Week 5: Inconceivable
It is all I can do to stay in the therapy room on my first day at Sister Kenny Institute, recovering from a freak brain hemorrhage that had struck less than a week earlier. Looking at the fluorescent lights, brightly-colored mats, balls and parallel bars is like looking into the blinding face of the sun. Plus I have a wicked case of vertigo that I can only compare to being on a storm-tossed boat at sea. I finally resort to closing my eyes.
The next day, feeling less sea-sick, it's back to the therapy room. They are going to test me. Test me? For what? I'm wheelchair-bound with a nearly-useless left arm and leg. Will electroshock be involved?
The first seems to be a simple eye test, where you read letters off a chart. Piece of cake. I'm reading letters off, arrogant and sure at 16, until I see letters like b, g, p, d, q, u, v, w, x, y, z. I can see them. I know I should know what they are. A week ago, I did know. But the alternating stems on the first few are too much to decode, much less say out loud. U, v, and w are also too similar to each other, and x, y and z? Well, no one uses those letters very much, do they?
I move on to the next test, feeling slightly unsettled. My apprehension grows when a phone book is produced, and the woman testing me whips out a stopwatch. You have got to be kidding me.
But no, she's not kidding. She wants me to find a name in the phone book. Not even in the front of the book. In the H's. She is going to time how long this takes me.
The pressure is on even before it begins, as in addition to being limited in its mobility, my dominant left hand (along with my entire left side) has sensory issues comparable to being in that permanently "asleep" state that happens when you cut off circulation. Turning those tissue-paper-thin pages should be my only timed exercise right now.
But it's not, and this woman watches me struggle with the book and the pages, completely clinical and unaffected. I manage to somehow get to the H's, but the further alphabetizing it takes to narrow this down is dizzying. I get maybe one more letter in - an e - before admitting defeat at this task with a sense of impending dread.
The stopwatch stays out. A dollar and a handful of change is put before me. She will time how long it takes me to count it.
The dollar is easy. And I can recognize the other coins as what they are - quarters and pennies most easily and dimes and nickels with more thought - but the act of not just counting the coins themselves but taking into account their values as well is too much information for my overwhelmed brain to hold.
My mother and sister try to reassure me as we head back to my room, but I know the truth. I know I learned how to alphabetize and count change in elementary school. I definitely knew all the letters in the alphabet and didn't get confused just because they looked similar or were seldom-used.
I break down, not even caring, in the middle of the hallway. Every thought, dream or hope about my future is being sucked down this spiral of despair into a black abyss. I am a high school honor student who has won a national award for writing, and I don't know the alphabet. The grief is enough to drown me.
That night, my dad leaves a handful of change on my bedside table. He urges me to leave it there, to look at it. He says that my brain just needs time. I brush him off, the fingers of depression still clinging to me, but I leave the coins on the table.
His hope in the face of such odds was almost laughable at the time.
Little did I know then that 15 years later, I would be writing something like this.
Little does he know now that 15 years later, I have a handful of change on my nightstand.
The next day, feeling less sea-sick, it's back to the therapy room. They are going to test me. Test me? For what? I'm wheelchair-bound with a nearly-useless left arm and leg. Will electroshock be involved?
The first seems to be a simple eye test, where you read letters off a chart. Piece of cake. I'm reading letters off, arrogant and sure at 16, until I see letters like b, g, p, d, q, u, v, w, x, y, z. I can see them. I know I should know what they are. A week ago, I did know. But the alternating stems on the first few are too much to decode, much less say out loud. U, v, and w are also too similar to each other, and x, y and z? Well, no one uses those letters very much, do they?
I move on to the next test, feeling slightly unsettled. My apprehension grows when a phone book is produced, and the woman testing me whips out a stopwatch. You have got to be kidding me.
But no, she's not kidding. She wants me to find a name in the phone book. Not even in the front of the book. In the H's. She is going to time how long this takes me.
The pressure is on even before it begins, as in addition to being limited in its mobility, my dominant left hand (along with my entire left side) has sensory issues comparable to being in that permanently "asleep" state that happens when you cut off circulation. Turning those tissue-paper-thin pages should be my only timed exercise right now.
But it's not, and this woman watches me struggle with the book and the pages, completely clinical and unaffected. I manage to somehow get to the H's, but the further alphabetizing it takes to narrow this down is dizzying. I get maybe one more letter in - an e - before admitting defeat at this task with a sense of impending dread.
The stopwatch stays out. A dollar and a handful of change is put before me. She will time how long it takes me to count it.
The dollar is easy. And I can recognize the other coins as what they are - quarters and pennies most easily and dimes and nickels with more thought - but the act of not just counting the coins themselves but taking into account their values as well is too much information for my overwhelmed brain to hold.
My mother and sister try to reassure me as we head back to my room, but I know the truth. I know I learned how to alphabetize and count change in elementary school. I definitely knew all the letters in the alphabet and didn't get confused just because they looked similar or were seldom-used.
I break down, not even caring, in the middle of the hallway. Every thought, dream or hope about my future is being sucked down this spiral of despair into a black abyss. I am a high school honor student who has won a national award for writing, and I don't know the alphabet. The grief is enough to drown me.
That night, my dad leaves a handful of change on my bedside table. He urges me to leave it there, to look at it. He says that my brain just needs time. I brush him off, the fingers of depression still clinging to me, but I leave the coins on the table.
His hope in the face of such odds was almost laughable at the time.
Little did I know then that 15 years later, I would be writing something like this.
Little does he know now that 15 years later, I have a handful of change on my nightstand.