The Monster (Part V)

There are in case you haven't noticed, 4 other parts below here.

Therapy

The total amount of my time spent in ICU was 13 days and nights. As the time went by, little flickers of hope popped up now and then. The therapy Nazi's (and I use that term with the sweetest of intentions) were there daily. Three types of therapists worked with me. Occupational, which was my upper body, Physical, which is the lower body, and Speech...without a doubt the greatest child killing, communist, anti-Mickey Mouse, anti-apple pie domestic terrorist of them all.

But for now I speak too kindly of this individual, so later I'll tell you how I really feel about her.

I think it may have been the 3rd or 4th day when the first sign of good things to come happened. Immediately after having my pur'eed pork chop for lunch (for those of you who don't know, that's a pork chop placed into some sort of food processor and ground up until it's a kind of runny paste, which they them put on a plate for stroke victims with no way to swallow properly to eat).

Oh man, can I have another?

Anyways, after my scrumptious lunch, I went for a walk with the Physical therapist guy. Big, football sized dude. He used a length of 4 inch wide strap tied around my waist to anchor me. He then hoisted me up off of the bed, and while holding onto both me and the strap, we began the arduous process of taking a step...1 step. Of course I don't remember being 12 or 14 months old, but I now have new appreciation for the trials and agonies of learning how to walk. However, the child has nothing to fall back upon, and therefore has no preconceived notions of what he or she is supposed to be doing. The adult does, and it gets in the way of progress. The first time we attempted this drill, we went for about 20 minutes, and the therapist got a hell of a workout dragging my 195 lb butt along the hallways. Not a step did we walk, but we tried. Afterwards, in the only public display of emotion that I can remember, I sat on the bed with my daughter beside me and I cried.

But that day was over, and we were on to a new day of dragging my toes upside down along the freshly waxed ICU hallway floors. Something happened this day. As every other time me and my therapist weighlifter buddy went for a stroll, he was constantly encouraging me to use my mind to make my leg move. For the first few days...it did not. Then this day, something remarkable happened. In the middle of the drag, my right leg suddenly shot out perpendicular to my body, as if I was Jackie Chan throwing a lightning quick flying kick at a three-foot tall Chinese drug dealer. It was a totally involuntary movement, initiated by some sort of central nervous system jolt. It was a good sign. The nerves were working and that represented hope.

Somewhere around the 5th day, I was slowly but surely starting to take these awkward and disjointed - but nonetheless wonderful - steps. The blood thinner was working to reestablish blood flow to the brain, the massages to the leg and constant reassurance by my therapist that we would not quit - was working.

We had similar progress with the arm, with one small side tracking event. On one of the early days, the nurse came in and I asked her if I could sit up. She said no problem because she had to change the sheets anyways. I'm not quite sure where I was put, but I think I was just sort of propped up in a chair at an angle where the left side took all the weight so I wouldn't fall. Hell of a way to run a railroad, eh? In any case, when she put me back in the bed and propped me up, somehow my paralyzed right arm got pushed or just sort of fell underneath and slightly behind my buttocks. Naturally, I had no feeling whatsoever, so I didn't notice anything out of the ordinary. It had to have been at least a hour...maybe more....when she walked back in and noticed with an excited gasp that my arm was where it was. I thought it was hysterical at the time, but she wasn't amused at all. I received a serious rubdown/massage trying to get the blood flowing back into the limb, and a potentially disastrous event was avoided. We all took great care from that point on to account for each limb specifically.

Finally, there is my friend the speech therapist. Her job may have been the most difficult, for her tasks were plentiful. She had to repair all the muscles in my throat, mouth, jaw, and neck...and a large part of those were still paralyzed. She had to teach me to pronounce the simplest of words all over again, while working with a severely damaged psyche. She had to repair my gag reflex, or it was going to be pur'eed pork chops for life, and finally she had to teach me how to refocus my attention span through reading. The things I had to read were single page coloring book pictures of sheep, cows, rabbits, etc...with the word written above the picture in large print. In other words, I went back to pre-toddler to learn how to walk, and I was back in pre-K to learn how to read and enunciate.

In order to accomplish her goals, she would rubber glove it up, lean my head back and stick her fingers down my throat, rather vigorously massaging and somewhat assaulting my throat muscles. She also had this really neat machine that would send 20 milliamps of electric voltage through my skin, muscle tissue, and rattle the roots of my teeth in an effort to stimulate activity. As soon as she would reach for that ultra-sound jelly, I knew I was in for it. She'd rub it on my face, bring the machine up to cheek level and....ZAP!!!!

Yes, it hurt. Three times a day she came in and did these things to me, all so I could accomplish the goal of saying SHYUEIPJFP, which of course we all know is "sheep" in the official stroke language manual. All things considered, she was a nice person, and if she ever needs me to speak to the warden on her behalf, I'd be more than happy to.

Life was being breathed into my damaged body and brain, and things were getting better by day 5.

My kids snuck me in an ice cream cup. Yeah, baby!!!!