Blog Title

My first thought was to call my blog Working After Stroke.  But then I realized there is no "after" a stroke.  Sure, there are phases:  acute phase, subacute, chronic phase.  I'm in that chronic phase now, and will be for as long as I live.  And like any other chronic condition, it just goes on and on.  So I feel as if I live my life "with" stroke, and work "with" stroke.  Everything I do is"with" stroke. 

Because I work full time, and have started my own company on the side, and because I am a husband and a father with a family that still depends on me, I won't have a recovery phase. I won't have years, or even months, of focusing full time on regaining what the stroke took away.  After a week in stroke ICU, I had four weeks at an inpatient rehab facility, and three more weeks as an outpatient, and that's it. What I have is for the most part all that I'll ever have.  The phase I've entered now is more of a compensation phase than a recovery phase - learning how to function in the world as best I can using whatever strategy I can come up with.  Luckily, though, I was left with enough residual mental and physical ability that I think I'm going to be able to pull it off.

Seemingly like every other survivor, I got almost no information about my stroke, or about stroke in general, from any doctor of any type I came in contact with.   I suppose they thought I wasn't capable of understanding, or retaining, anything of any complexity.  During my stay in the hospital, and later in the rehab facility, I never doubted that I would walk again, regain use of my left arm and hand, drive again, and return to work.  My wife, who was with me most of the time, didn't share my optimism, although she didn't let me know that.  She thought I was determined to be positive in spite of the mental and physical deficits that  were so obvious to her.  What neither of us knew and no one told me, and what I only learned later after returning home and researching what had happened to me, was that a characteristic of the right-hemisphere stroke I had were feelings of unwarranted optimism and well-being.  That exactly describes my feelings during the weeks after my stroke.  I remember discussing with my wife my plans to return to work, and I remember being somewhat puzzled and disappointed in her lack of enthusiasm and what I considered lack of support. 

I didn't begin to understand the reality of the situation until I asked my experienced physical therapist what was the typical time frame for one of her patients to return to work.  She looked at me and said, "None of my patients has ever returned to work."  That was a slap in the face that penetrated through my fog of optimism.  It didn't discourage me to any great extent, though, because here I am and so far, so good.