The time frame of events in 1999 gets fuzzy from here in 2014. I have spent much time in the last few days trying to remember the first days after the stroke.
On day three Nicole retreats further into herself. She barely wakes up in the morning. During the night she would wake up and "ask questions" without words. Words were gone sometime during the second day. She was completely mute. She would use her eyes, she would squeeze me. I talked and talked to her.
I had had by then some time to think when she was sleeping. Whenever I could I told her that I would be her voice going forward. I would represent her, I would think only of her best interests. I told her I knew she was still there. Her eyes and her squeezes through her confusion had made me understand. She did not know where she was. She did not know when "now" was. She had no long term memory, no short term memory. The prognosis was not good according to the trauma team. There had still not been enough time to process the changes we faced. The fear and terror was still focused entirely in the now, figuring out what had happened and fixing it if it could be fixed.
Sometime on day three, mid afternoon if I remember rightly, I noticed she would not wake up, she did not move. Her vital signs had changed. Blood pressure had dropped significantly. She was smiling like an angel while she lay on her back propped up on pillows. The nurses came. Dr. Lawrence came. The verdict was that Nicole was now in a coma. I freaked out entirely. The stroke trauma team seemed satisfied to monitor what they said was a natural evolution of a stroke such as she had. I implored Dr. Lawrence to do an MRI to compare to the one they had done two days earlier. I begged. Finally they took her for the MRI. There had not been another event. This was a continuation of the earlier trauma to her brain.
In the first two parts of A Nicole Story I mentioned I stayed in the hospital with her for seven or eight days. This is not correct. I think it was three nights followed by two nights that I went home to return to the hospital in the morning. Those two nights were when I started my research online. I reached out to stroke message boards and websites. I started to gain an appreciation of what we were now up against, presuming she survived. Now I had time, eight ten hours at a time to inform myself. People replied to me, gave me the questions I needed to address. I was becoming more informed, quickly. Having my mom at home was a big blessing. She was still healthy enough to provide comfort and council to me. Without her I doubt we would have made it. In the first few days she kept me calm, reminding me that we would get through it, somehow. I was laser focused on Nicole. I would stay that way for over two more years. Sometime during that first night of her coma, when I was far away from her, I had that magic moment of clarity. Nothing other than Nicole mattered. I loved her so completely. I wanted nothing else out of life. I would do anything to get her back. I would never stop trying and fighting. I was shocked at my reaction, I could not have predicted how I would respond, nobody could. I was not going to be one of those bastards who desert a wounded partner because I simply was not made like that. I was quietly pleased with myself. I had thought I was weak and self serving. I had a horrible self image, then. I learned many things about myself while being a caregiver for both my mom and Nicole. The most important lesson for myself is that I am a good person, an unselfish person, a person who steps up and does not blink when things get hairy. I was exactly who I wished I was. I already was that person. That was the day I made the tool I needed to break out of a depressive state that I had spent twenty years in. Self love and a positive image of oneself was the tool I was missing. It would be a couple of years before things sorted themselves out. I was going to crash and burn before we got to the light but that was ok. I kept my eyes on the prize and did not waver. Nicole. Make Nicole whole.
I remember the nurses coming by to stand with me and look at her. She really never stopped smiling. In a coma! They loved her.
Then, she woke up. She was more empty that before. A blank slate. I got back into bed with her for a few more days. She never let me go. I really did become her voice. She would hold my hand, I would say what I figured she might want to say and start talking. A glance, a squeeze and I got pointed in a direction. We kept going through the night, communicating. It was excruciating and exhilarating at the same time but she was home! Something that was Nicole was in there! I could tell! Yes, when we stood in front of the window looking at this beautiful panorama of the city and the river spreading out below us she had no idea what she was looking at, no idea about time itself. So, we started. We started the long, long journey of filling in the blanks, pulling her back as much as we could.
I told her about how we would get the therapy she needed. The trauma team talked to her about this as well. She smiled back. She could walk a little by then. It was decided that she would have a shower. I took her to the shower room. I told her to go ahead, have a shower. She looked at me confused, shrugged her shoulders. "you don't know how" I asked. She shook her head, no. I turned the shower on, took her gown off and undressed myself and we got in. I taught her how to have a shower. This was to be the pattern for the next few years. The first time she came up against anything she had to relearn it from scratch. Everything. Try to imagine that.
There were tests and more tests. More meetings with Dr. Lawrence and the trauma team, everyday. We walked around the hospital, I talked and taught her things as they came up. We laughed a lot. She was amazing, positive and simple like always throughout all of this. She never, ever wavered.
A week passed and then she got to go home for a weekend. She was out of immediate danger now. Friends had come to our house and set up our Christmas tree and Nicole's Christmas village. Christmas and that village are important to Nicole as anyone who knows her will attest. When she walked in the house she knew it was important to her. She was so pleased. She was still mute. Being home stimulated her a lot. Pieces were slowly falling together for her. You could tell.
Next up: Hospital stay ends, Dr. Minuk finds out why
No comments:
Post a Comment