Gloria Ferris

When Monica Robbins interviewed Tim and me a few weeks ago I mentioned that when I spoke at the October Stroke Conference I did three things related my experience,  and shared seven things I learned.  She immediately asked what were they? I of course drew a blank and could only relate five.  I have since found my notes and intend to relate them here over the next few days.

The first thing I learned was to Count My Blessings. Actually, I had learned that years ago when I was a small child, but over the years I had remembered to do it much less frequently. While I was in ICU the nurses would turn on the television for background noise. I don’t know if I listened to the dialogue from “White Christmas”or if I simply dreamed portions of one of my favorite Holiday Classics.

In any case, it reminded me of my father who taught me to “count my blessings”.  When I was much younger I was a “worrywart”.  I worried that my cousin who was in the Navy would get lost in the jungles of Panama, that my teacher would call on me and I wouldn’t know the answer soon enough, that my Dad would go to work one day and not come home again just like my Grandpa, that my mother would get very, very sick. The list was a mile long, and I would stare in the darkness long after the house was quiet with my spinning, worrying mind.

It was shortly after my seventh birthday when my dad walked me into a starlit pasture and told me that I needed to learn to count my blessings instead of chronicle my worries.  That night he showed me how to count on the people who loved me, to count on myself, to count on my strengths, to count on the thousands of stars in the sky. That night I fell asleep confident my blessings outweighed my worries. 

Fifty years later lying in a hospital bed with arms hooked up to too many IVs to count, with a machine to help me breathe,  it would have been easy to have a head spinning full of worries. What if I never walked again, what if I couldn’t use my left hand for eating and writing, what if this and what if that.  I could have spent my hours endlessly worrying, but instead I decided to count my blessings.  It worked. It helped me stay positive on the hardest of days and saw me through long, dark nights.

So just as Bing Crosby sang Irving Berlin’s words to Rosemary Clooney in the movie “White Christmas” so many years ago, I would tell you this Christmas ”when you are worried and cannot sleep try counting your blessings instead of sheep”. It worked for me.

Many of you know that last November began a a very long and scary adventure for my family, friends, and me. Some of you don’t know the details but know I haven’t been around much any more.  Today, I got clearance for Cardio Rehab and I believe that it is safe to say that I am out of the woods and on a long trek back.  It is time to begin the story.

Today I will begin the story of the last six months. I have decided to share my experiences at MetroHealth with my wider net of community because, if nothing else, you may see that anything is possible.  Let me say this, I have no answers only the experience itself to illustrate what is possible.  My aunts continue to say “it is a miracle”.  My doctors don’t say they are wrong.  Me, I don’t remember the first 23 days.  Tim tells me it is just as well.  As I learn bits and pieces I can only say I believe him.

On the seventeenth  day of November I traveled to MetroHealth courtesy of Cleveland EMS.  Within minutes, I was there.  Tim says he never saw so much activity, so much determination and focus in one place.  It appears that day I suffered a heart attack. Shortly after, I suffered three strokes.  Somewhere in there are a stent that became clogged calling for three more, two cardiac arrests, and after a talk with my cardiologist about just how dire my situation was, a DNR was put in place.  My friends and family were greatly impressed that my doctor included them in the status report after asking Tim if he wanted to do it or could he?  Roger later heard this same doctor tell a group of interns “this woman is the sickest patient in this 700 bed hospital”.

After they took a CAT scan,  the doctors told Tim and the girls that chances were good that I would never go home again.  There was a great probability that when I left the hospital I would enter a skilled nursing home where I would eventually succumb to pneumonia.  Tim said he wasn’t ready to seal my fate on a few fuzzy pictures of my head.  My doctors agreed.

And this is where my family, my friends, you, and many I have not met or know enter the tale.  Tim had already called people.  The girls, Geri and Teagan were there.  Many of you had already been to see me, to hold my hand, to remind me of all our good times, to thank the nurses and doctors for me because I could not.  Tim asked for help.  He asked for your prayers, your energy, whatever you had to give.  Whatever you did, however you did it, I am here to say it worked.  On December 10, the woman no one expected to live left CCU and moved to the Seventh Floor to begin Stroke Rehab.

Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Next:  The Beginning of the Long Road Back