Home, Vulnerability, and a Spiritual Journey

Part 1

So. I am home now from the hospital, after nearly a month of being confined there after a stroke on May 28. I wrote about that in a blog I posted last week, and which I actually wrote as a cognitive therapeutic homework assignment to determine if I had sustained any cognitive damage. There is some damage, as I discovered, but it isn’t linguistic, exactly, but more in the areas of cognitive organization and fluency. There seems to be a maddening lack of spontaneity in my thinking process, making everything feel more tedious and linguistically mechanical. With the loss of the use of my left hand, writing is now more difficult and more of a chore than it has ever been.

In the other blog, I wrote about how it happened, and what my response was at the time. I also wrote about the worsening symptoms, and what was discovered at the hospital. This is what I wrote then:

I  was not initially aware that I had experienced a stroke. Who, after all, would think the worst from the beginning? A stroke is something serious, really serious, like a heart attack, or a coma, or something like that. All I had, when I awoke, was some tingling, and a hand that wouldn’t hold on to anything, and a leg that was curiously sluggish when I tried to walk. No speech delays, no cognitive delays that I knew of, nothing like that. The first few hours were just a curiosity.

     It got worse.

     The next day, the sluggish leg didn’t work at all. The hand was and would remain still for more days. It was all on one side, the classic symptom of stroke. A CT scan at the hospital emergency room gave evidence that it was, n fact a stroke—an MRI the next day confirmed it. Of all things, most unexpectedly, I had a stroke, a cerebral vascular accident (cva), as it is called. My brain was wounded, perhaps by a small blood clot that clogged an artery too small to see with the naked eye, when the blockage cut off vital oxygen to the cells in that area that aid in muscular movement. Neurologically disconnected, the muscles in my left arm, hand, leg, and foot could no longer work or respond to signals to move. They were effectively paralyzed.

 As I said, it is now a month later. I am home—in a manner of speaking. I lost my apartment, giving it up voluntarily because I could no longer negotiate the stairs there, and more practically, I could no longer work and pay the rent anyway. I am now with my sister and her husband, wonderful people but evangelical Christians, and that is of some concern to me. Evangelical Christianity has always seemed to me to be the province of control freaks, meddlers, those unable to think for themselves, and people selfishly concerned with their own salvation at the expense of the planet, the stunning diversity of life, and the sense that human beings, in all of their imperfections, are perfect as they are. I don’t believe the Christian model of sin and redemption, but rather a gentler and more profound narrative more ancient than Christianity and infinitely more deserving of God as he seems to me rather than he is portrayed by the Christian right.

Perhaps my assessment is unfair. But I think if these people were more honest, and didn’t mention the bible as “proof” of everything, which it isn’t, and cared about people and the environment out of simple kindness rather than something to make them feel good or to “bring glory to God,” and understood that prayer doesn’t cure everything and is mostly just egotistical babble, I’d have more faith that they were being genuinely human. And if they didn’t associate themselves with political policies that hurt people and are incredibly selfish, they’d really get more traction with me.

As it is, though. I am here. I don’t know if I am being cared for because I am loved by them or whether I am just some kind of little Christian project they hope they can evangelize to mend me of my waywardness. What I need most now is a safe place and time to heal. I don’t need quoted scripture, or invitations to church, or intimations that if I were more Christian, I wouldn’t have had the stroke in the first place. Just a safe place and time to heal.

This writing is about my recovery, my now-vulnerability, which is palpably real, and my continued journey of spirit. I hope that you will try to understand me as I sort these things out. At the very least, I hope that you will help me to celebrate my healing, physically and mentally.