Two great surprises in the year after my fiftieth birthday changed my life. The first was John. I was living in England at the time, but during a trip across Canada, I reconnected with John, an old school chum. To our mutual shock, we fell in love and soon decided to make a life together in Vancouver.
In March 2001, I flew back to England to sell my house and organize our wedding. Shortly after I arrived, the second surprise came.
I was lying on the bed one evening, talking to John on the phone, when I began to feel pins and needles in my left hand. I switched the receiver to my right hand, and we carried on talking. Ten minutes later, I reached out to pick up my glasses, but my arm wouldn't work. I had an almost giddying sense of unreality. I mean, this doesn't happen; your arms and legs do what you tell them to do.
I hung up and called an ambulance. I'd already begun slurring my words; my tongue felt like a chunk of meat in my mouth. Fortunately, my speech was still clear enough for me to ask for help. I was worried the paramedics would think I was drunk.
Then I thought I'd better go down and unlock the front door for them, but when I tried to get off the bed, I fell - hard. It hadn't occurred to me that my legs might not be working either. Luckily, the phone fell with me. John called back and talked to me while I lay on the floor. I was grateful he was with me; the wait felt interminable. I was terrified.
John was still on the line when the ambulance attendants broke in. They told him they were taking me to the hospital. By then, I'd realized that I was probably having a stroke - my father had had one, and I was being treated for high blood pressure, which is a risk factor. By the time we reached the hospital, I was fading in and out of consciousness. I don't remember much from the days that followed. I do recall that, at one point, I woke up to find a breast in my bed. I knew it wasn't mine because if you touch your own skin, you can feel it. I lay there thinking, How can there be a breast in my bed that doesn't belong to me? I had no feeling at all in my left side. It was as if someone had drawn a line straight down my body and everything on the left was gone.
Even when the doctors confirmed I'd had a hemorrhagic stroke, I had trouble grasping just how serious my prognosis was. I thought I'd be in the hospital for a little while and then I'd be able to resume my normal life.
My children, Max and Bonnie, were both off at university at the time. Suddenly, they were put in the very adult position of having to help care for me. They handled it with incredible grace. I remember my daughter arriving at the hospital. She walked in with this wonderful smile and kissed me. Only later did I realize how bravely she coped, because nobody had warned her about what I looked like: Half my face had just dropped.
John flew over from Canada and was there, too, as much as he could be. When he had to be in Vancouver for work, I'd scribble letters all day with my good hand and my children would fax them to him each evening.
I suffered periods of terrible depression. No one could tell me if I'd ever regain any control over the left side of my body. I felt a real sense of injustice: I was fit. I was taking my blood-pressure medication. It was a relaxing period of my life; I was in the midst of a year-long sabbatical from my career as a special-needs teacher. I thought, Why now? As I learned, it could have happened anytime; hemorrhagic stroke can occur even in childhood. So, in a sense, I was very fortunate.
