It's The Day

I had a different post planned for today. Actually, I've been carefully researching, designing, and typinging on my laptop, two different posts, for the past four days. I'll likely still post those later within the next few weeks, but today I just don't have the heart to. 

So I'm winging it from my telephone, laying on my back, holding the phone steady by threading the pop socket Rick recently bought me through my left hand that is resting on my tummy. My kids tease me about my texting methods, but I'm actually faster with just my right thumb or pointer finger on the phone keypad, than I am with my whole right hand on my computer keyboard.

This won't be fancy, is likely to be rambly and unedited, but these are my two main thoughts today. Ten years? And overwhelming thankfulness!

Several months after getting home from the hospital, wheelchair-bound to ever leave my house, legally blind due to severe double vision (going to the movie theater was trippy - my eyes were so misaligned that I could initially watch the movie on two fully distinct and non-overlapping screens!) but also blurry and totally color-blind in one eye, profoundly hearing impaired, and overwhelmed by any kind of sounds or movement or conversation or people around me, I briefly met a 10-year stroke survivor visiting our church that Sunday. 

Ten years! That was the first time I knew ten-year survival was even a possibility. Grated, I never met her again and have no idea the specifics nor severity of her stroke, but her story gave me hope in the midst of terribly dismal prognosis from doctors.

In those early months I remember laboriously shoving my 7-weeled, 90-pound (Maybe it was only 50 or 30 pounds? It fell like 900 pounds to me!) "parkinson's" walker (a very unique special style for my stability needs at the time) up and down the hall, in the first months I was home. Desperately I attempted to squeeze the reverse-enginiered bycycle-style breaks that had to be manually held open to disengage the otherwise always-activated standstill engineered into the U-Step walker. My grip strength was improving at a surprising speed, but my coordination was terrible. If I finally got ahold of anything it was near impossible to let go (even when I really wanted to, like a too-hot item that was burning my hand) but getting my arm to any target, and my hand to close around it in the first place, was a challenge.

One to three hall laps were all I could manage in an entire day, both in sheer number of hours required, and in the physical, mental, and emotional drain. I only took a few very bad falls, but turning around at the end of the hall was always terrifying because my world was already constantly spinning and my balance so unreliable. I could hear my physical therapists chanting in my mind:

Engage your core.

Know your place in space.

Trust your legs. They really are strong enough to hold you.

Don't watch your feet. Look up and see where you are going...

So I would determinedly drag my numb left leg into another brief step and hope that my foot, whose only sensation was a continuous burning and stabbing nerve pain from within, was solidly planted on the tilt-o-whirl that was my constant world, before lifting my more obedient, yet still-inpaired, right leg off the ground.

For several weeks I could not attempt these walks without a "gate belt" and an adult assistant matching my every haulting step.Turning around at the end of the hall was the hardest part, taking a good 20 minutes. Initially, I could only manage right turns.

[For reference it has taken my about two hour to type this far.]

What does the walker story have to do with my ten-year mark? It was one one of those tedious hikes, a few feet from the end of the hall with the impending turn-around looming, that I distinctly remember thinking, "I can't imagine living like this for two or three years!"

By God's grace, I did not have to live exactly "like this" for the entire first few years, nor for this full decade I was not supposed to survive. Things are still not ideal (I'll link my physical update "Nevers" post here when I figure out how), but so much beyond "better" that I cannot begin to adequately describe the contrast! 

That I even came home at all (as opposed to dying or remaining in a nursing home), I entered those early years in a far better position than most folks who suffer my number (six within 26 days) severity (two were classified as "catastrophic" and either of those should have been fatal) or kinds (those worst two taking out large portions of my  brain stem and cerebellum) of strokes.

It has taken monumental amounts of ongoing work, both mine and those closest to me, but by God's grace I have not only survived "the decade that should not have been," but my quality of life has grown astoundingly high, as well.

I desperately wanted to say ten years worth of specific thank yous here, but I'm simply out of energy, both physically and emotionally. There are so many people to thank, and so many reasons! I know I cannot possibly cover them all, and I grieve that I will end up leaving folks out, but at the very minimum, I have to thank my amazing husband for faithfully supporting me from the moment you beat the ambulance to the hospital until now! I had a scripted many paragraphs in my mind, dedicated to Rick.

Others I cannot close without thanking, my parents and parents-in-love, our kids, Dr. Monica, Kathy, and Shelly. Our church families (we have had five since the day I stroked, plus about three others that kind of "adopted" us), schooling communities, medical and rehabilitation teams, and a large network of friend, both on and off -line, are filled with names and specific stories I wanted to share today.

[Another hour and a half has passed and my hands are shaking so badly that Im quitting here ]

10 years. Thank you LORD. Thank you all.

Editing in a text I wrote earlier today:

"Happy birthday" is totally appreciated and appropriate for this day. I started over as an infant, had to re-learn how to roll over, sit, stand, walk, crawl, eat, toilet train, see, hear, speak coherently, think logically, read, write, communicate, cook, clean... Doctors gave us no hope of these years. The LORD is great and greatly to be praised!