An Excerpt from Chapter One of Flashes of Light: How to reboot your life, your business or both when chaos strikes by Ann M. Babiarz, as told to Michael A. Babiarz
Creative Consultant: K. Lee — Editor: Annamaria Farbizio
©2015 by Ann M. Babiarz and Michael A. Babiarz, J.D., all rights reserved (see notice below)
Chapter 1: In the Beginning (part 7)
I started my slow, uphill road back by working with the stroke recovery team. Speech therapists provided exercises to retrain my brain. To my dismay, I discovered that in addition to speech, expressive aphasia includes damage to the ability to write. My first day out of ICU saw me attempting to print my name, and words describing objects in my room, as well as looking at pictures of a chair or a table and saying those words out loud.
My normal determination and feistiness returned, and for the first two days in the stroke recovery unit, I slept little. Throughout the night, I practiced. Any excuse I could, I read out loud, tried to make sense of words crawling across the TV screen, or wrote something — anything — on a pad of paper. I pity any poor hospital employee who entered my room during those days, whether nurse, CNA, or even someone emptying the trash. I begged everyone to stay so I could sharpen my skills on them.
Juxtaposed with this fervent study were feelings of desperation. I sensed a loss of freedom, and a fear that I could end up permanently disabled. Perhaps another deep seated belief I have is the desire to never be burdensome to anyone. That belief frequently joined other thoughts now swirling through my trying-to-fix-itself brain.
The variety show of physicians continued. I’m not sure which specialties didn’t see me in the hospital, but it might be a shorter list then the ones who did. The poking and prodding, inspecting and detecting, found no obvious culprit for my blood clot fiesta.
During this imprisonment, I learned the role of a hospitalist. Dr. Pachori made rounds and visited me daily. His job, as I understood it, was to coordinate the plan for the care I was receiving. I’m not sure how anyone with even his level of skill and training could keep up with this daily circus. Why would an otherwise healthy 49-year-old woman fall prey to such violent symptoms? He tried his best to balance encouragement with pragmatism in his patient counsel to me.
After several days of tests, scans and exams, the physicians suspected a drug as the cause of my strokes. I begun bio identical hormone treatment about a year earlier. Evidently, some of the research showed that these formulations can result in clotting issues. Left with no other explanation, the doctors discharged me, with instructions to refrain from restarting the bio identicals, replacing them with a baby aspirin each morning. I had follow-ups to set with neurologists, hematologists, and other-ologists.
Dr. Pachori wanted to further dig for a cause. I was so happy to be free from my confinement, that going home under any circumstances seemed blissful.
Read more of Chapter One in our next posting — blog posts entered Mondays and Thursdays. For information on the book, please visit: Flashes of Light.
©2015 by Ann M. Babiarz and Michael A. Babiarz, J.D., all rights reserved
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