Thursday, May 19, 2011

Blindsided

I awoke in the middle of last night to utter blackness. No display from the digital clock, no nightlight from the bathroom. I blinked and blinked but could not clear the darkness.

I'm blind! My God, I've gone blind!

Heart racing, I woke my husband …who determined we were having a power outage.

An extreme reaction? Maybe. But, that's how it happened before. I went to sleep on Good Friday 2010 with the full physical and mental capabilities of a fit 45-year-old, and woke the next morning unable to move my left arm or stand on my left leg.

On that morning there was no panic – only confusion. It didn't occur to me that my life could change overnight. Stroke. When I returned home from the hospital a month later, I would look at the bed that had once been my haven, and I would think "the scene of the crime."

Perhaps the biggest change since that morning one year ago is the way I see things.

3 comments:

  1. Excellent. I shall be your #1 follower.

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  2. Hi Marcelle: I have read this entry before, but feel compelled to comment this time:

    I too think of my terrible morning whenever I go into my own "scene of the crime" - our downstairs bathroom where I knocked the toilet paper roll of the holder and fell against the radiator. I also think of it whenever I shower in our master bathroom - I think about the last shower I took there without sitting on my shoer chair - also on my terrible morning. Also when I don the blouse I was wearing that morning, the one that I went to the hospital in.

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