide watch!' You were at risk of a fall."
Jon: "Eh, it was suicide watch. Like in prison."
Some things, like your weird sense of humor, have come back in full force. Missed you like crazy.
Love you always,
Min
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