I viewed a blog yesterday regarding 1000 Awesome Things, it reminded me of the mindset I have needed to get through almost three years now.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uPE0G00XFV0
In 1983 I was 16 years old and began smoking and at the time I thought nothing about future implications or about my family medical history.
Twenty years later, January 2003 I quit smoking. Two months later I survived a heart attack at the age of 36. I thought I had a cold or fluid on my lungs. This Monday morning I woke up feeling nausea, I was short of breath, sweating, I had a heaviness on my chest and both of my arms felt like I was throwing balls the day before...my arms ached and lastly I had fear that what I was feeling was more than just a cold. I had a neighbour take me to the hospital where they established I was having a heart attack. They sent me by ambulance to another hospital for an emergency angiogram...this revealed I did have a heart attack, a block in the lower part of the heart and it had cleared itself. They sent me back to my originating hospital where I stayed for a week and was told that I should not go back to work for 5 weeks nor should drive a car or play ice hockey...something I had done since I was 6 years old.
As the years went by I ate better, exercised regularly and yearly trips to the doctor showed I was getting stronger. In 2004 I completed my first Toronto Half Marathon. In 2005 I completed the Scotiabank Half Marathon and a month later I completed the Toronto Half Marathon again.
I continued to coach ice hockey since I started in 2000 and had begun playing ice hockey again. My physical fitness was paying dividends. At 41 years of age I was playing with 19 year old guys who bugged me to slow down.
March 2008 in the last game I played, a playoff game I scored my first hatrick in years and less than a month later I barley survived a major brain stem stroke.
One Saturday morning in mid April, I had just finished painting in the basement for hours. I was using my right arm and looking up the whole time. After finishing, I showered and dressed noticing the whole time that my right shoulder was incredibly painful...I had a headache but I had these a lot. Over the course of a few hours I began feeling weak and dizzy, I remember sitting beside the toilet to rest and then I noticed vision problems and when I went to speak to agree to have an ambulance called I just mumbled. I then remember being face down in the doorway of the bathroom, drooling without the ability to move anything...or even comprehend anything. I have a vague recollection of two women paramedics coming in and hoisting me into a wheelchair to take me down the flight of stairs to the ground floor, I remember my arm was hanging straight out and they couldn't fit me through the turn on the stairs, I wanted to pull my arm in but I couldn't they had to do it. Downstairs in the ambulance they put a tube down my throat and IVs into my arm while trying to decide which hospital had room for me. They took me to the Hamilton General Hospital where they specialize in the trouble I was having...the same hospital they took me to 5 years earlier for the angiogram.
I had an MRI on my head and it revealed some damage to the brain. I spent the next week in ICU where I thought I was just waiting to die...I remember asking a nurse "Am I just here waiting to die?" I just laid in a bed enduring the cycle of pills and doctors and the hiccups that I had for 13 days straight.
My family was advised to come and say goodbye to me and they were questioned about giving me last rights. My family at the time consisted of my two kids my father and my wife at the time.
After a week in ICU I graduated past the step down ward directly to the rehabilitation ward.
I could not speak clearly, my vision was double and I could not stand or walk or swallow or scratch my nose. They fed me through a tube up my nose for weeks until they finally decided to put a tube directly into my stomach to feed me medicines, water and a food supplement.
I quickly relearned how to roll on my side to pee into the bed pan. As time went by I graduated to maneuver all the lines and IV poll to get into a wheel chair to go to the bathroom to sit and pee. The day I went to go to the bathroom and I was able to stand and pee was a joyous day, I was as thrilled as winning the Stanley Cup!
After six weeks in the hospital, six weeks of not eating food and six weeks of reusing to relearn basic things I once took for granted I finally passed a swallowing test and was released the same day. I had a chocolate milk shake on the way home...nothing ever tasted so good!
I had gone from a wheelchair to a walker, over the next few months I graduated from the walker to a cane to no aids even though balance continues to be an issue.
A month prior to the stroke I went to play ice hockey and after the warm up skate I felt dazed and confused, and even though I was the only extra player for our team I sat on the bench for the entire hour...one of my friends drove me home and the next day I followed up with my doctor...an MRI revealed I had a mini stroke, a TIA. I was just instructed not to play hockey anymore, in hindsight I should have had some blood work done. I was a 41 year old man who survived a heart attack, completed half marathons and now had a mini stroke. After the brain stem stroke, the investigation of my blood revealed I have a thick blood disorder called Factor V Leiden, something I likely inherited from my grandmother who also had many mini strokes prior to her death...having the disorder or family history of heart disease is not a death sentence it is a foundation for us to build our lifestyles on.
I will post more about past life events but for now I think this captures a great deal.
I currently still deal with balance issues, right eye functioning and numbness in the right side of my head as well as my right arm but overall I know I am a great deal better than I was and I still have hopes of recovering more.
Leaving the hospital my therapist gave me a print from her email regarding a peer support group in Peel Halton for young stroke survivors. The formation of this group and many others like it was assisted by March of Dimes.
Six months after my stroke my father drove me to my first peer support meeting.
In 2009 I became co-chair of the Peel/Halton Young Stroke Survivor peer support group and in 2010 with the aid of March of Dimes I founded and became Chair of the Hamilton Young Stroke Survivor peer group.
I have been searching for other recovered survivors to give me some reassurance and over time I feel maybe I am becoming the example for others that I have been searching for myself.
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