I had heard the news about Peter David and I haven’t really given him much thought since something that happened a few years back.
And while going through the posts to see how long ago it was, I came across everything marked with him including some things that were in the drafts queue and which I choose not to share and it wound up appearing on the blog so I have egg on my face.
I have egg on my face a lot so it’s not something I get terribly upset about but, I do not suffer from schadenfreude so I have removed it.
One thing I will say though, my old man suffered from a bunch of micro strokes for a few years before having a more significant one when he was about 80. Being I cared for him for the last decade of his life, I know a little of what is ahead for the David family and it will not be easy.
In my father’s case, he already was an octogenarian but all things considered he was fortunate. He walked around for a few weeks complaining about vertigo and doing this flexing thing with his hand. Madame X was around then but the truth of it was even though we shared a house the old man’s cantankerous nature determined the best plan was to avoid contact as much as possible.
What was funny was he had no idea and neither did I until one morning I noticed him doing the flex thing and suddenly this checklist appeared in my head...
“Hey Munge, what’s the matter.”
More flexing...
“I don’t know, I’ve been having this vertigo lately.”
“Vertigo, huh? So, is the room kind of spinning?”
“No.”
“Is your vision telescoping, looks like your looking down a tunnel?” All I could think of in the moment he mentioned vertigo was the Jimmy Stewart/Alfred Hitchcock film.
“No.”
“You feel kind of week on your right side? Like your leg won’t hold you? Your hand is a little numb?”
“YEAH!”
“You idiot, you had a stroke!”
Now, the idiot part may seem harsh but you have to understand the dynamic. This is a man who consistently berated me and anyone else in his close circle as a matter of course. The only way to stop him from being verbally abusive to you was to give him a dose of the same medicine.
I called the doctor after that. It was a family doctor we had known and used for almost forty years and I told him my father had had the stroke and when he asked me when the incident occurred I told him it had happened a few weeks ago (because the flexing thing had been going on for three weeks and my father had been oddly reclusive to the point of not wanting to come along to the annual family Easter dinner).
The doctor was a bit annoyed and responded they couldn’t do anything for him so long after the event but I still wanted him tested and what followed was a few months of shuttling him back and forth to the doctor, taking over his bills (because he had trouble writing), locking the car up.
Madame X was a saint, she took him to do his laundry and would take him to run errands and go for walks. I have to admit she really stepped up even though she was terrified of him (that’s a whole other story). I really respect her for that and I cooked and cleaned (I had taken over much of the cleaning anyway by this point but I wasn’t cooking for him).
And it was thankless work, literally thankless work as the hard of hearing fool would get on the phone and loudly have conversations with persons who shall remain nameless accusing both myself and madame X of all sorts of shenanigans.
Unbelievable.
But it happened and in about nine months he did get better enough where I could start to let him drive again and he recovered to be able to do quite a bit but he was not the same. He was frailer of that there was no question and he did tend to be a little more unsure of himself and isolate himself as a result.
All in all I’m sure for him it wasn’t fun.
And it’s not fun for anyone suffering from a stroke because on some level they are still alive there in that braincase, the messages are still being sent out it’s just they’re garbled along the way and the equipment doesn’t do what you want it to do.
And Peter is in his fifties...
But, you can recover from these things. Or at least get back a bunch of what you’ve lost, maybe not all of it but enough to make do. And if you have people around you who can help out all the better but it isn’t at all easy for them.
See, we don’t talk about those people... the caretakers. Family members who do the dirty work. I’ve had a couple of people now who walked the path I walked and I’ve been there for them when they cried to the heavens about how onerous their load was, how thankless the task is but how because of their sense of responsibility, because of their makeup, they will not relinquish their charge and walk away.
And every person who has that burden is in my prayers.
And while going through the posts to see how long ago it was, I came across everything marked with him including some things that were in the drafts queue and which I choose not to share and it wound up appearing on the blog so I have egg on my face.
I have egg on my face a lot so it’s not something I get terribly upset about but, I do not suffer from schadenfreude so I have removed it.
One thing I will say though, my old man suffered from a bunch of micro strokes for a few years before having a more significant one when he was about 80. Being I cared for him for the last decade of his life, I know a little of what is ahead for the David family and it will not be easy.
In my father’s case, he already was an octogenarian but all things considered he was fortunate. He walked around for a few weeks complaining about vertigo and doing this flexing thing with his hand. Madame X was around then but the truth of it was even though we shared a house the old man’s cantankerous nature determined the best plan was to avoid contact as much as possible.
What was funny was he had no idea and neither did I until one morning I noticed him doing the flex thing and suddenly this checklist appeared in my head...
“Hey Munge, what’s the matter.”
More flexing...
“I don’t know, I’ve been having this vertigo lately.”
“Vertigo, huh? So, is the room kind of spinning?”
“No.”
“Is your vision telescoping, looks like your looking down a tunnel?” All I could think of in the moment he mentioned vertigo was the Jimmy Stewart/Alfred Hitchcock film.
“No.”
“You feel kind of week on your right side? Like your leg won’t hold you? Your hand is a little numb?”
“YEAH!”
“You idiot, you had a stroke!”
Now, the idiot part may seem harsh but you have to understand the dynamic. This is a man who consistently berated me and anyone else in his close circle as a matter of course. The only way to stop him from being verbally abusive to you was to give him a dose of the same medicine.
I called the doctor after that. It was a family doctor we had known and used for almost forty years and I told him my father had had the stroke and when he asked me when the incident occurred I told him it had happened a few weeks ago (because the flexing thing had been going on for three weeks and my father had been oddly reclusive to the point of not wanting to come along to the annual family Easter dinner).
The doctor was a bit annoyed and responded they couldn’t do anything for him so long after the event but I still wanted him tested and what followed was a few months of shuttling him back and forth to the doctor, taking over his bills (because he had trouble writing), locking the car up.
Madame X was a saint, she took him to do his laundry and would take him to run errands and go for walks. I have to admit she really stepped up even though she was terrified of him (that’s a whole other story). I really respect her for that and I cooked and cleaned (I had taken over much of the cleaning anyway by this point but I wasn’t cooking for him).
And it was thankless work, literally thankless work as the hard of hearing fool would get on the phone and loudly have conversations with persons who shall remain nameless accusing both myself and madame X of all sorts of shenanigans.
Unbelievable.
But it happened and in about nine months he did get better enough where I could start to let him drive again and he recovered to be able to do quite a bit but he was not the same. He was frailer of that there was no question and he did tend to be a little more unsure of himself and isolate himself as a result.
All in all I’m sure for him it wasn’t fun.
And it’s not fun for anyone suffering from a stroke because on some level they are still alive there in that braincase, the messages are still being sent out it’s just they’re garbled along the way and the equipment doesn’t do what you want it to do.
And Peter is in his fifties...
But, you can recover from these things. Or at least get back a bunch of what you’ve lost, maybe not all of it but enough to make do. And if you have people around you who can help out all the better but it isn’t at all easy for them.
See, we don’t talk about those people... the caretakers. Family members who do the dirty work. I’ve had a couple of people now who walked the path I walked and I’ve been there for them when they cried to the heavens about how onerous their load was, how thankless the task is but how because of their sense of responsibility, because of their makeup, they will not relinquish their charge and walk away.
And every person who has that burden is in my prayers.
No comments:
Post a Comment