Strokes are Scary!

Sunday night ended up being a whole lot more than expected. I was doing a mix of procrastinating and studying Sunday evening, and didn't get serious about working on translating a passage until kinda late, so at about 2:30am I finally finished translating it, felt proud of myself for accomplishing something and for the fact that  I was going to bed with enough time to get 7 hours of sleep! I turned off my light, packed up my school things, and went to sleep. Everyone else had already gone to bed....

Fast Forward:

I wake up to my mom in a frantic state, I think it must be morning and she must be late and maybe I left my car in front of hers again and she needs me to move it so she can get out, but no... I definitely moved it last night... hm, well what's she frantic about then....

Mom: "Something's wrong with Dad, the paramedics are coming, let them in when they get here!" And she runs back upstairs.... okay at this point I don't have a clue! I don't know if he just has a really bad stomach ache, if he's unconscious, if he's not breathing, or what! I'm scared, and already out of my bed fumbling for slippers, keys, phone, wallet, etc in case further action will have to be taken. I get all my things together eventually, in my haze it took me longer than usual. I look at a clock and see that it is only 3:30 am! I had only been asleep for barely an hour! I stand by the window, looking out at the street, trying to will the ambulance there faster! I still don't know how he is or what's going on, I don't know if whatever's wrong with him is time sensitive or not, so I just want that stupid ambulance to hurry up and get itself around the corner and up the hill as quickly as possible. Of course sitting there staring out a window isn't speeding up anything, and now I'm no longer being productive, so I start pacing a little bit, and then I hear my mom's, still frantic, now somewhat desperate and clearly terrified voice yelling at my dad/pleading with him to sit down, I move toward the foot of the stairs to try and get a glimpse at what could be going on and that's when I heard the most frightening sound of my life. 

My dad yells back at my mom and not a single syllable remotely resembles any part of any human language I've ever heard. He's yelling in an inhuman, animalistic, gibberish. My eyes must have gotten as wide as saucers. I looked up and met my mother's eyes with a horrified and inquisitive look; my mom met my look with... well I'm not even sure what her face conveyed to me. Perhaps it was just a look of acknowledgement, and mine was to let her know that I now felt her fear as well. What happened next was somehow scarier than my dad's panicked and loud utterances, I now saw why my mom's voice had been getting louder, he was coming to the door, toward the top of the stairs! She was getting more panicked, I yelled up the stairs as loud as I could, it felt like, for her to pray; God would take care of him, just pray! And ran back to look out the window again, hoping more than anything that the paramedics, that help would be there, that someone could take over so that incapable me and my mom wouldn't have to be the sole warriors in this chaos. 

My mom got in front of him and blocked the doorway, yelling and begging, practically crying with desperation trying to hold him back, but he pulled her out of the way and got past her, I started yelling from the bottom of the stairs "No! Dad don't!" with eyes that swallowed my face, I climbed a couple stairs braced myself with one foot on a higher step than the other and put my arms up like I would if I was underneath a kid climbing on a jungle gym trying to prevent his fall, but a whole lot more scared and a whole lot more desperate. My mom shrieked in pure terror as he started to run down the stairs, that's right RUN, he didn't even gingerly walk down the stairs which at the time would have been worrisome enough, but RAN down them as if he was fleeing something. I'm not sure what I hoped to accomplish by sticking my arms out and "bracing" myself... I mean I know I thought at the time that he might fall and I needed to do everything I could, but what would I have really accomplished?! Oh yeah Chelsea, just brace yourself and stick your arms out, don't mind the fact that this man barreling down the stairs is more than twice your size, don't think about the fact that if he did fall, he'd have the added force of momentum and gravity on his side, and forget about the fact that you have nothing to hold onto and the only possible outcome is that he would knock into you, and you would both go careening down the rest of the stairs and that you would undoubtedly land with him on top of you crushed on the tile, and that you might also hit your head on the secretary desk at the foot of the stairs.... don't think about ANY of those things, just brace yourself and stick your arms out! In a way I am glad that that is my first instinct, I am glad that my brain thinks to try and save my dad first instead of myself. Glad that I didn't stagger back from the stairs and close my eyes, glad I didn't just wait to see what would happen, glad I took action no matter how foolish the action was. 

So my dad made it successfully down the stairs faster than he has ever gone down them in his life, and simply went around me when he got to where I was on the stairs, he hurries over to his desk and starts rummaging frantically (frantic and desperate are going to be repeated often, and you might get sick of it, but those are THE words to describe what was happening). My mom comes down the stairs, I run to check the window for the paramedics again, they're still not there! My sister is standing just outside her room looking down with fear and confusion, I tell her to just stay up there and not come down, she does, and just begins to watch from above. I run back to my dad's office as I hear more of his unintelligible yelling and he's scrambling trying to grasp at a pen and write on a paper he has in front of him, my mom is trying to find him a pen that works, and I am slightly relieved that he is trying to write, I think oh thank God! He may not be able to speak, but of course! He can write, and then we'll know what's going on and it'll be okay... so this pen doesn't work either, and he's getting angry, and it's scary, it's like the beast from beauty in the beast or the hulk during one of his episodes, his sounds are far more angry than frustrated when the pen doesn't work, and I find myself mentally cowering a bit. I run to get one of my own pens, the one I use every day so that I know it will work, to try to appease the monster my dad appears to be. I toss the pen on his desk in front of him, afraid that if I try to hand it to him, I might get hurt. My mom picks it up from where it is rolling and hands it to him, he then bends over the paper and starts writing, slowly and methodically it seems, my mom goes to check the window and I am anxiously crouched over his desk from the other side trying to see the words he writes as quickly as he writes them. The most horrifying thing happens now.

His hand moves far enough along so that I can see what he's written so far.... the handwriting is good, the size and spacing is good, the letters are English... but the phrase, sentence, what have you, is completely unintelligible!  I still can't distinguish anything from it, I ... touf... seido... cygsy.... yuw  you  fou  fyyu... soor... you... see... you seee... then he flips it over and very meticulously writes, "I liked you sook you like like..." ((((O_O))))!!! Now I am completely horrified, terrified, worried, etc! Not only is he unable to speak, but there is also something wrong inside his brain, he cannot make words, and for all I know might not even be able to think coherently. 

--- At this point, he's still running around like a wild animal, I feel like my mother and I are trying to herd/pacify an unpredictable wild dog or something. He would look up at me when I yelled Dad, but he looked at me not with understanding, not with recognition, not with anticipation for what I would say next, but simply as a dog would look up if you called it's name; he looked at me, but with nothing but registry of the sound behind his eyes... it was unnerving, my mom agreed that it was as if you called a dog. No matter what you said to him, he would keep doing whatever it was he was trying to do at the time, your words had no effect. It was awful. ---

So after my dad finished writing, my mom and I told him with words and our shaking heads that we couldn't understand what it said; I felt bad for him, because I couldn't understand, but helpless at the same time, because there was nothing there TO understand, so what was I supposed to do? I was scared still. My mom was visibly shaking throughout this whole episode. I tried to rub, and pat her arm, hug her, anything to try and calm her down some, but to no avail. She was terrified, understandably so, but not a good thing to realize when you are scared yourself. Something is seriously wrong with my dad, my mom is quite visibly SHAKING with her own terror, my sister is a silent pair of eyes at the top of the stairs, everyone else is somehow asleep, and the paramedics won't be here for another... who knows how long! At this point I feel rather alone in the sense that, no one in the immediate vicinity can help, not that I can really help either of course, but the feeling that all of us are on our own with no solutions is daunting to say the least.

The paramedics and a firetruck finally show up outside our house, and as I'm looking out the window at them wishing they could get out faster, my dad runs back up the stairs!!!! My mom runs to the foot of the stairs yelling No! Ken no! Don't! and I blurt out something about oh no the door! It locks! I hope he doesn't.... and my mom yells back he is! She's halfway up the stairs, and I hear the click of the lock... my dad is now a scared animal locked in a room by himself with all of us outside... I worry that he will hurt himself in there and we won't be able to get to him in time, my mom knocks and yells desperately at the door asking him to open it! My sister later tells me that she heard my dad moaning and crying (her room and their bathroom share a wall).. I think he has locked himself in because he doesn't like going to the doctors, I open the door for the paramedics. They ask what's happened, and I try to tell them as quickly as I can so they will stop just standing there and jump into action! They tell me to calm down. I am the MOST calm in this scenario! I just want to get you the info quickly! They go up the stairs, and address my dad and tell him to come out, my dad yells some more gibberish, but finally with a small change; it sounds like an explanation, there is now tone in the gibberish, still no intelligible sounds, but at least a tone of intent is present, that immediately makes him a little bit more human to me. Then the paramedics ask my mom if there are any weapons in the bedroom, she tells them about the shotgun, which is empty, not loaded, has a child safety lock, and for which we have NO ammunition in the whole house, NOT EVEN IN THE GARAGE. They shout "Everybody downstairs!!!" My mom protests saying the kids are upstairs and the lead paramedic or perhaps the fireman again yells "Downstairs!" She goes, the paramedics keep talking to my dad through the door, my dad isn't saying anything anymore, my dad comes downstairs, brushes past (through) the paramedics and sits at his desk, they call his name and try to get him to smile and follow the flashlight with his eyes and other simple things, when I saw his smile it finally hit me as to what happened. It looked like one side of his mouth had been injected with Novocaine, his smile was wrong, only half of it worked.

A stroke.

Then the phone rings, my mom nods at me and I run to answer it; it's the cops -___- the paramedics called them when they heard about the shotgun. So the lady says to me, "I received a call that there's an armed man, barricaded in your house with a shotgun?"!!!!!!!!! "NO!!!!" I say, my dad had locked himself upstairs, but he's back down now, and he didn't touch any weapons. She asks more questions, I tell her my dad's not on anything, and that according to the paramedics he probably had a stroke, I hang up with her as soon as I feel the message is clear that there's no need for cops. 

I run back to my dad's office and the paramedics are trying to herd him over to the stretcher, but he keeps putting his hands together, open with the palms touching and making begging motions, no words, just pleading gestures, I again think he doesn't want to go to the hospital because of his fear. I tell him over the commotion that he has to get on the stretcher and that he has to go with them! He then jukes a paramedic and brushes my hands off his arms and grabs his shoes. OH his shoes! I yell at the paramedics that he just wants his shoes, because I've seen COPS and sometimes those guys get violent, my dad's not complying and I fear that they will soon get forceful and I know that would only result in my dad freaking out. Again, I yell that he just wants his shoes! They back up some; he sits at his desk and puts his shoes on, doesn't tie them I don't think, but puts them on, then he picks up his laptop and walks toward the stretcher, the paramedics take his laptop saying my mom will bring it to the hospital (I'm running to get my mom's purse like she asked), according to my sister (the silent watcher) my mom looks at him like he's a moron and says, "yeah, just what he needs, his work." and the paramedic looked sheepish as my mom set it on the ground. Finally they got my dad strapped to the stretcher and got him out the door, my mom said I couldn't come and that I had to stay to watch over my siblings. She left. I sat down on the stairs next to my sister who had come most of the way down after they took my dad out. Her face looked like it was barely holding together, I put my arms around her and we both quietly cried a bit in the alien silence, suddenly alone in a vacuum. We stopped soon though, even tears being too much effort after all that had just taken place. My ten year old sister staggered out of her room; I told her to go back to sleep, and she did without question. No one else woke up. 

Fast Forward:

I go upstairs to my parents room to look around. My dad's lampshade is totally crumpled and bashed in, his papers that were on his nightstand are scattered on the floor, his water is spilled on the top of the night stand, and his pajama shorts are in a heap on the floor. His pajama shorts! When he locked himself in! My poor dad just didn't want to have to go to the hospital in his pjs! He wasn't trying to avoid going he just wanted to get dressed and he locked the door so the paramedics wouldn't walk in on him! I now feel immense pity for my poor dad, a cornered rat in his own body. Trapped inside and scared just wanting some fresh clothes while strangers pound on the door outside. No words, spoken or written, no answers, no understanding, just fear, panic, and a preoccupation with being presentable before leaving the house. My poor poor daddy. I push the lamp shade back into shape with a pop.

Fast Forward:

I drive to the hospital to switch cars with my mom, as hers is the only one with a car-seat; I go into the hospital, and my dad puts his arms out for a hug, I give him one, his back is cold, the night gown doesn't go all the way around. My mom and I talk in hushed voices. The vitals are good, the EKG is normal, everything looks fine, more tests coming. I leave. I unlock the gates at our old house for the gardener, the sun is finally rising, and the eerie quiet of dawn is broken only by the roosters a few blocks away. I drive home, shaking slightly now that I'm alone. My sister took care of getting the younger girls ready for their day and I tell the ten year old what happened, we talk about hospitals and strokes and she says she still wants to go to school for her perfect attendance. She's a strong little girl and no stranger to chaos. My sister and I take them to the day care lady, the ten year old will get picked up for school from there. My sister and I go to switch the cars back.

Fast Forward:

I knew approximately what time my dad went to sleep, which allowed the doctors to give my dad a really good medicine for stroke patients, a strong blood thinner, that can only be given within 6 hours of a stroke. I was the only one who knew when he went to bed since I was up studying. Praise God for my propensity for procrastination.

Fast Forward:

Blood thinners made my dad's arm bleed a lot where they had put an IV in earlier. Watching his blood spill out was not something I could deal with. I told the nurse and he took care of it. He put a pressure bandage on top. 

Fast Forward:

My sister and I have been in the hospital now for at least an hour, she cries intermittently just seeing my dad like he is. He has his shorts on, the ones he changed into, his shoes are off now, he has wires and tubes and EKG stickies all over him. His monitors look normal, he's quiet and serious looking. We tell him his boss said for him not to worry about the huge project he's been stressing over for the past two weeks (which probably caused his stroke, and for which he wanted to bring his laptop to the HOSPITAL to keep working on) and that he has a team of people and it's their job to help out, so he needed to rest and get better and not worry about it. At that point my dad started to cry. 

He doesn't fail at anything, he never leaves anything unfinished; he works harder and sleeps less than anybody I have ever met. Seeing that this was something he couldn't finish, I think, is what set him over the edge. My mom and my sister started to cry with him. I tried to console my dad, rubbed his arm, told him it would be okay, his boss loves him, everybody loves him, and everyone understands; no one could fault him for this. He quieted a teeny bit. My mom kept holding his hand and hugging him. I went over to hold my sister. The poor thing doesn't know how to see my dad in anyway other than normal. She can't handle it. She didn't even want to come in and see him at first, but I think not wanting to be left alone in the lobby trumped that. Eventually everyone calmed down and stopped crying.

We all hold hands and my mom prays . I keep rubbing my dad's back and telling him it will be okay. 

Fast Forward:

My dad is being wheeled through the hall on the way to ICU, I'm holding his hand and repeating to him that we'll be going with him down the hall, but that they won't let us go into the ICU with him for about a half hour. He acknowledges what I said. Something changes (the nurse isn't there yet), so the doctor has to take my dad back to where he was before, I look down at him and start to grin, his face very faintly starts to match it, and I say. "Wheeeeeeeee," he and I both start to laugh. The first smile I've seen from him since the night before! It was so relieving to see him smile again! And to hear him laugh; even with all the craziness going on, he still had the capacity for joy. I said that dad's got his own personal roller-coaster and we all continued with our much needed chuckle. 

Fast Forward:

The neurologist comes in, and seems optimistic. Tests dad's strength, he nearly pulls her off her feet! lol, she kinda chuckles and says he's VERY strong, and that that's an unusual and good sign. She does more tests and then wants him to talk in order to evaluate his speech loss..... She asks him to tell her who else is in the room with him.... 

He looks at my mom and makes a sound, but then can't do it; the neurologist guesses he said Solange and asks my mom her name.... Kim, he then makes pointing and possessive gestures to show that she (my mom) is his, and we supply the word wife, he nods. He moves on to my sister and says something like delish-remun, her name is Mallory. He looks at me, and already looks somewhat defeated, she asks and he says something like tchJoresh- namoo (I think we all know my name is Chelsea). This was one of the hardest things... even after hours in the hospital and everyone sounding so optimistic... he couldn't even say the word wife, let alone our names. The neurologist said we wouldn't know his chances for speech recovery till after a few days and the doctor said, that after a month whatever he didn't regain, he would permanently lose... that was frightening. 

I left pretty soon after that, he was asleep and they were going to take him to get his MRI done soon. My sister and I went home and got ready for the day. I took my sister with me to work, she didn't want to be at the hospital and didn't want to go to school on so little sleep after such a traumatic event. I brought her with me and she read a book all day while I put on a happy face and served customers and made coffees. My boss was kinda frustrated that I came in instead of calling off, but during finals week, work hours are mandatory for rehire, so I felt i needed to be there. 

This ends the story of the terrifying chaos that went down late Sunday night/early Monday morning. I'll do a short version of the good part, because you can read that on facebook anyway. Or wait, you know what, I'm just gonna copy and paste the post from facebook onto here: 

My dad went from completely inhuman and unnerving sounds today, to normal sounding speech for someone who is tired! God is so good, and miracles do happen!

THANK YOU THANK YOU for all your prayers! Last night as most of you now know, my dad suffered a stroke and well without going into details, the episode before the paramedics took him to the hospital was a bit traumatic for everyone involved to say the least. We were all left shaking and it's only due to God's grace that my dad made it to the ambulance uninjured for the most part. 

He could not say any words AT ALL, he could not entirely understand us, and he couldn't write anything intelligible though his handwriting was still good. 

Preliminary tests went well, but he seemed to be failing

 attempts at speech miserably when I had to leave for 

work. 

Later I found out that he was eating on his own, speaking 

not just words but sentences, and if you talk to him now 

he just sounds a little tired. He is in a fairly cheerful 

mood and is talkative (no doubt overjoyed that the 

ability to speak has returned and so quickly)

GOD IS GOOD!! Thank you to all of you for praying for him

and the rest of us, thank you for all the support from 

everyone. He will be in the hospital for the next few 

days, but praise the Lord he is now expected to make a 

full recovery which they couldn't say this morning. 

I've been awake for 16 hours on 1 hour of sleep and still 

have two ridiculously hard midterms tomorrow, so I will 

now be going to sleep. Thank you, thank you, thank you 

again to all of you who sent your love and I will be on 

again later to give another update when I have one. 

And then this one:

Thank you ALL so so much for your support and your kind 

thoughts, prayers, and words. It was a hugely frightening 

ordeal that left all of us who were awake to witness it 

shaking, but God is good, and I am so so so relieved and
  hankful, and just... well it goes beyond words, but I am 

so glad my dad is going to be okay. I think that must have 

been the scariest thing I have gone through in life, if I 

think about it. Sheila Bruner, when you fell off Cherokee 

was right up there though, the only difference was that I 

didn't have to witness it, so it was a little more distant. 

But you falling/getting bucked off Cherokee and now my

dad's stroke are two things that were truly terrifying in 

life that I don't ever want to go through again. 

Praise the Lord that he brought such completehealing 
to you back then grandma, and now my dad too. God is good.

Thank you again to everyone.

I talked to my dad on the phone today and he seems 

fine! I hear he is really forgetful and won't be allowed to 

drive for awhile, but all things considered his recovery so

far is nothing short of miraculous! Strokes often cause 

PERMANENT damage, and yet he's made so much 

progress! He will be released from the hospital tomorrow

if all goes as planned. God is so good! Thank Him for His 

grace! 

I love you Daddy, and I can't wait to see you again.

<3