Stroke

By Jack Krayenhoff

What is it like to get a stroke? Well, let me tell you, for I have had one, a stroke due to a blood clot, that is. On the left side.

It is amazing for a doctor that I did not know it was coming. A few weeks before, sitting in front of my computer typing, all of a sudden the typing would not work. I simply did not know how to continue. Otherwise I felt all right, so I did not worry overly about it, thinking in a few minutes it would be OK. And so it worked out: in about ten minutes I tried again and it went fine!

In something like a week I had the same experience. Now I knew that all I had to do was wait awhile, and it would straighten itself out. And so it did. I did not tell my wife about the episodes – why bother her? She would just insist that I go to the hospital, but I was not having anything like that. I knew that all I had to do if hit me again, was to wait awhile and it would pass. If it had happened to somebody else, I would not have hesitated a moment: the man had clearly a transient ischemic attack (TIA)! But that it was happening to me, did not occur to me.

A couple of weeks later, it happened again. This time I was reading in a chair; my wife was lying on the chesterfield doing the same. I was looking at her; she noticed it and looked at me, expecting to hear some comment. But I found I could not say anything. And then she got really upset, and wanted to get the ambulance. I resisted this and started to walk up and down the hallway, making it impossible for her to telephone, but in the end I gave in. The ambulance was there in five minutes, and took me to the VGH, which is the place for stroke victims. I did not really need it, because I could walk, but I wanted to be taken in, and not have to wait around.

The emergency was an anti-climax. After a session in the imaging department, which showed nothing (which was expected such a short time after the stroke), I was seen by the emergency physician. He gave me a brief examination, which was repeated in one-half-hour and again after an hour. He said that I showed marked improvement (which was not at all evident to me), and anyway the anticoagulant in older patients had side-effects not seen in younger ones, so it was better not to give them to me. Seeing I could walk, I might just as well go home. Since it was by now too late to give the anti-coagulants.

In a few days, I went to the stroke assessment unit, where I was x-rayed again, and this showed the expected changes. The weakness on the right side was very little; the weakness of the right half of the face requires a medical look to spot it. But the speech deficiency is the prominent feature.

How am I doing emotionally? I am frustrated that I can’t speak, while the other faculties are in order. I can read, I can understand everything people say to me, but I can’t answer them. So I think that there is something the lord wants me to learn. People get a lot more confident, because I cannot answer them – that is something I must remember. Perhaps when I can talk again, I will have more patience with people’s opinions. For now let them think I have not the wits to reply to them!

So, here we are. The acute phase is two months ago, and though I am all right for short sentences, if I try to speak longer, I get stuck. I have been to a speech therapist, and she has identified two areas of insufficiency: an inability to get the vocal cords together, which makes for a soft and poorly defined voice, and an inability to find the right words in time. I am taking exercises for it, and I have the advantage that I am improving anyway. But for now, if you meet me, don’t expect me to be a brilliant conversationalist!