First time directing after the stroke. What has changed?
It happened on a Tuesday, I was naked in my bed, my body still tingling. My husband was taking a shower and I reach for my phone I grabbed the phone and tried to open the cover but I didn’t manage, I couldn’t do the movement. I tried to stand up and my body fell down. Everything became like from another world. I couldn’t see normally, it was blurry like the world was in another place and I was in bed naked and I didn’t belong with the things that were around me.
My husband came into the room, he looked at me and said “you don’t look good, what happened?”
I said - My hand doesn’t work anymore, I can’t open my phone
- What do you mean your hand doesn’t work.
- It doesn’t and look! I can’t stand up…my head hurts.
- Could you count from 10 to 1 for me
- 10, 9, 8…8…10, 9, 8…I know is this, I know is in there somewhere
- Can you do it in Spanish
- No
- I think we have to go to the doctor.
I could speak like myself but I couldn’t think like myself and I couldn’t move like myself.
The diagnosis was cerebral ischemia, I had had a stroke. I recovered relatively quikly, when I was in the Hospital I almost felt normal but when I went back into the world I noticed how many small things had changed. I found it difficult to open bottles and work buttons and tie my shoes and most annoyingly I forget things. I used to have very good memory, but now it is a bit fuzzy. About a week after I came back from the hospital me and my husband wanted to watch a movie, it was a Russian movie with subtitles, 10 minutes into the movie I realized that I wasn’t following the movie cause I couldn’t remember what I read.
Six months later after the stroke I started working on my play. I felt almost normal but my very good memory was gone, I used to memorize lines with no effort and if I was working on a scene and someone, anyone forgot a line I would be able to feed it to them, this time around I could not do that but I didn’t know it. I would still shout bits of text only this was normaly the wrong text and it was imposible for me to look at the actors and follow the text. I needed to have someone else look at the script so I could concentrate on the actors. It was an interesting though painful process to relearn, to find a new way to do things, it was difficult at times but I did it and next time it will be easier. Now that is done I am happy I did it though in the middle of making the play I said many times, never again.