For the Ones You Love: The Story of My Stroke

I suspect that each of us has made mistakes in life.

We suffered the consequences.

If all went well, according to the Great Plan, we learned from our mistakes.

Sometimes, we make mistakes that are so grand in their import that we hope that others will learn from them and thus avoid suffering the consequences.

This is the story of one of those times.

In 2001 I was working in Rite Aid Pharmacy as a pharmacy technician. I met my first stroke survivor soon after I'd started. I had never seen one (stroke survivor) before and had no idea, without asking, what was wrong with this man.

He was a young man, in his early forties. He was paralyzed on his right side, with his right arm seized against his chest and his right hand in a perpetual fist.

He could not speak. He walked with a distinct limp, like his right leg wasn't even real.

I learned that he had suffered a stroke six years earlier while sleeping and lay undiscovered for some time. He remained in a coma for six months and, when waking, could not walk or talk or eat. He didn't even know his name.

With therapy he learned to eat again and, eventually, he learned to walk again.

With therapy he learned to use his right hand again. He learned his name again. He could no longer read or write. With years of speech therapy he learned to talk again.

When we met, he could scrawl his name and numbers. He was re-learning the alphabet. He still struggles to recognize letters. He draws them in the air when he cannot name them.

A feature length film could not capture the romantic comedy of our falling in love and getting married. The opening scene would be the day he gave me his phone number when he was coming off the bus and I was going on. Then we'd watch how he phoned me and we talked for three hours.

We'd watch how we spent our first date at the Social Security office. That was the day I learned of his fear of falling. How I use to rub his feet every night and bandage them. It was when I learned of hammer toes and foot surgery.

We associate our story with the movie "50 First Dates", except he's the girl and I'm the guy. When he told me he loved me for the first time, I asked him if he knew my name. He didn't.