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The YouTube video demonstrates what happened to me when I had an acute stroke on January 1, 2014. Dr. Chuck Gordon worked a catheter from my groin up to my brain, turned on a tiny vacuum cleaner (aspirator) and sucked the clot out.
Dr. Gordon believed I had been dead for 20 seconds by the time he had the Penumbra device in position. Not breathing. Eyes rolled back. Heart rate flatlining. He is still amazed that as soon as he turned on the aspirator and withdrew the catheter, vacuuming out the clot, I began to move and speak. His report is on this web page as a jpg--see below. |
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My memoir probably should have been titled Two Strokes and You're Out--NOT. I wrote extensively on stroke in the 1970s and 1980s for a national newspaper and the Heart and Stroke Foundation. The nurse in my stroke rehabilitation program suggested that I should write a book on what happened to me because I was making a recovery that seemed impressive.
Writer's block hit me. I couldn't even think clearly about stroke, much less write about it. The brain cells that controlled my "fight or flight" reactions had been fried. All I could do was take flight when I tried to deal with stroke. So I went back to the beginning of my writing career, when I was young and adventurous. I wrote about the fun times, the wild times, the adventures that had nothing to do with my cardiovascular system. I had a full head of steam on the project by the time I got to the difficult part and managed to struggle through my dealings with the furies unleashed by stroke.
My working titles for the book were unsatisfactory and thanks to editors and publishers who thought some of my other adventures were more exciting than my cardiovascular ones, tagged polar bears found their way into the title. The book is now called Polar Bears and Other Scares: Adventures of a freelance writer. I keep the electronic versions very inexpensive.
Writer's block hit me. I couldn't even think clearly about stroke, much less write about it. The brain cells that controlled my "fight or flight" reactions had been fried. All I could do was take flight when I tried to deal with stroke. So I went back to the beginning of my writing career, when I was young and adventurous. I wrote about the fun times, the wild times, the adventures that had nothing to do with my cardiovascular system. I had a full head of steam on the project by the time I got to the difficult part and managed to struggle through my dealings with the furies unleashed by stroke.
My working titles for the book were unsatisfactory and thanks to editors and publishers who thought some of my other adventures were more exciting than my cardiovascular ones, tagged polar bears found their way into the title. The book is now called Polar Bears and Other Scares: Adventures of a freelance writer. I keep the electronic versions very inexpensive.
