I stayed in acute care in the hospital for six weeks, and then I spent just over five months in a rehabilitation facility. I was fiercely determined to carry on being my own person, to be able to dress myself and get myself to the toilet. My progress felt slow. A nurse would ask me which underwear I'd like to wear that day, and I just felt so angry that it should be anybody else's business. The loss of control was terribly undignified.
After three months in rehab, my physiotherapists wanted to get me to stand on my left leg. I had absolutely no feeling in it. Four physiotherapists held me at different parts of my body and took my right leg off the floor. I felt like I was suspended in space. It gave me vertigo and I began to panic - I was sure I was falling. It felt like an endless drop in a nightmare. I cried afterwards, partly out of delight that I'd gotten up there but also because it had been very frightening.
This, in a sense, reflected my entire experience. I was facing a whole new relationship with my body and a whole new life. It felt as if the ground beneath me was just gone.
In the first several months, and even after that, I didn't want to live; I couldn't see the point if I was unable to live the way I'd lived before. When John arrived at the hospital after my stroke, I told him I didn't expect him to go through with the wedding.
I'd gone from feeling young for my age to being catapulted into old age. Early on in the hospital, a physiotherapist pushing my wheelchair parked me in front of a mirror, and it was the cruellest thing. I just saw this old lady staring back at me, slumped over. I didn't expect John to want to marry this.
But John was adamant. We got married that August. The wedding was on a Friday in an English town near where I had lived most of my life. My goal all through July was to be able to stand for the wedding. And I did manage it: I stood for my vows. At the reception, John toasted his "gritty" bride, which everybody laughed at. But he meant gritty like John Wayne - true grit. I thought it was a lovely thing to say.
In June of 2002, I moved to Vancouver to be with John. I didn't know another soul in the city, and suffering a trauma can be isolating. It's difficult sorting out who you are again. Not long after the move, someone suggested I attend a program through the University of Victoria, called Living a Healthy Life with Chronic Conditions. Reluctantly, I went. Every week, you set a goal. One week, I decided I would try to prepare a meal. It required enormous planning. Even chopping an onion was hard. My left side would spasm unpredictably, so I didn't want to put my left hand anywhere near the knife. With no way for me to steady the onion, I just bashed at it with this very sharp blade until the pieces were small enough to fry. Half of it flew off onto the floor, but it didn't matter. It was a magnificent step on the way to regaining my capability.
Before the stroke, I was quite good at crafts, and I wanted to knit again. I visited knitting stores, asking for advice, and they just said, "Well, you know, you have only got one hand." Finally, a store clerk suggested using big needles and thick wool. I bought this beautiful hank of blue wool for a scarf. Holding one of the needles between my crossed legs, I just kept knitting and knitting. The thing ended up being about six feet long. It didn't matter that the tension in the knit wasn't even. I was just so pleased that I could do it. Later on, people would admire this scarf and I was always proud to say I knitted it myself.
