Stroke

Mostly I'm tired of communicating with everyone--telling them all how he's doing, what he's been through, what the doctors say. Not you--not any of you. (I'm serious.) But there are so many people who, of course, want information. And it's not like you can just write on facebook, "My husband had a stroke. We're ok." Only of course, we're not--my husband is a writer, possibly the most beautiful writer in the world, and the stroke affected his speech and writing and language. And he will recover, but we don't know how long it will take and we don't know how much he'll recover. Everyone is optimistic, but maybe they're always optimistic? Or maybe they have no idea how intelligent he is and what a great writer he is and they just think he's average? So he's probably back to average already. But I want him to recover back to extraordinary, which is what he was before. How does this affect his role at his job? His future career directions? We don't have a clue.

And I'm tired of my three-year-old who has been through so so much--a new sibling, mama in the hospital, mama recovering, all of which we prepared him for as best we could. And now this, for which we haven't--couldn't--prepare him. For which we were not ourselves prepared. Daddy in the hospital, recovering. Mama on her last nerve even more than usual, yelling at everyone when any little thing goes awry.

And I'm tired of talking to, consulting with, calling doctors.

And I'm tired of nursing my newborn--constant nursing, all day and night. Picking him up to burp him when my whole body aches. Sticking him back in his bassinet. And all the other newborn things--I have the best breast pads in the world and even they are leaking. My other pads are leaking, too--it turns out it's nearly impossible to buy pads in a hospital, oddly enough.

But I don't mean to be too negative, because we've been counting our blessings, too, as they say.

Last Saturday, I was rounding up the kids for our first family outing--we were going to go to the farmer's market. I dressed them in matching green Little Brother/Big Brother shirts, a gift from their grandmother, which I can't look at now without getting sick to my stomach. After a family breakfast with Nana and Papa, Francisco and I were the last two at the table. He started trying to tell me that he didn't feel well, but he couldn't get the words out right. He poured some water out of the wrong side of the pitcher, into his milk glass. I immediately called to my dad to get him to help Francisco lie down in a bedroom to rest. My father works with stroke patients and asked Francisco, "Has anything like this ever happened before?" "What month is it?" He couldn't answer. He just kept saying, "I'm ok; I'm ok," which was the furthest thing from the truth. After I sent Chester out of the room, then calmed down his tantrum from being sent out, I asked my dad if he thought we should go to the hospital and he said yes. He drove Francisco and I drove the baby. When I saw my father again in the ER, he had tears in his eyes.

They immediately saw Fransciso in the ER (the neurologist videoconferenced in--and the nurse or LPN originally read off someone else's stats to her--glad they caught that) and administered TPN, which breaks up the clot. They sent him via ambulance (the weather was too bad for a helicopter) to the bigger hospital 40 minutes away. He was strapped to a stretcher and couldn't really speak--at least not anything that made sense. When we arrived at the next hospital, they immediately took him into the OR and gave him an angiogram (through a catheter in the leg), which could physically break up the clot, if necessary. (I had to give them consent that I knew a whole list of things might happen including death.) (And by immediately, I mean after 6 or 7 doctors, nurses, etc. came in and asked him the same questions, which he couldn't answer, which was difficult to watch. And also like something off of a television show.) But the medicine had done its thing and the clot was broken up--a small piece lodged somewhere where they couldn't reach it. I don't know if this is good or bad, but I think it's what strokes do.

This whole time, Francisco didn't know his name. He couldn't say what pictures were of. He couldn't touch his nose when they asked him to. But he could look at me and hold my hand and so that was the way we communicated. We understood each other, and it all happened through holding hands and looking at each other with love.

Tomorrow morning is Saturday and I don't want to go down for our regular family breakfast.

By the end of that first day, he remembered his name and my name and our children's names. All I could think about that first day was how sorry I was for ever being mean to him and how I would never be mean to him again (yeah right--I lasted six days). How happy I was that he was alive and beside me. And how much I love him.

We spent four days in the hospital, as they ran tests, trying to figure out why this might have happened to my husband, who had no risk factors for stroke and is very young. Francisco made more jokes than ever in the hospital, as a way to make it through a trying time--and I've never been more grateful for his sense of humor. They found a hole in his heart--a PFO--which 30 percent of the world has and which might have been the reason for his stroke (88 percent chance, according to the doctors) and which we now have to figure out whether or not to have closed. (As far as we understand, the literature on these procedures is controversial.) We want to see better neurologists and cardiologists than the ones at this hospital, but the ones we called up in Philly are scheduling into January and the procedure should be done in October. That's something that we still have to sort out. (Dear reader, if you have an in with any excellent cardiologists or neurologists at highly ranked hospitals--such that you could get us an earlier appointment--we are all ears!)

We were staying with my parents for my maternity leave, and we were more grateful than ever for that decision and for their help: Dad and other friends took care of our three-year-old, while Mom came to the hospital with me to hold our new baby so that I could nurse him in between talking to doctors.

(The ICU nurse made me feel like a bad mother for taking our two-week-old to the ICU, but what was I supposed to do? He doesn't even like pacifiers, so I don't know if he'd even take a bottle. And pumping every two hours would be way more stressful than nursing him. It sometimes felt like I was deciding between my baby and my husband. Thankfully, he didn't get sick from the hospital. And also, thankfully, he's a dream baby. And I'm also grateful that the baby's birth and my recovery were easy. And that the stress of all this didn't make my milk dry up--the baby seems to be gaining weight at a record pace. Boy, it is hard to get enough food in the hospital though--my mom mostly made sure there was enough there for me to eat and drink, but the day I did in the hospital without her involved a long trek, carrying the baby, to the unappetizing cafe where I just bought all I could to make it through the day--and sadly I didn't even make it there in time for breakfast; I had really been in the mood for calorie-laden breakfast food. I lost weight in the hospital, despite my best efforts.)

The day before Francisco's stroke, my parents had decided against a weekend away after my father had trouble sleeping the night before--we were so glad that they were in town when it happened. My parents are an incredible support--we simply owe them everything and could never repay them. They made it (and continue to make it) possible for me to devote most of my energy to Francisco. We are very fortunate to have parents like these.

I'm sure there's a lot more to say about the longest week of my life--a week that was also full of love. I don't think I've ever loved Francisco more. But there's a lot to do, so perhaps more later.