Old Skills To Re-learn

Just days after my stroke I noticed something new and disturbing. I couldn't read. This didn't seem to be a cognition problem as I could understand words on a page.  What I couldn't do was focus and follow printed words for more than two or three lines. My eyes would jump around and refused to stay on the page. I was thinking this might be an eye problem, or maybe it was a brain or nerve problem, which had little to do with my eyes. Either way I was scared. Here I was an avid reader who previously could and would get lost in a book for countless hours. Now I was in the hospital with nothing but time on my hands, and I just could not read.

When I mentioned my condition to doctors, nurses, or therapists, no one seemed to have any knowledge about this particular symptom. That caused the fear to grow.  At that early point in my recovery, I could more easily imagine a lifetime of challenges with walking naturally and maybe not using my right hand normally.  I simply could not imagine a life without reading.

Several months later, I stumbled upon Dean's stroke recovery blog.  I started very slowly and clumsily reading the many entries that interested me. I wrote to Dean to tell him how excited I was that he was touching on some of my own issues. I told him it would be some time before I finished reading all the entries because I could only read a very little bit of content without resting. Dean responded by telling me that as a result of his stroke, he too had a period of not being able to read. In Dean's case the symptom manifested almost exactly as it had for me. He continued on, telling me that he now reads for hours at a time!

As a stroke survivor himself, Dean validated the "reality" of my condition, compared it with his very similar experience, and let me know that it was possible to get past this hurdle. In that moment, I gained faith that I could do the same. I started reading an excellent book on stroke recovery, and for the first time in over six months, I read for more than one hour! No question, the single greatest moment so far in my recovery!

To better, even more successful days for us all,

Toni