Once upon a time, there was a little boy who had a little stroke…
OK, technically I was neither little nor a boy, but on May 26, 2011, I had a minor stroke, or to be a little less oxymoronic, a very small part of my brain starved to death one morning. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but I ended up spending 3 weeks in the hospital learning how to stand and walk again.
During that time, I kept my friends updated via Facebook. I did this for a number of reasons, the most important of which was to stay ahead of the rumor mill. But I also wrote about my experiences for my benefit, to make sure I was still me, and that the damage was purely physical and not mental.
But something odd happened. What started as data points slowly turned into a story. A story about a man trying to mock his way through the worst thing that had ever happened to him. And largely succeeding. After 45 years of watching TV, I was suddenly living in a poorly scripted House/Scrubs crossover episode. And since I seemed to be the only one aware of it, I took it upon myself to make the experience as entertaining for everyone else as I could.
A lot of people laughed, both in and out of the hospital. That made the whole experience livable. Once I started to write that the whole experience would have been fascinating if it were happening to someone else. I never wrote that, because if this had happened to someone I cared about, I would have been basically useless. I can laugh at things happening to me that I couldn’t if they happened to someone else. Because I believe that the good Lord is looking out for me. Laying in the hospital the first night, I found myself faced with two possibilities: either God had forgotten to keep me from having a stroke, or God knew and let it happen for a reason. And once I got down to that question, the answer was easy. And my response was surprisingly easy, too. “OK, let’s see what you have planned this time.” Continue reading
A Labor of Like 