![]() People have asked if anyone around me could tell I was having a stroke. When I checked my blog much later, there were comments from 12 of my friends urging me to go to the hospital. There is no external stimulation my life has turned inward this week. So this is how it feels to hole up somewhere: the snow has come on and off this week, the chilly air outside has the snap of a crisp spring peapod, and all is peaceful. Just 17 hours earlier, pre-stroke, I’d written the following in my journal: Now I can’t say what I want to say or remember what I want to remember. While taking on the concept of a brain game earlier today, I suffered a memory overhaul. My brain is in a weird state right now - a combination of short brain games and lack of memory. This was what I blogged that evening in an attempt to communicate what I was experiencing: I opened my mouth to add something, but I couldn't form the words. I tried to join my friends’ conversation, but the words were too fast, the subject matter switching all the time. Something is wrong." But no one, not even I, could hear or understand. Underneath what felt like 100 down blankets, what was left of the pre-stroke self said, "That is not what I meant to say. Our friends had arrived to celebrate New Year's and all I could do was smile and say, "Hello." Just, "hello." They were excited to join us, and in the hubbub, I was silent. I was unable to say, "I am trapped in my brain" or, "My memories are mixing with imagination." When I woke up hours later, I really believed I had been in those mountains hiking - that it was not a dream. I dreamed about walking a frozen Alpine lake. (Sleeping is not recommended immediately after or during a stroke.) I dreamed about getting lost in the snowy mountains. I cannot remember that ride back to the house as much as I try, years later. Something’s wrong."Īnd eventually, my thoughts subsided. "There’s no way I can buy filters while you’re out here. He disappeared and came out empty-handed because even he knew there was a problem. "I'll go inside, and you sit here," my then-husband said, telling me to sit on the curb outside the store. This is not normal this is beautiful, I thought. Numbers became squiggles, colors lost their names, food lost flavor, music had no melody. My right brain, the specialist with regard to color, music, creativity, intuition, and emotions, therefore could not talk to my left brain. As a result, my left brain, the expert at numbers and language and logic and reasoning, a part of it suffocated and died. I did not yet know this, but a clot had traveled from my aorta into my brain, and made its way to my left thalamus. That was what my stroke felt like: like I was separating from myself. But when I saw the red snowblowers in the parking lot turned 90 degrees and doubled, I finally had a complete thought. They were colors and shapes and sound and touch and sensation and my brain was no longer sorting these things out. I could not make sense of it all I did not know the small triangles were trees, the larger ones mountains, the sound tires crunching snow and Snow Patrol, the jacket Gore-Tex, and that my wrists were the things attached to things called my hands. There was a cascade of input - triangles and sky and gravel sound and music on the radio and wind and the feeling of rough cloth near my hands.
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