The following article is taken from the Strokenetblog website:
www.strokenetblog.net
It was written by Steve Mallory, President & CEO of The Stroke Network and originally posted on their site September 25, 2013. I have Steve's permission to re-post it on our blog. I hope you find it as interesting and inspiring as I do.
Please visit them for many more articles about and by stroke survivors.
Here is Steve's:
Article written by: Steve Mallory, President & CEO, The Stroke Network, http://www.strokenetwork.org/, SMallory@strokenetwork.org, Personal Website: http://www.stevemallory.org/
Are you living up to your potential, since your stroke. I know that stroke can be extremely devastating to how you perceive yourself and I thought that if I can change a couple of minds then maybe my story might be worth reading. I have to warn you, what I am going to say has not all been a can of corn!
Let me take a few minutes to give you more about my background so it makes sense why I wound up where I am. I didn’t just fall into this, where I am now, but followed the path of least resistance.
I had my stroke while on a business trip in Toulouse, France. That was in 1994. What a shocker! I was only 36, which is in the age range of most of our survivor members. Ages 30 through 60 are a more predominant age for stroke than I ever thought. I had a reasonable education of an Associates Degree in Engineering and Bachelors in Business. I thought that with my education and background that I would go a longs way with Aerospace! I was highly motivated and was willing to work my tail off!
I had spent my first five years in an aerospace laboratory performing tests and writing technical papers about my mechanical and physical testing. I think that performing this type of work is what makes me so analytical and motivated to take the time to be able figure things out. This was a great job but was not something I wanted to do forever.
I spent the next two years working as a Quality Engineer. This job also required an analytical approach but usually meant that we were the bearer of bad news that our plant had manufactured a part incorrectly. My last seven years were spent as the Chief Quality Engineer in charge of the other Quality Engineers and Inspectors. I had so much responsibility I could hardly keep track of everything. I had to travel all over the world and work with businesses that made parts for my company and then also try to stay on top of what was going on in our plant.
In addition, I was the one who had to give final approval for the fan reversers that we delivered to Pratt and Whitney and then which were assembled to the wings of the Airbus A-330 aircraft. The assembly took place at Airbus in Toulouse, France and that is why I was in that country when I had my stroke.
I was stressed to the max! I could not make a move without somebody asking me about 80 million questions! I was burning out and snapping at people over nothing! I think the 14-hour days caused me to reach my breaking point!
One morning I woke up and the room was spinning out of control. Several more TIA episodes later I had my stroke. I think it lasted three days before the final attack. Naturally, I thought I had just been working too much. The stroke hit me like a thief in the night!
I tried calling my wife from the hospital but just gave a garbled a message. I thought I was speaking clearly but found out later that I made no sense. Little by little, over several hours, my motor controls completely stopped. I was locked-in and had no movement below my nose. Now here’s the scary part, my cognitive functions continued to function at about 95%. Can you imagine not knowing what was going on, not being able to talk or move and your doctors and nurses talking to you in a foreign language?
I can order French meals and knew some of the common French phrases but that’s about it for my knowing the French language! I recognized about 5% of what they were saying and everything else was Greek! They took me to an operating room and put me to sleep. When I woke up I had a tracheotomy! Talk about nightmare! It was every ones worst dream come true! Needless to say my story is probably not much different, in principle, than most of you.
Things could not get much worse and I decided right in the beginning that since I still had my mind that I was not going to give in. Figuring things out was my specialty. What was so discouraging, though, was that I was REALLY paralyzed. I could not fathom how weak I was. I don’t know how you guys feel but my paralysis is a total weakness that is impossible for an able-bodied person to imagine. I had a feeding tube down my nose, a suction tube down my throat and an oxygen tube hooked up to my throat. I did not know how I looked and still did not know that my speech was gone because of the stroke. .
Anyway, I want you to understand that I have had my share of shock and awe! I know that you and your loved ones have gone through equally devastating times. I do not consider myself to have gone through anything more or less than you all have. Just consider that the pain that we all have gone through as enough to make us brothers and sisters.
Do you remember the movie with Richard Dreyfuss and Bill Murray called, “What about Bob?” Murray plays Bob and Dreyfuss is his psychologist. The good doctor goes on vacation and Bob follows him there bugging him for advice about his psychotic life. He is told to think about taking life in baby steps, meaning, take things slow, take your time making decisions only about one thing he can overcome and accomplish it and then move on to the next thing he wants to overcome.
This was my mantra almost from almost day one. I knew I must not focus on improving more than one thing, whatever it was, it had to be achievable and then I had to move to my next goal. Of course, my very first goal was communication! Without it I was toast! This had to be the worst period of my life! Living without communication is a horror story and I lived without it for over a month! I had to make contact with the outside world. My inner dialogue was perfect. I had to let everybody know that my mind was still there and that I could feel everything that was being done to me.
I began communicating by blinking once or twice to yes and no questions. Next, I was blinking to the written alphabet to spell out words. And finally, I was staring at objects I was interested in and looking at a communication board to spell words and sentences. This progress did not happen overnight and took tons of patience. I thought, baby steps, Steve, baby steps!
Next, my most important goal was being able to move and control my head. The human head probably weighs over 10 pounds. If I were sitting up in bed my head would flop over. The nurses would prop pillows on either side of my head. Eventually, one of the pillows would move down and my head would move with it.
One time, I was propped up in bed and left by myself for about an hour. My wife had to go eat dinner and a nurse was supposed to look in on me. Gravity soon started making the pillow move down and so did my head. My neck and head eventually were almost perpendicular to my body. I know I had to look contorted! The nurse obviously had gotten called away and then forgot about me. My wife came back from dinner and found me like that and was furious!
Little by little and day by day my neck was becoming stronger. I had to continuously perform neck exercises. For a long time, my head was bobbly. I started by lifting from left to center and then right to center, forward and backwards, over and over. The computer use was excellent exercise, too! Slowly but surely my head control got better and better. Baby steps, Steve, baby steps!
I guess my point here with telling you about my first goals and accomplishments after my stroke is to let you know that life after stroke is nothing more than a series of baby steps. You cannot give up because you think your life is ruined. I could see that the only way to get whatever I wanted was to use my noggin and then to figure out a way to make it happen.
Setting goals that are too much could make you think that something is not achievable but if you start out slow and bite off a small piece of it, just a nibble, and then be patient and take your time mastering that small piece you can do so much more than you ever thought.
If you go to my web site at http://www.stevemallory.org/ you will see that I have been extremely busy over the past 10 years. I was able to accomplish these things by taking it slow, not trying to do too much at once and then making sure that I mastered whatever it was that I had to do. I certainly do not have everything listed but just the ones that I did should show you that I made up my mind not to sit still after my stroke.
You must live up to your potential if you want to feel that your life has been successful. You do not have to feel that having a stroke was the end of your life. It’s true, things will never be the same again but does that mean that living a productive life is finished? Are you ready to end things just because you are out of shape, walk or talk funny?
It’s not the end of the world but making a life for yourself again is something you and your family can brag about! You don’t need your old job back or have to drive again, especially if it’s not safe to do so. What is important is that you are the best person you can be and that you aren’t sitting around feeling sorry for yourself.
Most people know that I am a Christian and although I am not going to evangelize, please bear with me while I quote my favorite scripture.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2Cor 4:18
This verse was the key to me being able to accept what I became after my stroke. I had so many things wrong with me that this burden was almost too much to live with. So, I made up my mind to do what I could and to do them well and to just accept what was too much to change. I feel like I’ve lived up to my potential by doing things this way! A friend once told me that life is like a blank canvas. You can draw anything on it that you want.
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Here is Steve's:
Article written by: Steve Mallory, President & CEO, The Stroke Network, http://www.strokenetwork.org/, SMallory@strokenetwork.org, Personal Website: http://www.stevemallory.org/
Are you living up to your potential, since your stroke. I know that stroke can be extremely devastating to how you perceive yourself and I thought that if I can change a couple of minds then maybe my story might be worth reading. I have to warn you, what I am going to say has not all been a can of corn!
Let me take a few minutes to give you more about my background so it makes sense why I wound up where I am. I didn’t just fall into this, where I am now, but followed the path of least resistance.
I had my stroke while on a business trip in Toulouse, France. That was in 1994. What a shocker! I was only 36, which is in the age range of most of our survivor members. Ages 30 through 60 are a more predominant age for stroke than I ever thought. I had a reasonable education of an Associates Degree in Engineering and Bachelors in Business. I thought that with my education and background that I would go a longs way with Aerospace! I was highly motivated and was willing to work my tail off!
I had spent my first five years in an aerospace laboratory performing tests and writing technical papers about my mechanical and physical testing. I think that performing this type of work is what makes me so analytical and motivated to take the time to be able figure things out. This was a great job but was not something I wanted to do forever.
I spent the next two years working as a Quality Engineer. This job also required an analytical approach but usually meant that we were the bearer of bad news that our plant had manufactured a part incorrectly. My last seven years were spent as the Chief Quality Engineer in charge of the other Quality Engineers and Inspectors. I had so much responsibility I could hardly keep track of everything. I had to travel all over the world and work with businesses that made parts for my company and then also try to stay on top of what was going on in our plant.
In addition, I was the one who had to give final approval for the fan reversers that we delivered to Pratt and Whitney and then which were assembled to the wings of the Airbus A-330 aircraft. The assembly took place at Airbus in Toulouse, France and that is why I was in that country when I had my stroke.
I was stressed to the max! I could not make a move without somebody asking me about 80 million questions! I was burning out and snapping at people over nothing! I think the 14-hour days caused me to reach my breaking point!
One morning I woke up and the room was spinning out of control. Several more TIA episodes later I had my stroke. I think it lasted three days before the final attack. Naturally, I thought I had just been working too much. The stroke hit me like a thief in the night!
I tried calling my wife from the hospital but just gave a garbled a message. I thought I was speaking clearly but found out later that I made no sense. Little by little, over several hours, my motor controls completely stopped. I was locked-in and had no movement below my nose. Now here’s the scary part, my cognitive functions continued to function at about 95%. Can you imagine not knowing what was going on, not being able to talk or move and your doctors and nurses talking to you in a foreign language?
I can order French meals and knew some of the common French phrases but that’s about it for my knowing the French language! I recognized about 5% of what they were saying and everything else was Greek! They took me to an operating room and put me to sleep. When I woke up I had a tracheotomy! Talk about nightmare! It was every ones worst dream come true! Needless to say my story is probably not much different, in principle, than most of you.
Things could not get much worse and I decided right in the beginning that since I still had my mind that I was not going to give in. Figuring things out was my specialty. What was so discouraging, though, was that I was REALLY paralyzed. I could not fathom how weak I was. I don’t know how you guys feel but my paralysis is a total weakness that is impossible for an able-bodied person to imagine. I had a feeding tube down my nose, a suction tube down my throat and an oxygen tube hooked up to my throat. I did not know how I looked and still did not know that my speech was gone because of the stroke. .
Anyway, I want you to understand that I have had my share of shock and awe! I know that you and your loved ones have gone through equally devastating times. I do not consider myself to have gone through anything more or less than you all have. Just consider that the pain that we all have gone through as enough to make us brothers and sisters.
Do you remember the movie with Richard Dreyfuss and Bill Murray called, “What about Bob?” Murray plays Bob and Dreyfuss is his psychologist. The good doctor goes on vacation and Bob follows him there bugging him for advice about his psychotic life. He is told to think about taking life in baby steps, meaning, take things slow, take your time making decisions only about one thing he can overcome and accomplish it and then move on to the next thing he wants to overcome.
This was my mantra almost from almost day one. I knew I must not focus on improving more than one thing, whatever it was, it had to be achievable and then I had to move to my next goal. Of course, my very first goal was communication! Without it I was toast! This had to be the worst period of my life! Living without communication is a horror story and I lived without it for over a month! I had to make contact with the outside world. My inner dialogue was perfect. I had to let everybody know that my mind was still there and that I could feel everything that was being done to me.
I began communicating by blinking once or twice to yes and no questions. Next, I was blinking to the written alphabet to spell out words. And finally, I was staring at objects I was interested in and looking at a communication board to spell words and sentences. This progress did not happen overnight and took tons of patience. I thought, baby steps, Steve, baby steps!
Next, my most important goal was being able to move and control my head. The human head probably weighs over 10 pounds. If I were sitting up in bed my head would flop over. The nurses would prop pillows on either side of my head. Eventually, one of the pillows would move down and my head would move with it.
One time, I was propped up in bed and left by myself for about an hour. My wife had to go eat dinner and a nurse was supposed to look in on me. Gravity soon started making the pillow move down and so did my head. My neck and head eventually were almost perpendicular to my body. I know I had to look contorted! The nurse obviously had gotten called away and then forgot about me. My wife came back from dinner and found me like that and was furious!
Little by little and day by day my neck was becoming stronger. I had to continuously perform neck exercises. For a long time, my head was bobbly. I started by lifting from left to center and then right to center, forward and backwards, over and over. The computer use was excellent exercise, too! Slowly but surely my head control got better and better. Baby steps, Steve, baby steps!
I guess my point here with telling you about my first goals and accomplishments after my stroke is to let you know that life after stroke is nothing more than a series of baby steps. You cannot give up because you think your life is ruined. I could see that the only way to get whatever I wanted was to use my noggin and then to figure out a way to make it happen.
Setting goals that are too much could make you think that something is not achievable but if you start out slow and bite off a small piece of it, just a nibble, and then be patient and take your time mastering that small piece you can do so much more than you ever thought.
If you go to my web site at http://www.stevemallory.org/ you will see that I have been extremely busy over the past 10 years. I was able to accomplish these things by taking it slow, not trying to do too much at once and then making sure that I mastered whatever it was that I had to do. I certainly do not have everything listed but just the ones that I did should show you that I made up my mind not to sit still after my stroke.
You must live up to your potential if you want to feel that your life has been successful. You do not have to feel that having a stroke was the end of your life. It’s true, things will never be the same again but does that mean that living a productive life is finished? Are you ready to end things just because you are out of shape, walk or talk funny?
It’s not the end of the world but making a life for yourself again is something you and your family can brag about! You don’t need your old job back or have to drive again, especially if it’s not safe to do so. What is important is that you are the best person you can be and that you aren’t sitting around feeling sorry for yourself.
Most people know that I am a Christian and although I am not going to evangelize, please bear with me while I quote my favorite scripture.
So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal. 2Cor 4:18
This verse was the key to me being able to accept what I became after my stroke. I had so many things wrong with me that this burden was almost too much to live with. So, I made up my mind to do what I could and to do them well and to just accept what was too much to change. I feel like I’ve lived up to my potential by doing things this way! A friend once told me that life is like a blank canvas. You can draw anything on it that you want.
********************************************************************************
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