Stroke

Let’s go back to last Thursday July 9th, 2020

This was my view at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon.  We were enjoying another beautiful day on the shores of Lake Superior at Agawa campground in Lake Superior  provincial park. I felt a funny twinge in my left hand that lasted only a second or two. ‘That was weird’, I thought.  I felt it again an hour later.  It was then that I decided to tell Jillian about the odd sensation I was feeling in my left hand.  We kept an eye on it and before long things seem to be getting worse rapidly. As we sat down to dinner at our campsite we decided it was time to make a run for the hospital. We scrambled to pack up the campsite, albeit mostly the kids and Jillian, as quickly as possible.  

We were on the road soon enough heading south on the TransCanada highway towards the closest hospital, which was in Sault Ste. Marie, 2 hours away! An ambulance would meet us halfway there and take me the rest of the way.  I was rushed into emergency where the doctor ordered a CT head and a CT angiogram to look inside my head.  I would spend the night in the hospital wondering what had happened. Friday morning I was sent for an MRI of my brain. It was then that the doctors determined that I had suffered an ischemic stroke. It was a scary situation and I had lost all feeling and movement on the left side of my body.  Jillian was at the hospital soon enough to be by my side. She had called mom and dad and Anneke who were soon all on their way up to Sault Ste. Marie.  The day was a bit of a fog for me as I struggled with my speech and tried desperately to find movement on my left side.  There were small signs of hope, as I managed very faint movement in my left leg and foot.  My speech would improve through the day and I went to sleep feeling more positive about things than I did when I woke up that morning.