What Lies Ahead....

A year ago today I never would have guessed what was in store for my family.

It was a Sunday afternoon. Connor was outside with Lee. I was inside.

"Danielle, I can't see Connor," I heard Lee shout. I smiled. Hide-and-seek was Connor's favorite game.

I walked out onto the patio.

"I can't see Connor," Lee repeated.

I started to say "Where's Connor?", but I noticed Connor sitting in front of Lee. In plain sight. Not even pretending to hide. Connor had a strange look on his face. Lee wasn't smiling.

"He's right there," I said.

"I know. I just can't see him. I can't see my hand either," Lee said, waving it inches in front of his face.

"What do you mean you can't see your hand?" I could feel panic mounting. I took a deep breath.

"How do you feel?" I asked.

"Just wait a minute," Lee said, closing his eyes. He opened them again. "I can't see."

"Anything else? How do you feel?"

"My head hurts. And my arm is tingling."

I called 9-1-1.

The next few hours unfolded slowly. I felt disconnected from it all. It was as if I was watching a movie about someone else's life. It wasn't my own.

When he initially arrived at the hospital, they said it could be one of three things: a tumor, a stroke, or a migraine. We prayed it was a migraine.

We waited for the MRI technician to arrive. The MRI took about thirty minutes. We waited again for the results. A young resident delivered the news: it was a stroke. They had contacted the on-call neurosurgeon. He would be in soon. They were going to open up Lee's brain and try to break up the clot. She explained it in simple terms, but I couldn't understand anything she was saying. She put her arm around me and said, "We're doing everything we can. If this was my husband, this is exactly what I'd want them to do." I started crying.

When the neurosurgeon arrived Lee was sitting up in bed leaving messages with his assistant about upcoming deadlines. The neurosurgeon looked at his charts and concluded he'd had a stroke.

"Cool," Lee said. I gave him an evil look.

"No, it's not cool," I replied.

The neurosurgeon chimed in: "No. It's not cool. If it had been one millimeter lower, you'd be dead." As if that's what I wanted to hear.

The neurosurgeon decided not to operate. By that time it had been about six hours since the stroke. He explained that the damage had already been done; at that point the risk of serious injury was greater if he operated than if he didn't.

I recalled my grandmother's stroke. They operated on her to clamp an aneurysm. Without the clamp the aneurysm would have burst, and the bleeding in the brain would have killed her. She lived for three years after the surgery, but she was never the same. She died when an aneurysm burst.

For the next three days I thought a vessel in my husband's brain could burst at any given moment. I was afraid to touch him, for fear that if I jarred him too hard it would cause the vessel to burst. I kept waiting for them to deliver the death sentence. It was only when he was released that the internist explained to me the difference between his stroke and my grandmother's stroke. Lee's stroke was caused by a clot, not an aneurysm. There was no vessel that was about to burst. The damage had already been done.

"So he's not going to die?" I asked.

"Well, we don't really know what caused this one. He could have another stroke. But we're going to do everything we can to monitor him."

Lee ultimately recovered from that stroke. His sight returned, and thankfully there isn't any permanent disability. We were lucky.

For months after that I worried about the unknown. I panicked any time he was running late, any time I couldn't reach him on his cell phone. What if.... I worried, afraid of what may lie ahead.

I ultimately had to put it out of my mind and move on, but there are times when I worry. Lee is young; Lee is healthy. His cholesterol was slightly elevated, but certainly not enough to have caused a stroke. His blood pressure was normal. He doesn't have a family history of stroke. It never should have happened.

And yet it did.

I tiptoe through the days now, worried that at any moment the floor will collapse under me and I will have to rebuild again, to start over. The truth is my life is better now than it ever has been. I can't imagine that it could get any better. It can only go down from here.

Ironically I am more thankful than I have ever been. Each night I say a prayer of gratitude that my children are well, that we can continue to support them financially, that Lee is lying next to me snoring. I am grateful for this year that I spent with him. I want many many more years. I am blessed. We are blessed, and I pray that it continues that way.

The signs of stroke include:
1. Sudden numbness or weakness of the face, arm or leg, especially on one side of the body;
2. Sudden confusion, trouble speaking or understanding;
3. Sudden trouble seeing in one or both eyes;
4. Sudden trouble walking, dizziness, loss of balance or coordination;
5. Sudden, severe headache with no known cause.

For more information, go to http://www.americanheart.org/presenter.jhtml?identifier=4742