The Long Game

If you look closely enough, everything is always changing. But we grow used to a certain pacing, where we can almost imagine that everything will always stay as it is. Of course, we all know that none of our bodies is going to last forever. But any rapid change will always shake us. Within 24 hours, I went from being (seemingly) healthy and able, to having my entire left side paralysed, and then restored to basic movement again. And I feel like, six weeks later, like I’m still catching up with the whiplash of that sudden shock into paralysis and back.

We were supposed to have a lunch today. But on the way there I knew I couldn’t go. My body was showing all of the signs of waning from fatigue: Speaking took a lot of focus to not be slow or slurred, my left arm felt leaden, and my left leg was feeling dense. I told my wife that I couldn’t go and I started crying. I’m not usually one to cry, but I couldn’t stop myself. Since the stroke, even though there have been many slow and quiet moments to process it all, I still feel as though I’ve always been in active mode: To do or to rest. Everything has been in progress mode, with an intention in mind, and hence a goal, and a hope. But I think this was the first moment since the stroke that I cracked, because I thought I was in doing mode, but my body told me I was in rest mode; because I was yet again (in my sense anyway) letting people down; but more than anything, because I was faced with the fear behind it all: That I really have no control over it all. I can push myself, I can progress with rehab, I can rest. But, just like the slingshot into paralysis and back, my body’s carrying the shock of almost absolute powerlessness. My brain will recover when it recovers, and my life will crawl towards an equilibrium whenever it decides to. And there’s almost certainly a long road in front of me, with unknown dips, and permanent scars.