I COME HOME

Gary Ward and Fred Cabanas f

It was not long before we realized that no progress could be made at the hospital.  Despite promises from the rehabilitation team the fact was that any recovery was going to have to be an individual effort and not within medical magic.  There was no magic pill.

Like most people I had no knowledge of stroke.  Not only did I not know what it was but I had no knowledge of how to get over it.  I found out later that I was not the only person at that hospital who had no idea about stroke.

A cardiologist looked at my heart via ultra sound.  At no point did he ever touch me or examine me.  The hospital food was poor.  It alone could give you a stroke.  It always included a juice box of what appeared to be sugary orange juice, the last thing a stroke, cardiac or cancer patient needs is insulin spiking sugar.  I received regular medications I assume for blood pressure with the occasional injection in the belly for something.  I still have no idea what that was.

I became suspicious when I realized that the fella who shared my room with me had also had a stroke.  Only he wore a diaper, slept most of the time and could not remember his name, his family's faces or his own address.  Later on I would learn that memory loss was a part of a left hemispherical stroke which I also had.  The right side of the brain is the conceptual side of which I am full of.  The man did not appear to have any motor problems although he was overweight and probably pre-diabetic, a precursor to cancer, heart attack and stroke.

On a few of the occasions where I had tried to get up from my bed and ended up on the floor it was that guy who held me down with tears in his eyes.  He just could not emotionally cope with me trying to walk so he held me down on the floor until the nurses could find me.  Of course I wanted to crawl back into bed before they got there but the cry baby would not let me.  But eventually I did walk out of there under my own power and that gave me hope.

The whole thing was funny to me.  My roommate cried while I laughed.  I also learned that emotional instability was a part of having a stroke although I never cried in the hospital.  I did cry buckets at home.  The real thing was that I was angry.  I felt like 55 years of hard work went down the drain when I had the stroke.  But I must confess it was that stroke which kept me alive.  It warned me of serious changes that I had to make.  One can always recover from illness no matter how far down the rabbit hole he is.  But no one can recover from death.

While in the hospital I wondered how I was supposed to behave now that I was paralyzed.  To be honest I never believed that I was paralyzed.  I would lay there and try to convince myself that I was paralyzed.  But a little voice in my scrambled head would say no you are not paralyzed.  It was not a medical question.  It was a question of faith and courage.  Did I have the courage to face this apparent situation and say no.  Well, I had always believed that if I do not have all the facts I could just make them up as I saw fit.  So I began to accept the idea that I was not paralyzed and that in time it would pass.

Larisa stood by my side every step of the way.  The few times that I faltered she never waivered.  She is crazier than I am. Once she gets an idea in her mind she will not let go.  I guess that is one of the reasons I married her.

Reminding me even more that the doctors do no know all was the twitching of my supposed paralyzed arm and leg.  I remember telling Larisa on one of her visits that my arm and leg were twitching.  She said "see?".

The doctor, Carlos Romero hated to visit me.  First my wife was always there to drill him on my condition and various health issues.  Second, it was obvious that I was not a fat out of shape or frail patient and that I had tried to take care of myself through proper eating and exercise.  How did modern medicine explain what had happened to me?  I had done almost everything "right".  He began to mock me and extol the virtues of the Mediterranean Diet.  He insinuated that it was my muscular frame that had set me up for a stroke.  That if I had been less of an athlete and less of a man physically I might not be in this mess.  He might be right.

But we got him back when we questioned him on the role that homocysteine plays in vascular health.  It was then that we learned shocking news.  We learned that Dr. Romero did not believe in vitamin and mineral supplementation.  He felt it was literally pissing money down the toilet.  Instead he prescribed 2 kinds of beta blockers, a calcium blocker, a diuretic,  aspirin and statin and I was to come and see him 6 months later which I never did.

Like good patients I began to follow doctor's orders.  Then I realized that he was only guessing about what medications I should take.  It did not take me long, about one week, to realize that Dr. Romero had completely skipped over a more reasonable course of action and instead had me on dangerous heart medications that had massive side effects.  At one point when he was ordering a blood test for me he asked to measure cholesterol and triglycerides  but not homocystiene.  When Larisa asked him whether or not measuring my homocysteine levels could be beneficial his reply was sort of "that's a good idea"  .  Well, in fact homocysteine levels are very relevant as a cardio-vascular marker.

As the time approached for me to leave the hospital we began to question a lot of the medical procedures.  In a couple of cases we caught the nurses in error with my medication.  We also later would catch my pharmacy also making errors with my blood work.  It became obvious that we asked far too many questions for the doctor to be comfortable with and that we needed to seek our medical arrangements elsewhere.

The final kick came when we learned that we could not phone Dr. Romero. He had no phone.  It was like Hotel California.  You could "checkout but you could never leave".  If we wanted to ask him a question we would have to come to the hospital just after his rounds and catch him while he walked down the hall.  He was a government paid worker and this was their idea of care.

So with the confidence of an elephant on ice I began my new life as a stroke survivor.

The surrepticious trips outside by stealth wheel chair helped me adjust to life in the world again.  But nothing prepared me for life as a survivor after two weeks in the hospital.  Like most I feared another phantom attack.  I could not stand so I bathe in the tub.  Well, Larisa had to bathe me.  The difficult part was getting out of the tub afterwards without breaking my neck.  I learned to shave and brush my teeth with my left hand.  Still I needed to learn how to walk.  This is a lot more complicated than it seems.  You have to study the mechanics of walking which most people do instinctively.  In my case I had lost that instinct.

I had a lovely bedroom in the old house.  It was huge with a private en suite, marble floors and complete privacy to recover in.  My only complaint if I had any was the hardness of that marble floor when I would fall.  But no broken bones so far.  There was also a buzzer built in so that I could alert the family in the kitchen if I needed help.  It was the ideal house for what I faced.

Today we live in a small apartment in a 13th Century village.  It is ...adequate and comfortable.

My children wanted to visit me while I was at the hospital.  I would not allow it not so much because I looked and felt like hell, but I really did not want them exposed to the ugly scenes that I saw while I was there.  This might have given them the impression that a hospital was a place you go to die.  That was my impression while I was there.

So they waited patiently at home to receive the man who had taught them to swim, to play tennis, to throw a football, to play basketball and to never give up.  It was not easy to stagger from that taxi the first day.  Fear of letting the family down began to enter the picture.  And then it hit me.  My dreams of flying again as a pilot in command were over.  And then the tears began to flow.  I guess I had always assumed that I would be a pilot forever not realizing that one slip would bring that dream to an end.

If  you are a pilot you know what  I mean.  You know the excitement of  your first solo and now I know the sadness of never piloting again.

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