time after surgery

My Stroke -- Part I

On Thursday evening, January 23, 2003, 6:10 p.m., in my 44th year, one week shy of a 7-year stretch of uninterrupted paid employment, I had a stroke while I was sitting in my office.

I had just received a bit of bad news from my ear-nose-throat doctor. I had failed the vertigo test I had taken on Tuesday. He had taken the liberty of scheduling an MRI for me the following Tuesday. I got off the phone, and started having one of my dizzy spellls.

I had been having these dizzy spells a lot recently, and I had gotten use to having them in my office, which was after all, a public place. I would get dizzy. The room would be swirling around me. I would sit down, focus on a particular spot, it didn't matter which, so long as I focussed on a fixed spot. In about thirty, sometime sixty seconds, the room would stop spinning. I would get up, have a glass of water, collect myself, and go on about my day.

This time, it was different. In the middle of the room spinning, my face burned up, the way it might if I instantaneously caught a fever, and then my stomach burned up, the way it might if I were not a human being, but a Franklin Stove. The whole event took 10 seconds. Suddenly, I had a splitting headache, and my vision blurred.

I knew something different was happening. I actually thought I might have had a stroke. As a precaution, I took a cab home to Forest Hills, even though it wasn't even 7 p.m. yet. I knew if I took a subway home I would feel worse, and I didn't want to take the risk of feeling worse on a stalled subway. I knew that couldn't possibly feel any worse without going into a hospital. However, if I felt the same, I thought I could take care of the matter myself. All the way home in the cab, I kept thinking of hospitals that I might stop at. None came to mind. My condition did not seem to be deteriorating. The cabbie stopped in front of my door. I gave the driver a 30% tip.

I convinced myself that I had another migraine headache, that I had another stress headache, that I had another sinus headache. Throughout my legal career, I would have a handful of these a year. Headaches that would prevent me from seeing clearly. I would take some aspirin, some Motrin, some pain killers, and sleep it off. It was about 8 p.m. I went to sleep and slept through the night.

When I woke up the next morning, I was feeling just as bad, but no worse than the night before. I called in sick, and continued to take pain killers and sleep.

By Saturday morning, the headache had gone away, but the vision had not cleared up. My father had flown up from Florida for the day to see my brother, and my sister had driven in from Philadelphia to join him. My wife and I were supposed to have dinner with my father and my sister that evening. So me and my blurred vision and my wife drove from Forest Hills out to Massapequa that evening for dinner at the Nautilus Diner. I never mentioned how I was feeling. Neither my father nor my sister said that I looked ill, that I looked like someone with blurred vision. I certainly did not mention it.

Incidentally, the careful reader may ask why I did not join my father and my sister for their visit with my brother, or why my brother did not join us for dinner. But that is for another chapter.

On Sunday, Laura and I drove around Forest Hills running errands, and on Sunday night, I watched the Super Bowl -- Tampa Bay blew out Oakland. I watched the football game on my 27" TV screen which I once thought was the largest TV nature could possibly make, and which I now considered a pathetic symbol of how badly I played the game of capitalism.

On Monday morning, eyes still blurred, I went to work. We were unusually quiet for January, and I was really just doing glorified filing and paralegal work. I noticed for the first time that you can adjust the computer to increase the type face of things you are looking at on the Internet. By lunch time, I realized that maybe I ought to see an eye doctor. Now. So I told everyone I needed to see a doctor in Forest Hills, and I would come back when I was done. I don't think I came back to work that Monday, but I would have to look at the time records.

After my conventional eye exam, the eye doctor introduced me to the field of vision game, which I have since played many times. In this game, you sit in front of a video screen, focusing on a central light while lights flash around the central light. When you see a light flash you are supposed to press a button. This is all a way of testing your peripheral vision, and whether or not you had any blind spots in your vision. Apparently I had a nice blind spot. The entire upper left quadrant, especially of my left eye.

As a practical matter, I had no idea what the eye doctor was talking about. I did not feel as if I had a blind spot. However, when we stopped playing computer games, and went back to the old fashioned games of how many fingers am I holding up, even I could see that my peripheral vision was not what it was supposed to be.

The eye doctor was the first person to say the "s" word out loud. I told him that I had an MRI scheduled for the next evening. He told me to send him a copy of the results.

I worked 11-6 on Tuesday, again with blurry vision. I think this is one of the days I took the bus to work. I live in Forest Hills, and I generally take the subway to work. In order to get to the subway, I have to go uphill (which is why they call it Forest Hills). There had been some days recently where I just didn't think I could make it up that hill. I figured I had just gotten too fat. I was on Weight Watchers, and had lost 20 pounds in a month, although I wasn't following the Weight Watchers program very well. I was lighter than I had been in at least 5 years. However, I figured that I was also 5 years older, I was 44, and even with the 20 pounds off, I was now too old and too fat to climb the hill every day. Therefore, some times, not all the time, I took the express bus to work. There was a stop right in front of my house and let me off on 57th and 6th. I work at Carnegie Hall Towers, which is 57th and 7th. The trip was twice as expensive and took three times as long, but I didn't have to climb the hill to get to the subway, or climb up the stairs when I was leaving the subway.

Anyway, I worked 11-6 that day, and then went to take the MRI. They put you in this pneumonic tube. What does pneumonic mean? They put cotton in your ears. And they slide you into the area where they are taking the reading. The tube felt a little small, and I think it was designed to feel a little small.

Then a voice comes through some sort of intercom: "OK, this one is for two minutes". And you begin to hear these wild industrial sounds all around your head. You think you are going to start shaking, but it is always just a little below that level. One thing's for sure. This is a lot more than two minutes. And the next one was more than 5 minutes. And the next one, they didn't tell me how long it was. And I didn't know where the other side of this intercom was. During that 10 minute one, did they even stay in the room with me? Were they anywhere nearby? If I began to shake and bake, if the MRI machine broke, would they be around to stop it? I was just scared.

When it was all over, the technician called my ear-nose-and throat doctor. The technician told both of us that I had suffered a stroke. Since I have recovered so nicely, there are some people out there who assume that I am just engaging in a sort of soldier's exaggeration of my injuries. They assume that I had a "TIA," a transient ischemic attack, a mini-stroke. Looking back, I had at least two of those as well, one in 1996 and another in 1999. I can tell you the difference between those one-hour incidents, and what was happening to me now. I could also show you the pictures, which I keep in the house. I had a real live adult-size stroke.

They wanted to put me in the hospital. I wasn't going to the hospital. I had one more task at work to take care of before I was going into any hospitals. I also had to go home and watch the State of the Union Address. Somehow or other, I was able to convince the ENT doctor that I didn't have to go to the hospital. I promised the ENT guy that I would see his neurologist the following afternoon. I went home, by cab again, and watched the State of the Union. It seemed important at the time. I can't remember anything about it now.

The next day, I went to work, told a couple of people, well I don't think I told anyone I had a stroke, but I did tell a couple of people that I had been failing medical tests, and more doctors wanted to see me. Months later, after I went back to work, people told me that I had looked awful the entire month of January. I don't remember anyone saying that to me at the time.

In 12-Step programs, they are constantly telling you about needing a "new pair of glasses" to get you to recovery. Clearly what I needed was a new set of ears.

To be continued.

posted by B @ 1/23/2005 07:17:00 PM