Authors: Robert McCrum
Davina taped R.’s leg up with a bandage and helped him as he walked around a table! He actually did it. And I saw another flicker in his toes, too. I felt so proud and so happy and so hopeful, and R. was almost ebullient when we got upstairs.
As things come along more with his leg, I’m focusing all my worry and depression on Robert’s arm, which hasn’t shown much improvement besides the flicker of feeling in the shoulder that they started noticing early on. He has more feeling in it, he says, and they say that’s a very good sign, as things go. They say it might come back, but it might not come back. At least there’s still a possibility, and it’s that that keeps me hoping. I think so hard about how bad it would be to have an arm that was totally useless. I suppose in the scheme of things it wouldn’t be that terrible – you could still write, still read, still drive (apparently); it would just require finding new ways of doing the old things, which takes time and, much worse, is an alarming reminder that you’re not the same as you were. You want so much to be exactly the same, to have things go back to exactly the way they were before, and they never will. But what I’m trying to tell myself is maybe that’s not so bad.
As my stay in the Devonshire stretched into September, I found I lost my sense of time and could not, for some reason, keep track of dates. I woke up one morning wondering how long I had been there. Perhaps two weeks? Or was it three? Ever since the stroke had happened, I’d doubted my mental capacity, and now I became convinced, as I did periodically, that I was actually losing my mind. Actually, it had been little more than six weeks since the stroke itself.
I was glad that at least I had kept a record of this experience: regularly at nine forty-five I would sit in the wheelchair, write my diary and wait for the first session of physiotherapy for the day. It was remarkable what strength Davina had created in my left leg. My left toes were now working fully, which was exciting. The routine
of physiotherapy was this: first, being trundled down the corridor in the wheelchair; then, down in the lift, for which we often had to wait interminably. Then downstairs in the basement we’d negotiate the double doors and face a blast of air-conditioning from the gym. Next it was off with the socks, off with the shoulder-brace and left wrist-splint and shirt (here, I was unpleasantly and unavoidably reminded of preparing for outdoor games at school). Then, I’d perform ten ‘sit-to-stands’, then ten more, then some exercises for my arms, then more lower-body therapy. Davina would grip my knees and buttocks and try to get my body to work. She would do this by urging me to attempt the action and then by making the movement herself where I was unable to respond. Every morning while I waited for physiotherapy I’d look at the TV section to see what was on TV to while away the evening. Such was life in gaol.
Dr Greenwood turned out to be totally supportive of the idea of acupuncture, and asked Sarah to ask Dr Zhu, the acupuncturist, to telephone him for his approval. The British medical profession these days is much more open to the idea of alternative therapies than in the past. Dr Zhu was, apparently, properly Chinese, and had trained in Shanghai, which was reassuring.
At the point at which Dr Zhu came into my life, my left arm was still hanging like a dead thing, its fingers seeming as cold and soggy as dead meat. My left leg was like lead, with no feeling or movement apart from the toes. My head ached intermittently. No one seemed to know whether or not I was improving, or if they did, they wouldn’t say. I found the refusal of the experts to commit themselves immensely frustrating. When pressed, the physiotherapists said that they could see what they called ‘flickers’. I could put weight on my left
leg. With a bit of luck – ‘maybe’ – I would soon be able to walk. My speech was still slurred, and speaking was an effort. The most frightening headaches seemed to have gone. I wondered: were the headaches something to do with convalescence? On some days, my legs ached as if suddenly released from cramped quarters. Despite Dr Lees’s words when I first went to the National Hospital, any new headache made me afraid. Was this the warning of another stroke? A precursor of a fatal recurrence? I think Sarah felt the same.
Time did not seem so bad now as in the days past. I had been brought closer to many people, including Sarah, whom I loved anyway, but who now seemed totally indispensable. I had also been made aware of things I did not know about; I was older in experience. I had not changed much otherwise – I looked much the same and still felt reasonably young at heart, though often terribly frustrated. If this was a brush with death, I knew now that it could have been much worse. So it was a timely reminder, a tap on the shoulder, a clearing of the throat behind me, a
memento mori.
I also felt as if I had been given a glimpse of old age – the helplessness and dependency and the waiting for things to happen. Before, in my ‘old’ life, I had always been the youngest in any group; now I would feel like the oldest, at least in experience.
I dreamed that I was in an elevator that was barrelling up and down in a skyscraper, out of control and not stopping at the right floor, and I began to panic. There was a stranger in the elevator and I ran over and threw my arms around him in fear. When the elevator began to calm down, he still wanted to hug me, and I didn’t
want to. When it stopped at the right floor, he stalked away.
Robert is only slurring now when he talks too fast. His breathing is the only thing that seems to be still affected – he runs out of breath at the end of sentences – but it’s very discouraging for him, and hard for me, because I want so much for it to be fine. He calls at work on our special line and my heart lifts and when he can’t make himself so well understood I feel so sad.
The routine went on. Breakfast at eight o’clock (Alpen, grapefruit and coffee), then shower and shave, transfer back to the wheelchair, dress and dry, then sit in the wheelchair and make notes, and wait for the physiotherapist. My moods fluctuated wildly: one morning I had a blow-up with Catherine, the occupational therapist, as I was coming out of the shower. She had come to inspect my feeble efforts at dressing myself (to evaluate the likelihood of my return home), and was driving me mad by watching me struggle into my clothes and offering no help. This was an example of ‘tough love’, and to me it was absolutely infuriating.
Catherine:
‘Everyone is concerned that you are over-using your right side.’
Me:
‘Who is everyone?’
Catherine:
‘The nurses.’
Me:
‘But the nurses change all the time. How on earth can they have any opinions worth having?’
Catherine (defensively)
: ‘Davina is very concerned about the overuse of your right side.’
Me:
‘She’s never said so. And what do you mean, “overusing my right side”? All I’ve got is my right side!’
I sank into a furious silence. I felt as if I had been treated like an idiot and a child. After this the atmosphere
between us became very cool and difficult, a breakdown in relations that was entirely my fault – Catherine is a fine and dedicated professional. I felt better for having written it down in my diary, and added, as a PS, ‘Thank God for Davina!’ In the end, I was saved by Dr Greenwood’s arrival. He seemed to know how vile my mood had been. Greenwood and I then discussed (a) my mood and (b) the possibility of psychotherapy. I mentioned my friendship with Adam Phillips once more but said that I was against seeing a shrink: I couldn’t imagine what we would talk about, or how it would be helpful. I knew I was supposed to feel angry about my situation, and depressed, but when I did get angry, it was fairly unspecific, and came in moments of frustration, rather than all the time. On the whole, I said, I accepted my fate, and was trying to work within the restrictions that had been set down by it. I repeated that I didn’t see how therapy would help. Greenwood said that we were approaching an exceptionally difficult phase that was typical of stroke recovery. He was quite specific about this, and it was clear that he believed this would be a period as trying to Sarah, the carer, as for me, the convalescent. I found him wise and sober and helpful. I had come to trust him completely; and I was determined to get through this phase without becoming overwhelmed by depression and hopelessness.
I watch Robert do his physical therapy and get so alarmed when Davina says things like, ‘Your knee’s not really coming in.’ What does that mean? Still nothing in his arm, and Davina is saying if it comes back at all, it might take months, not to expect anything day to day. Robert can shuffle around if he’s wearing an enormous
bandage that supports his leg, and if Davina walks along behind him, supporting his waist. He’s been very grumpy and sniping at me a lot. I feel – I feel depressed. Dr Greenwood said we’re approaching what’s in some ways the hardest part, because the more Robert improves the angrier he gets about what he still can’t do.
When I did not sleep well, when I watched the light under the door and wondered when dawn would come, I found my night-time full of fears and thoughts about my future. Perhaps this was a sign that I was finally getting better. Life seemed to be inching slowly towards normality at last; the possibility of going home seemed more feasible. In my daily visits to the physiotherapy gym, I found that I could nearly walk, but my left foot was not strong, and, lacking muscle control at the ankle, dragged badly. As Sarah had noted, the more I got better, the greater my frustration.
It was time for a haircut. Each morning my hair was taking longer and longer to dry, and then I realized – a sobering thought – that it had last been cut just before I got married. When I rehearsed these long, strange weeks since our wedding – our honeymoon in Morocco, our first days at home together in London, the party we’d planned to give for our friends who’d not managed to come to Philadelphia – I recognized that we had been strangely lucky. I felt so close to Sarah now, and hoped that when we got home together we should be closer still. I was sure that the experience had been very good for our marriage in the long term, and we used to say to each other that if we could survive this we could survive anything.
The next big excitement was the arrival of Dr Zhu. He was distinctly Chinese, dressed very plainly in a grey-green
shirt and a black tweed jacket, and dark green felt trousers. As soon as he arrived he produced an article about his work from
The Times
, rather like an author producing his reviews. This amused Sarah and me greatly. He asked the nurse to take a Xerox copy of the article so that we could keep it. I lay on the bed in my underpants and shut my eyes, and then quite suddenly he told me that he had put a needle in my arm. I had felt nothing. I was quite alarmed, but lay there patiently. After my experiences at the National, Dr Zhu’s needles seemed comparatively unthreatening. Millions of people had had this treatment; there was no need to worry. The acupuncture itself was like a series of tiny mosquito bites. Dr Zhu put two or three in my arm, and several in my leg and ankle on the left side, also one in my belly and one in the top of my head, which was a bit more unnerving. After about twenty minutes he removed the needles. I felt very lazy and sleepy after this and wondered if this was connected with the acupuncture. Dr Zhu said he would come again on Tuesday, and then again next Saturday. The evening after his first visit, I seemed to have a slight tingling in my right arm, which, presumably, had something to do with the acupuncture.
A good weekend. Dr Zhu, the funny little acupuncturist in a black jacket and tie, came by and stuck tiny little needles up and down Robert’s left side. He said the stroke had thrown his body out of balance, and the idea was to bring the balance back. How this is achieved with puny pins that you would use for sewing buttons on is beyond me, but whatever. If I support him, Robert can walk a few steps. We’re getting along much better – I
just snap back at him, and he knows I’m not going to put up with any bad behaviour. I can see a tiny, tiny glimmer of light down at the end of the very long and dark tunnel. Robert will start coming home soon on weekends. Big adjustment – creeping up the stairs, hobbling into the bathroom, being tired all the time – but it’s progress.
Finally, as planned, I spoke to Adam Phillips about psychotherapy. He told me that, these days, hospitals are all into therapy in a big way; he advised me to wait till I really wanted to do it, which exactly reinforced my opinion. I think Sarah found my reluctance to admit a need for psychoanalytic help extraordinarily incomprehensible, but such help is not part of my culture and I took the view that there were enough people fussing over my needs already. In physiotherapy, in which I was now participating enthusiastically, I was learning to negotiate the hospital stairs, with immense difficulty, and beginning to feel more stable on two legs.
One of the innovations employed by the Devonshire in convalescence was the video camera. I still possess a VHS cassette of my pathetic efforts at walking during these weeks. When I watch it now I can hardly imagine being so enfeebled and helpless, and see with shock the lines of despair on my face.
I found myself thinking that it would be nice to get home, where I would feel more independent. I had reached the stage where I was feeling more energetic internally, and fed up with the hospital/prison routine. Getting up in the mornings was hard. All I wanted to do was lie in. I found the shower and shave routine an absolute tyranny, and I longed for a bath, for a long soak.
By the end of September, I was beginning to take unsupported steps, but my left leg flailed out wildly and it was hard for me to retain my balance. I’d been at the Devonshire about a month when Dr Greenwood convened a conference of my various physical therapists to evaluate my progress.