Erosion of a mind...

Sunday April 15, 2012

My husband confronted me again tonight. Being confronted by him isn't new and isn't the issue but the subject matter was. And this was one of the most frightening things to date. 

Though he was there when my stroke occurred and though he'd been through the weeks that followed in hospital and the months that stretched into years of rehabilitation for me, he informs me tonight that he had read my entry in my blog Back To The Egg and that everything I said when writing about my brain event were lies. That I wasn't hospitalized for 7 weeks, that I wasn't paralyzed. And his argument was "You fucking lied about everything! You weren't paralyzed at all. You just had paralysis." This sent a giant chill down my spine as I realized the ramifications of what he was saying. Or better, how much of a grasp he'd really lost on reality.

When I had my stroke, May 29, 2001, (which by the way he didn't recall either) I was so extremely lucky to have all the planets lining up for me - doctors not just living next door but both of them outside in their front yards at the same time as I was outside and they saw me fall. Lucky that I wasn't home alone or wasn't just with Greg who would have thought I'd only fainted and likely carried me inside and laid me on the couch and left again. 

I was lucky to have a hospital just a mile away and some of the best health care insurance in the country. I was lucky to be made a patient of one of the best neurosurgeons in the nation too, Dr. Howard Yonas, who just happened to be on duty when  I arrived downtown at UPMC.

This man, this wonderful doctor was intrigued with my case from the very beginning. I had experienced a major Hemorrhagic stroke - a bleed which was covering the back third of my brain. I have brain scans on cd of the aftermath of this bleed as it shrank, but even after a year the hole was still the size of a quarter.

And...Greg knows all this. Or at least knew it. Not now apparently. Whether by selective memory or real deterioration of his faculties, all this has gone from his head. And truthfully, the obvious erosion of this man's mind is now beginning to really frighten me.  He knew the bleed was major because the doctor told him this with me sitting right there in the office. Dr. Yonas told Greg (with me sitting there) that he was amazed and thrilled at the recovery I was making and that he was discussing my progress with colleagues at seminars etc. He was even reticent to sign me off to another doctors care because to do so meant he wouldn't have me as a 'case' to discuss any longer. 

I guess what I'm saying here is that Greg was through all of this…the immediate crisis, the trauma of paralysis, the rehab and therapy and the discussions with Dr. Yonas, Drs Wright the second neurologist, Dr. Henderson my lead physiotherapist, the clinic rehab therapists, the nearly a year of first round therapies and homework...yet he "remembers" none of this. The world according to Greg is that I wasn't paralyzed, I didn't lose large chunks of consciousness or memory. I didn't have to relearn to walk or sit without falling over…he was there for the celebration the first time I was able to go longer than 30 seconds on a tread mill at a half mile an hour. He was there when I was able to walk from the front of a Target store to the back without seeking a place to sit.

He sat with my therapist and discussed botox injections in my foot and ankle to unlock tone because without any feeling or ability to move my ankle, I needed to unlock it. He went through the electroconvulsive therapy to my left arm, shoulder and leg, trying to 'wake them up'. He knew of the biofeedback sessions and sat in and helped with my first baby steps on the tread mill and bike as I began my journey back to walking. And he sat in with a few speech therapies and cognizance sessions as I learned to use my battered brain again.

But now all this is lying! I wasn't affected by any of this. I didn't go through any of this. It's as if a giant eraser went whipping through his head erasing all the stuff he doesn't want to remember. The only things he wants to remember are things that happened to him. He lost a job! People he trusted crossed him. His life is a miserable piece of shit because he gets fired. Or gets cured of cancer. Can't count that though…that's a good thing and good things never happen to Greg!

No, he gets a splinter and the whole evening's ruined. He spills a few drips of milk on his knee and there goes the whole fucking weekend. He spends the next hour screaming about what a pile of shit his life is and how everything happens to him all the time. His life is so hard…he wants to die. He prays to die. 

And he's loving every minute of this apparently because he makes no effort to change a thing! NOT A THING! All he wants to do is punish everything around him. And then he's angry because I am warning my friend Debra about how bad things are here at times. That a baby kitten would perhaps have some amount of stress being brought into our home, much as I want this kitten I am trying to stay focused on his little life and not my own selfish wishes.

I will continue this in the following days when I have some idea of what is going to happen. Something will happen though because it cannot continue the way it is.