Category: My Story

Desert plain. It was a windy day, so windy it was almost violent.

“Come,” said the teacher. He was asking me to walk against the wind’s blowing. So I did.

“What is it like to walk against the wind?” he asked.

“It’s a struggle,” I replied.

“In the language of Scripture,” he said, “the word for wind is ruach. But it has another meaning; it also means the Spirit. In Hebrew, the Holy Spirit is the Holy Wind. So what happens if you walk against the wind?” Continue reading “Rauch”

Throughout the next 12 hours, a nurse came to my bed, checking my vital signs and other neuro checks required every 30 minutes. It was about 2 AM, I was in the ICU.  The ICU nurses were very diligent in their efforts to make sure I had not lapsed back into a worsened state from the earlier attack on my brain.  They were extremely patient with their queries: What was my name? What was my birthday? Could I feel this prick on my right foot and arm?  Where was I?  Who was that in the chair by my bedside? And sure, I knew all the answers in my head.  The yes/no questions, I could just nod my head.  But sometimes they needed words and words were just not coming out of my mouth.  At best, my answers were garbled versions of yes and no, or one-word answers that they accepted, but it did not sound right to me.  I was physically doing better but I was speechless.  I could not move my tongue and my mouth properly, the words did not want to come out.  How in the hell was I going to communicate? Continue reading “Speechless – 4”

November 19, 2016
THE SHANNAH

While contemplating the events of the past year, I was reading a passage called “The Shannah.” What exactly is a year? In the Holy language of Scripture a year is associated with the word, “shannah” and it is linked to the number “two.” “Shannah can mean the second, the duplicate, or the repeat. In the course of nature the year is the repeating of what has already been . . . the winter, the spring, the summer, and the fall, the blossoming of flowers and their withering away, the rebirth of nature and its dying, the same progression, the same replaying of what already was. A year is a “shannah” a repetition. Continue reading “THE SHANNAH”

Hippocrates, “On the Sacred Disease,” Men ought to know that from nothing else but the brain come joys, laughter, and sports, sorrows, despondency and lamentations, all these things we endure from the brain.   Somewhere between the ER and the Neuro ICU, I must have fallen back asleep, as I don’t remember being transferred.  The ER having stabilized my condition after my IV tPA was completed, had released me to the next phase of my journey.  My Neuro status had improved dramatically since my earlier arrival to the ER, in that my Stroke score had dropped from a 23 to a 16.  This score is based on the NIHSS Stroke scale which evaluates the acuity of stroke patients, determines appropriate treatments and predicts patient outcomes.
Continue reading “Neuro ICU – 3”

Stroke is the the 5th leading cause of death in the United States, but it is in first place, in regards to the devastating disability and long term impairment that most people suffer.  Many patients do not get to the ER  in a timely manner.  My salvation came from a clot-busting medication, tPA, given via IV in the ER.  If  a patient arrives within 3-4 hours of the first signs of a stroke,  the medication can be given.  After 4 hours, the drug cannot be used.  Since I was admitted to the ER in under 1 hour, from the time my stroke had occurred, I had only a 6% risk of complications from tPA.   Knowing that my impairment  and disability would be extreme without this drug, my family accepted the risk for me.  Within ~ 10 minutes of receiving the tPA-IV, I was able start moving my right arm and leg.  The ER nurse that was at my side the whole time was checking to see if I could speak, but no words were able come out.  The left hemisphere was still damaged due to the blood loss from the clot.  Everyone was in amazement at how fast I regained the movements on the right side of my body.
Continue reading “24 Hours – 2”

On October 26th, 2015, my wife and I sat down to watch our favorite show, “Blindspot,” at 10:00 pm.  It had been a pretty regular day, I had just got up from doing a little work on my laptop, I am a Physical Therapist by trade.  In the next 30 minutes my life would change drastically.  Over the years, I have been exposed to the worst medical trauma that life can send your way and one of my worst fears was happening, as a blood clot had dislodged from my heart, rapidly running up to my brain.  It happened so fast that the last thing I remembered, (several months later) was the loss of vision in my right eye.  I had just had a Cerebrovascular incident, better known as a stroke. I was just 49 years old at the time.
Continue reading “FIRST 24 HOURS”