The next morning after a restless night, a neurologist made his rounds. At this point I was showing a bit more weakness but it wasn’t that bad yet. He looked at my blood pressure and he was concerned that it was so low. Apparently they don’t like to drop your blood pressure too quickly with a stroke if they think it might be ischemic (a clot). He told me to lay down flat as that was the best thing to do if I was actually having a stroke.
Early in the morning I was visited by both a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, and a speech therapist. I had no idea what the difference was between a physical therapist and an occupational therapist. I would learn that the physical therapy was mainly concerned with the legs and the occupational therapists were concerned with the arms and legs. They all performed assessments that I generally did pretty well with. The effects of the stroke were only now starting and they were still mild.
I kept waiting to get an MRI. I thought that would be one of the first things that would be done that day to see if I had actually had a stroke. I was first moved to a “holding” room waiting for an actual bed to open up in the hospital. I had a funny experience in that room. There was a monitor and a camera which suddenly and unexpectedly turned on. A face appeared and I was registered for admission. I was then moved after a short wait to my actual room. I still had not had an MRI or been officially told I had a stroke, but my symptoms were starting to get slightly worse and I knew something was wrong. This was late morning when I was moved.
I was finally moved to a hospital room. Much to my disappointment I was moved to a “semi-private” room. Trust me when I tell you there is nothing “private” about a “semi-private” room. Our hospital apparently has a stroke wing, but I wasn’t critical enough to be moved there. I was placed in a cardiac room. There you could be wired up and monitored. I was now in my “cell”. I couldn’t look out the window as I was on the wrong side of the room. At least I could look out into the hallway and see the folks walking by. One thing I immediately noticed was the clock on the wall in front of me. I had a feeling it was going to become my enemy and it did. I learned to tolerate the days which went by relatively quickly, but the nights seemed to last forever.
I wasn’t in the room long before the transport folks finally came in the early afternoon to take me to the MRI. By this time I was really starting to lose function on my right side. My balance was off and I could not fully open my hand. I could only partially raise my arm. I could barely raise my toes but they would move. I have to say I was initially found this to be more interesting than anything else. I didn’t really have the forethought to be scared. When I got to the MRI was the first time I could really see how this was affecting me. I needed help to transfer from the wheelchair to the platform and it was very awkward. I can’t remember his name, but the tech was very nice and tried to comfort me. I was starting to get emotional about it and tearing up when I talked. Apparently, I later read that there is a clear link to emotional responses and strokes. I had times where friends would call me and I’d answer the phone but I just couldn’t talk because I was so overcome with emotion.
I’m not a big fan of MRIs. They are noisy and I get claustrophobic in one. It used to be much worse, but I’ve learned over the years to tolerate it. It was a miserable 30 minutes or so staring at the machine and contemplating what it would find. Eventually it was over and I was sent back to my room. Unfortunately they failed to do another view, and I was called back about two hours later. I got scared because I thought they had “found something” and had to look deeper. It just turns out they did just fail to get a view of my carotid arteries. I had another MRI and this one was just a bit shorter. Eventually I was back in my room.
By this time the day shift was over and the night nurses were briefed. Each shift change I had to do an evaluation for an NIH score. They would have me run my ankle over the front of the other leg to see what control I had. They would check my grip strength, raise each leg, and examine my eye movement. This would happen twice a day for the next 10 days. I noticed that each time they did it I was getting a little bit worse at it. They would indicate my score on a dry erase board. I noticed they had also written CVA–left side on the board. That’s the official name for a stroke–a cerebral vascular accident. I had learned the term years earlier when I went to Emergency Medical Technician school. I’ve always thought that was a funny name. I hadn’t been in an accident!
I had three different roommates and they were all heart patients. I learned that being a heart patient comes with pain. I felt fortunate that I had not felt any pain up until now, and I wouldn’t. I never even had a headache. The worst pain I had was after they started giving me the maximum dose of Crestor, a statin. The first few nights I had some pain in my upper legs. Two Tylenol tablets pretty easily fixed it and let me sleep. For years doctors had been trying to give me statins. I kept refusing them because I was worried about side effects. I then thought about the fact that being partially paralyzed was a hell of a side effect and thought to myself how stupid I had been.
Eventually the neurologist made his rounds and broke the news to me that I had actually had a stroke. The MRI showed that it was a clot (ischemic) on my left pons–the brain stem. He said it was a small stroke but that the pons was a very dense nerve region of the brain. It controlled a lot of “stuff.” I would eventually learn it was only a slice about 3mm thick, but it was dead and not coming back. It also showed that my left vertebral artery did not have good circulation, likely the cause of the clot forming. The vertebral arteriels supply blood to the brain and originate at the aorta which starts at the heart. I asked him if I would recover and he said every stroke was different, but that I had a good chance of recovering at least some function. By this time, I had also noticed that my swallowing was not quite right and that when I coughed, it was not a normal cough. Things were definitely not quite right, but he didn’t make it sound dire either. Looking back I was too dumb to realize the situation I was in was not great.
Here I was 10 months away from retirement, and I had had a stroke. I had almost exactly 10 months of leave saved up from my years of working for the government. I had been giddily counting down my time, but had no idea this was in the cards. The doctor left and I was left with my thoughts and a long night to contemplate all that had happened. It was surreal.