I don't have a lot of memory of January through April 15 of last year. If we read through the diary I'll remember things, but just coming up with the memory off the top of my head is pretty foggy. I do, or I think I do, remember the moments on April 15 when it all changed. I remember talking to a couple people on the 14th and saying I had a terrible headache. Then the next morning I remember being in the gardrobe and hearing the telephone ring. I think I remember walking to the phone and having some trouble reaching for it. And that's it. I think that is the point that I had my stroke.
Jim tells me he called and got the answering machine, then called again a couple times, went to his boss Julie and told her he had a bad feeling and was going home to see what was the matter. He probably saved my life .
When he got home he looked around the apartment, then noticed our cats, one sitting on the table and the other one on the floor, looking at me where I sat on a Rubbermaid tub scrunched over. He went to me and asked me how I was. I apparently said "Bushy." He called 911, and the ambulance arrived in about five minutes. They did all the paramedic stuff they do, asked if I could have taken too much insulin, then took me away on a gurney or whatever those are called. They took me to Evergreen Hospital. Jim went upstairs and printed out my prescriptions list and went to the hospital too.
Now if you ask me the next thing that happened it was almost three weeks later. Maybe it was less. I just looked at the calendar for May and I can't tell you what day it was, the 2nd or the 9th. Jim of course can remember every excruciating detail. He remembers my being taken off to surgery right away to have a hole cut in my skull to drain off fluid that was collecting in my brain. I had a ventilator put in so I could breathe, and I was given powerful sedatives to keep me from suffering from the ventilator. I was out entirely for a almost two weeks. Jim kept coming and spending most of the day and night with me in the ICU, trying to comfort me, to talk to me, to read to me, while I itched. I did not really seem to know him at first, but after the ventilator was out he brought a list of questions about our lives at the suggestion of the speech therapist. He read them to me. At first I answered pretty much everything with "January 3rd, 1952, no matter whether a date was called for. I identified myself as Nan Hawthorne.
Slowly I began to answer other questions. Jim showed me a picture of the cats and asked me about them. I said that Mr. Hata was "a nice kitty" and was pleased when he told me he was my kitty. I finally answered every question, although by this time I had been moved from the ICU to the PRU and again to the ARU (Acute Rehabilitation Unit). It was in the ARU that I remember anything at all. He told me I had the most trouble remembering my mother's full name and I think the name of my high school or college.
He was very worried this entire time while I was dreaming about Julian Assange for some bizarre reason, but more on that next. He worried I would be brain damaged, incontinent, and would require constant supervision. In a word, he thought he had lost me. The cats were at home alone, even after Jim took Mr. Hata to have teeth pulled, and he told me he sat on the bed one night and wept. It breaks my heart to think of him so alone and scared. He got hardly any support. It makes me realize how isolated we have made ourselves, but I honestly don't know what to do about it.
About this time I started to be more conscious. As I said, I dreamed about Julian Assange. I remember in one dream I was climbing on some sort of merry go round in a kids' playground in a park. Assange was talking to us all, whoever "we" were. That so impressed me I would talk about him to Jim and everyone else, including Laurel and Tiffany when they came to visit me at the hospital. I also had a dream that I went to an urgent care clinic where the nurse Rasi made me fill out a long form because he was afraid I was exhibiting drug-seeking behavior. I remember I was in my hospital gown and had peed all over myself. I remember how Tiffany and I talked about someone named "Marianne"that I thought was significant somehow, as I think one of my nurses was a bitchy one named that, though I also remember that her real name was Elizabeth.
At any rate I became more aware of my surroundings in the ARU and recall the therapists and my nurses. I couldn't work the remote for the TV which also called the nurses if I had to get up from my bed,which had an alarm on it if I tired. It was awful. That's why I kept wetting myself.
The glorious day came when I was allowed to come home. I saw my cats, got to sleep in my own bed with my darling husband, and though I saw rehab techs for a couple weeks at home, I started getting better. Jim has been astounded at my progress.
Of course he doesn't really know what goes on in my head. That's one reason I decided to write this "end of the year" post. Apparently what I had on April 14th and 15th was a bleeding stroke. A blood vessel broke and I bled into my brain damaging my caudate nucleus. That is apparently where ideas connect and are formed into memories in one's brain. I was lucky and most of the blood drained into ventricles which kept it from damaging my brain worse. These two things are what leaves me where I am today.
Of course I am myself amazed and grateful to Jim. He took a lot of time off from work, time that later resulted in some problems with contracts that he could not have prevented being gone, but he also can't give this as an excuse, that not being constructive. He worried about me, took care of me, chided me to take better care of myself, and generally he suffered. If I wasn't completely smitten with him the first 32 years I most certainly am now that we have had our 33rd anniversary. I fussed at him about drinking for a few months, but I think I am beginning to get some perspective on that and am leaving him alone about it.
So what is life like now? I think it may be useful to enumerate the issues.
- My brain is generally in a sort of vague fog. Almost every day I spend some time a little confused. My rehab doctor has pointed this out to me many times, and I am now starting to believe her. I find that most of the time I have to do things in a methodical way. For instance, I was just in the shower and had to wash my hair, choose soap to wash my face, then another soap to wash my body, then rinse everything off one by one. How can I describe just how carefully and deliberately I had to do all that? Because I am alone and not sharing every thought, I appear completely competent. Only I know that nothing is going that smoothly. The fact is I manage it all safely so it doesn't matter, except that it annoys and worries me. I don't like feeling incopetent.
- My short term memory is rather wobbly. I am involved in too many things and even taking notes on it all doesn't seem to prevent forgetting something I said I would do. I utterly forgot about Times Rainbow, for instance, making me seem foggy and vague to Lori Lake who is doing the anthology with me. I also committed to do the Gender Odyssey blog but don't seem to be able to regulate when and what. I know I should not have taken these things on, but it's too late now. Until someone fires me, I will keep muddling on.
- At one point when I was in the hospital I told Jim that "something tells me that gender is important". That is, that I am not Nan Hawthorne but Christopher Hawthorne Moss. Being transgender just slipped my mind. But it doesn't make it not so. After seven months I am slowly coming to some new conclusions about my own gender. I know I am not a woman in the sense I am coming to understand. I now believe there is some truth to a difference between the sexes, how we think, how we act. I am decidedly not happy with what that means when it comes to my being female. I don't really like women as a group. Whether or not they are truly the way they seem to me now I don't know. I just know I do not want any part of it. Sexually it's more uncertain. I find both men and women sexually attractive but in different ways, and I find at nearly 63 and on the medications I am on, I am not really all that into sex. I like to think of myself as a gay man, but I really am some sort of middle thing, genderqueer or whatever. I changed my name and my identity and there it is going to stay.
- What about surgery or a mustache? I think I will bag the latter. I actually don't think one can even have a mustache transplant or I just don't want to for discomfort. But shouldn't I look at top surgery the same way? What difference does it make what gender I appear to others? Do I really want to go through it? Some days I say yes. Some days I am not so certain. I live most of my life in my mind anyway.
- And speaking of that, what about my writing? Since I went on Ridalin I am much more focused. I finished Angel Eyes and even wrote A Fine Bromance. I can see myself continuing to focus on one book after another, though right now I to need to turn my attention to Time's Rainbow. My progress is as methodical as I mentioned about my shower, but it works for writing, though I actually am worried that my work is not up to my usual excellence. Nevertheless, it feels more productive and satisfying. I sent Angel Eyes to Dreamspinner Press wondering if they will find it wanting in terms of HEA (Happily Ever After), but I know A Fine Bromance will please them. I just need to get the teen-speak down. I feel I can keep at writing unless I am completely mistaken about my ability. I am prepared to do nothing but write.
- And now to health and longevity. I honestly have no idea how long I expect I will live. I sometimes wonder if I will make it out of 2015. No reason, just an impression that I can pretty easily dismiss. I do want to improve my health, lose weight, fix my blood sugar and lessen the impact of my spine problems. I am pretty sanguine about living. The main reasons I want to live a good long time is for Jim's sake. I no longer even feel like I need to live to write all my books. But Jim needs me here and cogent.
I am sure I will remember other things I want to comment on. For now I feel like I did a good job here. I am tired and want lunch and want to get up so my butt doesn't hurt. So for now I will call it good.
But for now I say goodbye to 2014 and welcome the promise of 2015. I hope this will be a good year.
