So as a result of my many medical problems I have what can only be described as a medical team. As of the beginning of this year, it consisted of a GP, Infectious Disease doctor, Wound Care doctor, Dietician, Speech Therapist, Neurologist, Pharmacist Clinician, and a host of people at the Heart Hostibule. Plus the hospitalist and their assorted nursing and other staff. I’ve also been hostibulized enough (7 tines since 2020 – I had to go through my medical records and count) that I have frequent flyer miles at the hostibule.
This week I lost one member of my team. But that’s a Good Thing.
On 1 February I was discharged from Speech Therapy. I’ve made a pretty amazing recovery over the last few months, and I’m back at work now. So we discussed it and I was done. There’s one major caveat: if I either see major improvement or a decline, I am to contact her. In the former case, it’s to see if we can help the progress along. In the latter, it’s to see what we can do to reverse it before it’s too late. It should be a simple task if necessary. I go to my GP, tell her what’s going on, and she fires off a referral.
She had floated the idea a week before, in my last appointment before I went back to work. Basically, my return to the robut factory was a final test. And I passed with flying colors.
Returning to work was the real wildcard after about two months on Disability, for one simple reason. I didn’t know if I could still do my job. It sounds absolutely stupid – how can I not know? When I took the cognitive tests and doing the Speech Therapy homework it all looked absolutely simple. I was looking at pretty much every single test and thinking “this is easy. I was doing this in second grade.” Then I would actually attempt it and some tests would kick my ass. And I couldn’t predict which tests would be hard for me until I did them.
That was pretty much the situation with work. I didn’t know whether I could do something as simple as measure and strip wires. When my boss called to check on my return to work, I told him the truth. I thought I could do my job, but I wasn’t completely sure, and there was only one way to find out. That Monday would either have been business as usual, or an unmitigated disaster. He just laughed.
Well, I went back, and everything was fine. Started out doing a cap bank, and it took me a little longer than usual, but that was because I was taking it slow to be sure I knew what I was doing. A week later I am right back to business as usual. Hell, I’m doing well enough that the running joke is that even with a traumatic brain injury and the resulting brain damage I am still a better tech than That Guy.
I even went in Saturnday for some OT. That’s how much better my leg is doing. In some ways this stroke was the best thing that’s happened for my health in years.
A few people have said they couldn’t tell I had a stroke. Then, right on cue, my brain shits the bed in mid-sentence and I have to explain just what the Hell is going on.
And one guy keeps telling me I’m a tough guy. He seems genuinely impressed with some of the stuff I’ve been through and bounced back from – when I went back to work after The Toe Incident and I told him what had happened, he started calling me Nine of Ten. Then a while later he swung by my bench again to make sure I wasn’t offended by it, because he’s a good dude and it apparently occurred to him that maybe making a joke about an amputation could have a slight potential to piss someone off. That said, I thought it was hilarious. So the name stuck.
Same thing when another coworker told me the ICU trip where my arteries almost collapsed was “just a flesh wound” in her best Black Knight impression. The best part of that was she had no idea I’m an amputee because she started a year after it happened. She was suitably mortified when I asked if she was aware of it, until I told her that was pure comedy gold. Besides, she’s cool too. And really, what are the odds that someone makes an amputee joke at the expense of a real live amputee without even knowing?
So I told my speech therapist how it went, and we agreed continued sessions weren’t necessary. I’m not back to normal – I may never be completely back – but I have made an amazing recovery. As I’ve mentioned before, I still have some speech and memory issues, and I make more typos when I type, but I can do everything else.
6 February I had a follow-up with my neurologist. He was pretty impressed with the progress I was making. As it stands, my meds seem to be adjusted pretty well, and I may cut back on a couple of them when I see my GP in a couple months for a follow-up.
The CPAP machine is nothing short of amazing. When I did my sleep study about two days after I got out of the hostibule I was having fifty-two sleep apnea events an hour. With the CPAP, I’m down to something like point seven events per hour. He was showing me his printout from the CPAP, and the events barely even registered most nights. The pressure is set about right, and the mask fits well. I barely even notice it, except when my pillow traps the hose between it and the wall. The only downside to the machine is I use about a third of the reservoir every three hours, so if I sleep in I wake up with serious cottonmouth.
In ten months I have another follow-up with my neurologist, just to make sure things are going well. Other than that, he said what I’m doing is working, and to keep doing it.