Talking About Trauma

I’ve been holding back on publishing this post for months now. But with the holidays here, a time for family, love, and reflection, I felt it was time. Four months ago, my darling wife Carla suffered a stroke and has been recovering in the hospital. The experience has left us all permanently changed and has forever altered my perceptions of various things.

I used to think I had lived a cushy life characterized by privilege and good fortune, which I was not particularly proud of. But since this happened, I feel I’ve come to learn a lot about the “real world” and the kinds of things that are possible. So here are my thoughts on the experience…

There’s something about trauma that can only be appreciated by having gone through it. It changes your whole perspective on life and makes you feel older, wiser, more seasoned, and perhaps more damaged. It’s that bittersweet reality that makes it all the more perplexing and helps you appreciate two very salient facts about life. First, it’s full of contradictions, which makes no sense but also does at the same time; and second, you need to be appreciative of what you have because you never know when life will force a change upon you.

I’ve been reflecting a lot on this lately due to a huge health scare involving my darling wife, Carla. Rest assured, she’s alright and recovering at a prodigious rate. But she’s got a long way to go before she’s allowed to return home, and I know for a fact that things will never be the same again. I can’t yet imagine what the “new normal” is going to be like, and I’ve found I still can’t wrap my head around all that has happened. It doesn’t make sense, but here it is. It doesn’t seem possible, and yet it is.

No doubt about it, 2023 is likely to go down in our family’s history as the worst year ever. It began with my father having a mild stroke. Mercifully, they caught it quickly, and he recovered rather rapidly. The doctors even told him he “dodged a bullet.” But of course, he still experiences some difficulties when he’s tired or strung out. And on Labor Day long weekend, my wife suffered something similarly serious. The doctors described it as a “hemorrhagic stroke,” which is also known as a “brain bleed.” This is different from a “clot stroke” in that it involves blood vessels rupturing in the brain instead of a clot blocking blood flow.

Emergency surgery saved her life and stopped the bleeding. However, we were told that she would likely suffer some physiological and neurological damage. Mercifully, after a few days, she was waking up from a medically induced coma and immediately began showing us signs that she was herself. Within weeks, she was able to speak again (the tracheal tube prevented that before) and showed us she remembered everything. We were elated to know that the Carla we all knew and loved was all there!

We also learned the cause: her kidneys had been failing, and this led to her blood pressure spiking up. There were subtle warning signs before she had the stroke, but nothing that led us to think there was a serious problem. This meant that in addition to physio and neural rehab, she would also need dialysis indefinitely until her kidneys recovered or she received a transplant. For the time being, it looks as though the latter is going to be the case.

At the time of writing this, she’s been in recovery for four months and has been making a stunning recovery. In any case, it’s been a slow and difficult recovery process. Carla needed to have a biopsy and two abdominal surgeries. Meanwhile, her dialysis has been a constant challenge. Three days a week, for a minimum of four hours each, she has to be hooked up to a machine that cleans her blood. And I finally hit the wall a few weeks shy of Christmas, otherwise known as “caregiver burnout.” But a break, some great therapy sessions, and I was back in there before Christmas!

We were hoping she would be home in time for the holidays, but that has been pushed into the New Year now. Instead, we’re bringing the holiday celebrations to her! I hope that everyone out there who reads this is having a very Merry Christmas, Happy Hunnukah, Happy Solstice, Happy Holidays, etc.! However you celebrate, I hope that you are surrounded by those you love and are in good spirits. See you all in the New Year!