Between Heaven and Hell by David Talbot

Author:David Talbot [Talbot, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Chronicle Books LLC
Published: 2019-02-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

A Person,

Not a Patient

After you’re released from the stroke ward, your recovery becomes a different sort of experience—less helpless and more interactive. During my first two months at home, I was still in the remote care of the medical system, visited several times a week by a series of therapists—physical, speech and occupational—who helped me adapt to my new daily life. I attribute my success at staying upright and never falling during my first year of recovery—and not slicing off the tip of a finger with a kitchen knife—to this team of home-visiting therapists, with their briskly dispensed yet warm guidance. (Here’s a tip to avoid chopping off your digit while chopping onions: Buy a set of nylon-coated safety knives.)

But even with this constant rotation of home help, my physical improvement was driven primarily by my own intense desire to speak more clearly and to walk more steadily. The domestic therapy team drilled into me how much my recovery depended on my own energetic, disciplined commitment to the process. I sat for hours in front of a mirror, stretching my facial muscles with endless repetitions of sound exercises (ooh, ooh, ah ah, ee, ee . . . ) and tracing patterns with an ice cube on my slightly sagging left cheek to revive my facial nerves.

While my body slowly grew stronger, I also found myself growing fascinated by the mental process of recovery. I had countless questions about brain injuries and the frontiers of neuroscience, some medical but some verging on the philosophical. My physical therapists could talk with me about some of this cerebral universe. But some of my intellectual hunger required an experienced neurologist—one who knew how to speak with a stroke survivor, not simply as a patient but as a person. I quickly devoured popular literature on the subject, including My Stroke of Insight, brain scientist Jill Bolte Taylor’s illuminating account of her own stroke, and Ram Dass’s Still Here, a more spiritual but nonetheless down-to-earth chronicle of his stroke. Both books were filled with little epiphanies and bursts of insight that helped me navigate my way through my hobbled first year.

But my insatiable curiosity about my new condition drove me to want more. I longed for a lengthy conversation with a wise medical counselor, someone gifted with scientific knowledge about the human brain but also in awe of its mysteries. In the hospital, I was lucky enough to have two smart, caring doctors who sat with me and Camille during their rounds on the stroke ward and answered our endless questions. But at that point in my recovery, my most urgent questions were fairly basic—When the hell will I start pissing without a catheter again? And Can my feeding tube be safely removed now?

Some brain doctors, of course, seem to lack all human empathy—and one of them belonged to my hospital team. One day, this brain surgeon made an abrupt entrance into my hospital room after returning from vacation. He was a big-chested man and

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