florida80

Rehab and relearn

My first night in the rehab ward was terrifying. Alone with my thoughts, I no longer felt like I belonged to the human race. My brain kept taking tours into my distant past. I drifted in and out of sleep, and through the night, I wept.

Yet memories, I was convinced, were the one touchstone I shared with my old self. They worked like a metaphor to help establish my new claim on “being.” A part of my brain was damaged, but other parts seemed to be working overtime to compensate for what I had lost.

Thankfully, Pat would not let me feel sorry for myself. Nor was the staff tolerant of any quitting. As I traveled through the halls in my wheelchair in the weeks to come, I heard a chorus of voices raised in a song of healing. Rarely did I hear anger or annoyance escape anyone’s lips but my own.

That first day of rehab, I had an appointment in the gym. “Do you know the way?” one of the nurses asked. I realized they expected me to wheel myself to the gym. Good luck, I thought. I couldn’t begin to go in a straight line. My right arm hung lifeless in my lap, and when I pulled with my left hand, I did doughnuts, spinning in circles.

“Drag your left foot along the ground as you push,” a nurse advised. When I tried, I made it a few yards before I veered right and smashed into the wall. “Perseverance,” she called to me.

I repeated the lurching motion, once again smashing into the wall, then continued down the hall, swerving to my right, almost colliding with an elderly woman. Then, to my surprise, I bolted in a straight line toward the gym.

The next few weeks were a grueling process of relearning and repeating the simplest movements: swallowing, standing, stretching.

To regain movement on my damaged side, I practiced “mirror therapy.” The goal is to fool the brain. A mirror was placed on a table by my right shoulder, my right arm behind the mirror. Then with my good hand I performed several simple exercises, staring in the mirror as hard as I could.

There is nothing smooth about stroke recovery, but there’s also no limit.

I drummed my fingers, formed a fist, flexed the fingers of my left hand. I did this slowly so my brain could take in the movement, pausing and then repeating, for about a half hour.

What I saw, of course, was the reverse image. I thought I was looking at my right hand doing the movements, not my left hand. My brain was being fooled. Or was it? I wasn’t sure. But I was determined to embrace this little deception. I think these exercises helped forge new pathways between the hemispheres of my brain.

One day, after a few weeks, Nicole was sitting opposite me when she jumped to her feet and shouted that my damaged hand had mimicked the movement of my good hand. At first, I didn’t believe her, but then I lifted my paralyzed arm and, much to my amazement, flung it in a circle, hitting the mirror. I let out a whoop. I had movement in my arm for the first time since the day of the stroke