Confessions of a Caregiver 3: The Second Morning

It was Valentine’s Day: the morning of February 14, 1991. I had rustled through John’s dresser at home looking for clothing for him and discovered a brand new woman's blue sweater in one drawer. I realized that it was his Valentine’s present for me. I decided to wear it. After having spent the rest of the previous day making arrangements with a friend to drive me to our car I then drove to the hospital. The ever-present Fear Cloud was still with me. It had now settled into a large knot in my stomach. Breathing was challenging because my chest was so tight. At least I was warm in my new sweater.

When I arrived in his room, an awake John could not greet me because his speech was completely gone. He saw the blue sweater and reached for me with his now only working arm, his left. He grabbed my arm and tugged on the sweater with the hint of a smile. Facial muscles were not working right either. That hint though, told me that he was still there, inside the silent cocoon of brain damage. I sputtered some words of comfort and he turned away from me towards the wall, refusing to be a part of life. A moment of pure divine inspiration came to me and I said “John, this did not just happen to you, it happened to us. We have two choices here, we can do this well, or we can do this poorly. You and I will choose to do it well.” In that moment, John made a choice. He turned back to me and with his eyes, he told me “Yes”. We had made a pact. We became a different team. We had always been a team as musicians, now we became a team called “rehabilitation from stroke”. 

It is impossible to describe the POWER we both felt, together, at that moment. The clutches of The Cloud were starting to dissipate.

Later that day John was moved to yet another room. This one was private. A White Coat finally arrived to talk to me.  It was my first conversation with him. I asked him what a stroke was, because I really did not know. I was so naïve. He explained what it was and told me that John would not be able to work for at least two years, and probably never again. Anything else he said to me went unheard after that announcement. When he left the room, I literally crawled on the floor and hid under John’s bed and sobbed. John slept through all of this with the head end of the hospital bed raised. I don’t know how long I sat on the floor, hiding in my private space of collapse. Eventually, I crawled out from under the bed and faced The Cloud from a position of strength. I had to. There was no one else to help. John and I were alone then.

We are still alone in this journey today.

All of the above and all subsequent posts are from my memories of the events that occurred.

_______________________________________________

The book, "Don't Stop the Music: Finding the Joy in Caregiving" which tells the entire story of the stroke with the Lessons Learned and Solutions for Caregivers will be published in late 2013.

You can view John's facebook page for the complete chronological story of his life and stroke at: https://www.facebook.com/pagesDont-Stop-the-Music-John-D-Swan/260829200098

Please feel free to share these posts with others and reply, with credit given.

 2014 Nancy Weckwerth