First stroke

Do not think of it as something to be learned. Do not imitate it. Instead, find it yourself—from within your own mind—and make it part of your body, and think deeply about it always.

—The Five Spheres (Water Scroll)

Be Passersby

—Gospel of Thomas

Strokes are an odd trauma. Odd betrayal. In layman’s terms, a stroke is a brain attack, similar to how we think of a heart attack. In my case, the first one was due to a tear in my carotid artery. The blood clotting caused a stop in blood flow from my heart to my brain, so a piece of my brain slowly began to die in the right hemisphere; thus, my left side was affected.

I’m no medical specialist—this is just the way I understand it.

Confusion is hard to explain. Imagine watching your own free fall out of a tree, looking up, clawing at branches, losing balance, eyesight, and hearing, it all passing by on your way down. From the tree into a hole beneath it, I could only see the last branch above through blurred vision and muffled hearing.

The day of my stroke, my little brother had just returned from a tour in Afghanistan as a Marine. We were playfully tussling around as brothers do. He had me in a guillotine choke, but it wasn’t tight. I knew I could escape. I went to lift him. 

That was when I knew something was terribly wrong. The “alien” feeling began. You know when a child is aware that they’re about to get a spanking and they run? That’s exactly what I did. 

Stumbling, grasping, gasping to breathe, I made it to the porch to get some air, drooling and mumbling. I couldn’t catch my breath. Suddenly, I felt so sleepy; I just wanted to sleep, take a nap. I didn’t recognize my left side. I even asked my brother why he had on my watch. After I understood I couldn’t hold on to a single branch of reality and had resolved that something had broken within me, I rested my salvation on faith.

Before I started to stroke out, a friend was already on his way over to lend me a wrench so I could change my oil. He was met with the sight of me stumbling off the porch and being swallowed by some bushes. 

“Man, what are you doing? What’s wrong with you?” he spat out vehemently.

Imagine trying to take a step, but your leg is jelly—no firmness of bone or earth to push off the ground. That’s what it felt like trying to walk. “I’m tired; I feel like I need to take a nap,” I said.

“No suh, I think you’re having a stroke. Stick your tongue out.” He had seen it a few times before. He asked for a mirror. “You can’t go to sleep. You gotta get to the hospital. Do y’all have a mirror? Stick out your tongue.”

He pulled out his pocket knife and he poked my left arm and thigh. The only sensation was pressure. I couldn’t feel the sharpness—the nerves were dead. 

I was slipping in and out of the moment. I couldn’t sit up unassisted. He had just seen me throw some cornbread-fed country boys onto their backs in a local tournament. Now he was helping me into his vehicle.

On the way to the ER, I asked him to turn the music down. He told me the radio wasn’t even on. To this day, I know I heard a symphony of reggae.

En route to the ER, I protested with slurred speech, drooling and confused: “Wha, nah man blah blah blah.” I couldn’t believe his declaration. I didn’t know much about strokes other than the vision of curled-up people in a back bedroom wearing a diaper.

A passenger in a foreign place, I recognized nothing, not even my own face. I was a mess. At the same time, there was a euphoria—half of me was dying, but I was still in my body. In the moment, I was in an uncontrolled free fall, grasping at branches of perception, losing half of my left side moment by moment, one piece after another.

To this day, my left side is weaker, has less sensitivity, and feels colder than the right side of my body. Sometimes I grab a limb or a gi lapel, and it feels like when you touch something too hot, fresh out of the oven. It’s like it has been dipped in a pool of death. Some days, the nerves are still very raw. I take medication to manage the pain. However, loss of control is part of my daily life. I catch myself drooling from time to time.

The mental part is the hardest part. Deep down, I know what I mean, but it’s difficult to find the words that make sense. The same goes for logic, reason, puzzles; I have been practicing. What I conceal versus what I admit. Discernment.            

I remember the physical and mental strength I had before I was “broken.” Putting it all back together isn’t possible—but I just keep working. Fortunately, jiu-jitsu gave me a path forward. New neural pathways had to be constructed. The way I form words and connect information in my head is different than the way I did before the stroke. I get to it eventually, but in a different way. The same goes for jiu-jitsu techniques. 

I’ve learned that mending isn’t the same as returning to what I was. 

Kintsugi is the traditional Japanese art of mending a broken vessel by highlighting the cracks with urushi lacquer mixed with metal. Its beauty is enhanced by the scar. My vessel broke. My mind serves as the lacquer mixed with metal. My vessel has scars from multiple surgeries and mental scars unseen. I will never return to the unbroken vessel.

So be it.