Right after my stroke, I said lots of bloopers. I called my friend Helen "Halibut."
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Today I had some poison.
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I use voice-activated software to "type." If you have only one usable hand, talking to your computer is better than poking at it with one finger.
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After my stroke had stabilized, I was transferred to a rehab hospital, to mend. In the neuro ward there were all kinds of patients, evidence of calamities: car accidents, strokes, aneurysms, etc.
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At the hospital, they showed me a picture of a shawl. I couldn't remember its name. I identified it as "pashmina."
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I had aphasia, from the Greek for “without” and “utterance.” It is a general term for loss of language.
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If you lace your shoes differently, you can tie your shoes with one hand.
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In the hospital a shrink was trying to figure out how addled I was. He asked me to spell "world" backward.
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Stroke victims tend to have certain patterns of movement. For instance, patients often walk with a raised hip on the bad side, to let a messed-up leg go through. Normals keep their hips even.
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Right after my stroke, I had a fill-in speech therapist who said to me, "This is God's plan." Separately, she went up to my mother and said the same thing: "This is God's plan."
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In 3-holed-binders sits neatly sliced bureaucracy: forms from the health insurance company, forms from hospitals, forms from my doctors, forms from pharmacists, forms from the government…
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Disability is the only minority group that anyone can join at any time.
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