Is it Help or Torture?

Is it Help or Torture?

Still in the hospital, still working on getting better. One of the things we might not have made clear in our haste to reassure everybody that Ben is okay and going to recover is that he does have a brain injury that is not yet healed. One of the cruel ironies of a stroke is that though the wound is not fully healed, it is important to get into physiotherapy ASAP so that the muscles and brain don’t forget one another. It is not like a broken limb or heart surgery where the patient is mandated rest and time to heal before he/she can begin to actively strengthen their body. For someone who has suffered a stroke, there is no rest. This is made all the more crazy when you consider just what organ is injured- the brain – the hungriest, most active, energy consuming organ in the body. Seriously, the brain consumes something like 600 calories a day just to operate – you cannot burn that in an hour run. So healing the brain and training the brain are both exhausting and daunting tasks in and of themselves but together they are well, wow! When I think about it, I marvel at all Ben is doing. Add to this the fact that Ben is experiencing some serious vision problems (he is having trouble coordinating the muscles controlling his optical lens, which is creating a blurry world all around him), and his progress and attitude become even more amazing. I sometimes wonder how well I would fair in his shoes.

Thinking of it this way, certainly helps me to understand the days when he does not want to get up, when he wants to return to bed after his pt sessions, when he wants to be quiet and left alone, when he sits silently as we all chatter around him, and so on. The truth is, the reminder that we need to be patient and respect the body’s unpredictable process of healing is actually for those of us who love him and wish him well. We are so eager for him to keep moving forward and to keep positive that we worry over every little sign of distress or tiredness. How easily we can miss read the signs and in our desire to help actually drive Ben up the wall.

I mean imagine… Ben, who values quiet solitude, prefers using as few words as possible, and detests more than anything fielding questions about his current state of mind and health – he would rather you read his mind than answer the question ‘are you okay’- is now being bombarded with constant attention, constant questions about how he is feeling, what he wants, what he needs, and constant company. In his current situation he can’t escape, he can’t run away, he is too tired to tell us all to just shut up, and too aware that we are trying to help to ask us to leave him alone so he endures it all quietly. Can you imagine how tiring this all is for him? We are learning though, accepting his silence, his need for rest, and his desire for us to be there beside him without the constant chatter.

Many of you may be thinking that learning this would be easy since Ben is never one to shy away from loudly letting everyone know just what is on his mind but actually, a surprising side effect of the stroke is that Ben says very little about what he likes and dislikes. Even with his patience and attention span at such an all-time low that ADD does not even begin to describe it, Ben has been rather mute. Seriously. I actually witnessed his physical therapist beseeching him today to speak up and voice his anger. That is right, someone asked Ben today to vent his anger and not be afraid to speak his mind. Don’t worry, I do not think we lost that most lovable side of Ben’s for real. I just think he is truly too exhausted to bother and so devoted to being a good grateful patient that he is finding a different kind of patience for our fussiness.