Sunday Stroke Survival: Coming of Age-a Response to Barb Polan

Yes, I pulled it from your blog Barb!

I just read Barb Polan's blog about Coming of Age. It's a very well written, insightful blog post. I encourage y'all to read it. Post strokee or not. This is much longer than my comment to her. It's of a cord that I've often written about here. I'm thrilled I'm not the only one that sees my life post stroke this way.

I've often said when describing my life as the "new normal" which Barb calls bulls**t and cliche. But what else do you call it? It's accurately describes my life now. It's nowhere near what it was before. Adjusting to life after a stroke is hard. It's one of the most difficult things I've ever had to deal with and I've dealt with a lot and been here several times before. To use another cliche, it is what it is and I'm starting over again.

Which leads me to the another phrase I use quite often here, "What do I want to be when I grow up this time?" As I've said, I've been here many times before when life changing events happen.

Just out of college for the first time, I was a registered nurse with a Bachelors degree. I had always planned to be a medical doctor since I was eight or nine years old. Getting married, because I was "in love," straight after  high school graduation. Soon after children followed. I still wanted to be a doctor. But that was an impossible dream at that time in my life. So I had a plan. I step up to being a doctor gaining experience as I went nurse, nurse practitioner, physician's assistant, to medical doctor. This way I could earn a living too while I learned and took each step. No nurse would ever treat me the way we treated wet behind the ears, newly graduated doctors. I'd had been in the trenches and worked my way up.

Things change

An opportunity came up at work. They wanted to be a level 1 spinal trauma hospital. For this, they needed a life flight to ferry patients to them. All they required the applicants to have was a Bachelors degree in nursing, three years in Emergency medicine, and a paramedic license. They were so much of a pinch to find applicants that they threw in a bonus...fifteen years to retire with full pension at 65. I jumped at it. It was only a small detour of my life plan plus I'd gain even more experience. The only thing I lacked was a paramedic license. At the time, an RN just had to take an EMT (emergency medical technician) course and they could challenge the paramedic licensing boards. I did and the rest was history, sort of.

My #2 daughter was afflicted with Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis. Not much was published outside of medical journals about the subject. I wrote an article for my local support group newsletter. A mother's point of view thing. It was picked up by a nationally syndicated magazine. Then, I was approached by a publishing company, could I expand the article into a book. Oh, yes, I could! The book was published. I ended up giving the royalties to the Arthritis Foundation and eventually giving them the copyright. I didn't need the money and it was better spent with them. It wasn't my dream to be a writer or published author. But soon, publishers were asking for books on various subjects and I complied.  I still didn't dream of being a published author even though I was earning royalty checks. It was just something I could do in my spare time. The rest is history, sort of.

Things change 

 A call gone bad. I was shot and the helicopter crashed. My injuries were life altering. I had a badly damaged spine and a hip replacement at 26 years old. I had just had my 4th daughter a couple months before and I was facing never being able to walk again. I was six months in a wheelchair proving the doctors wrong. I loved it. I was another three years going from two arm canes, to standard cane, to none. I went back to nursing part time. But I developed arthritis in my spine. I had a choice. Keep working in nursing or find a new career. I was again recreating who I was when I grew up.

But being one to take the bull by the horns, I went back to college to learn a career that didn't require me standing. I chose education first because I could get my degree faster because I already had a Bachelors degree. It would take me six months. To hedge my bet, I also took computer programming courses and business courses. The dream of being a doctor faded as real life pressed in.

I still continued to write nonfiction and collaborations. I was passing time until a money making career developed. It was also a needed source of income. My "in love" status changed while in college. I realized my husband of 16 years was a louse. I knew that in the back recesses of my mind, but came to face reality when he said he refused to be married to a cripple. There were other factors too but my marriage ended.


 Things Change
 
My life dream died. By this time, I remarried my beloved, continues through to the Masters program in business and marketing. I was still searching for a career. The business careers were pretty lucrative. So I settled. I was still writing. My husband suggested I write about my younger life because everyone thought it was interesting. The hitch was that I had to write it as fiction. I still didn't think of myself as an author even though there were twenty books out there with my name on it. It was something I found challenging and an escape from the stresses of life. Then, I couldn't find an agent or publisher to publish my manuscript. It got put on the sidelines but I had caught the bug. Soon four manuscripts formed and the beginnings of a fifth. I became a hybrid author. Self publishing my fiction and traditionally publishing my nonfiction. I was recreating myself.

Another opportunity raised its head with the church. They needed lay pastors to help other pastors as well as my own in the southern district. Being faith filled, I knew a calling when I heard it. I did that for a couple of years and loved it. So I was back in college again. This time, it was a PhD I was after. I fought the Lord long and hard over this one. I hemmed hawed around on my dissertation. Drug my feet in defending it. And, reluctantly graduated.  It was another two years arguing with God before my ordination.

The things I enjoyed doing would never amount to enough money to live off of. In writing I got a paycheck every six months besides advances. Even as a hybrid author pay days were every three months. As a chef or chef instructor, the opportunity was met by serious competition that was younger and cheaper. As a lay pastor, it was mostly free of charge or a love offering. As a pastor who couldn't relocate, I was destined to be a traveling, fill-in pastor for $50 a service. I was actually doing pretty well doing all three together. I was earning money, but wouldn't get rich in it.

My true money earning career was as an international business and marketing consultant. That I didn't exactly hate, but the traveling became a problem. It was a living at a minimum of $65 a hour. Not that I wanted to be rich. I'd been there, done that, and paid heavily for it. I was recreating myself again.

Things change

My beloved illness status changed to terminal. Truth be told he was terminal after the first year of his illness after two heart attacks and a stroke. The next year we found the rare form of cancer that was causing it all. I sold my company to my partners. After ten years, I had grown my company from a home business to having three partners and staff. My buyout was a cool million that all went to help keeping my beloved alive.

I fell back into my loved to do things like ministry, writing, and teaching culinary arts. It was something I could do to bring in the extra money we needed with mounting medical bills and still mostly be home with him. I was recreating myself into what I wanted to be when I grew up.

Things change

I had a stroke. Being an overachiever, not one but two. My ischemic stroke escalated into a hemorrhagic stroke within a matter of days. I went from weakness to aphasic paralysis. I began fighting my way back. After the first stroke I began writing a book on a humorous take on stroke recovery.  Preliminary chapters were sent to publishers and a bidding war for the full nonfiction began.  In the midst of the war, I had another stroke. This one took my writing ability. Fighting my way back was nothing new for me. Been here, done that. I was recreating who I am yet again.



Things change

My beloved finally died after beating all the doctors' predictions of "any time now" by ten years. I had been in the role of caregiver for more years than I cared to remember from my mother to my husband and several other family member in between. I vowed that I wouldn't do it again. It was time for me. So what exactly was I suppose to be now when I grew up with a totally dysfunctional body and brain?

During the last twenty years of my husband's life, we had a mutual dream...to live an organic, self sustainable lifestyle. This life dream didn't depend on the world, but on us.We took baby steps towards our dream while living in the suburbs. We grew about 50% of our own food, researched alternative methods of power like solar energy, and ways to preserve food. We even took it a step further by buying a twenty-acre tract of land off the beaten path. We called the place Murphey's Madness Compound because we included our children and their families in our plans.

Things change

Living post stroke, our dream clashed with reality. My children all moved away to distant parts of the globe and were living their dreams or at least making a living. I could no longer do what we dreamed of physically or financially. I found myself chucking my life dream once again to move into an assisted living facility or senior living type dwelling. I refused but could not see an out of my situation. Mel to the rescue. Now the rest is history until things change again.

Life is about changing and adapting to those changes. You'll eventually find your path through the changes. It may not be the way you dreamed it would be, but just as satisfying. You might even go in a full circle, like you did, Barb, to get where you needed to be. God is good, all the time.

Nothing is impossible