​All along my young and adult life, I thought of my left hand as the clumsy one. I couldn’t do anything that required delicate movements: playing the piano, sewing, or writing. Those jobs I reserved for the right. Then, after my injury, my left hand became useless. I couldn’t turn or lift my wrist; I couldn’t open and close my fingers. Every movement I could do easily and without a thought with my right was now denied to me; the muscles in my left couldn’t hear my brain’s orders.
I first discovered the magnitude of the obstacles I couldn’t overcome when I started going to the Rehab Center as an outpatient. After I finished my session with the therapist, I went with Eric and my then nurse aid to the cafeteria to have lunch. The cafeteria was a pleasant place, wide and with large windows that overlooked the river. Eric got a turkey sandwich for himself, and a tuna salad sandwich and yogurt for me. He opened the yogurt and handed me both.
I looked around me and saw families seated at round tables. A water bottle was resting on each table. Then, I saw family members grab the bottle, open it, and pour the water onto their glass. I thought of my inability to hold the bottle and unscrew the lid at the same time, and just the thought of it made me feel parched. And the same thing would happen every day we ate at the Rehab Center cafeteria.
From then on, I became sensitive to any action that emphasized my inabilities: I couldn’t lift the soup pot full of soup and stir the ingredients, which left out all the fragrance and the flavors; I couldn’t chop the onions; I couldn’t mince the herbs; and I couldn’t eat ice cream or yogurt –  the bowls would fall as soon as I tried to get a spoonful. Every action emphasized my left hand’s absence.
Every day since, I’ve learned about its significance. In the past, my right hand was always the more dexterous one, which made it very useful for me. So much so, that my left was easily forgotten. But in the years after my injury, I’ve realized how much I miss my left when I need to manage in my everyday life: my right can work only as a teammate. So, it doesn’t matter whether the left hand is clumsy or not; it’s still indispensable.

​My injury happened out of the blue. While I was in the operation room, the hemangiomas in my brain started bleeding unexpectedly, and I got into a coma that became reversible thanks to my neurosurgeon and his team. When I woke up, I found out that I couldn’t swallow or talk clearly and that my left limbs couldn’t move.  While I was sleeping in the rehab center a few months later, I had a seizure. The staff had to administer an anti-seizure med to stop it. So, at fifty-five I was hemiplegic and suffered seizures through no fault of my own. Out of the blue, a building had crumbled on me, and Eric and Nathan could do nothing to prevent it.  All of a sudden, I became a patient at home: I was unable to walk or use my left arm and hand; I had to do my rehab exercises religiously; due to the work-out and the anti-seizure med I continued to take, I was very tired at the end of the day; and because of my hemiplegia, I couldn’t manage on my own. I went from taking care of the house and Nathan plus working, to needing someone to take care of me. Eric had to replace me and look after me, in addition to doing his stressful work.
As I mention in another chapter, to Eric, spending all the time in the hospital with me during my coma changed his life: because of that, he feels that everything I face represents a threat. This means that all the care he would like to give me and can’t (his work doesn’t allow for it), another person (a hired professional) has to give it. For my part, I experience every inability to manage on my own as helplessness, and any form of help as captivity.
So, we have to strike a balance between fear and letting go; between accepting help and feeling trapped. There’s a boundary between us that we should avoid crossing if we wanted to respect the other’s wishes and needs. If I claim my right for autonomy, I overlook Eric’s fear of my death and wish to help me. If Eric acts out of fear for my life and a desire to help (stemming from his love for me), he overlooks my wish for autonomy and my sense of entrapment. This conflict was at its height when I was undergoing the phase of confusion – when my brain was really swollen.
To respect my needs, Eric would have to refrain his impulse to help and his fear, because his fear needs a nurse aid, and both a nurse aid and his help leave me with a sense of entrapment and the consequent anger. To respect his wishes and needs, I should refrain from rejecting his or the hired professional’s help, because not having a hired professional means that Eric will have more work than his own (which means more stress). A long journey is facing us, and we both will have to travel together. It will take time for me to heal. And until I heal, Eric and I will have to do the dance: to dance around the boundary without crossing it.

I’d asked my neurologist several times when I would stop taking the anti-seizure med – despite its many advantages, I always felt tired, and I had to take it every day, twice a day. I thought my brain should have been healed by now. My neurologist is a very cautious man; to make a decision about scaling down, he wanted to see an EEG. So, we waited until two weeks were passed after I’d got my two vaccine shots (Eric’s idea). But on my last appointment, he came up with an unexpected solution: I’d take a new anti-seizure med that didn’t have any side effects, and I could slowly be weaned off Kepra.
A few weeks later, my nurse aid came, as usual, to help me with my daily exercises. As I was doing my regular speech work-out, she looked at me and made me straighten my head. It took some effort, but I did it. Then, she told me to straighten it again, and I did it. My brain couldn’t register any imbalances, which were a lot. Every exchange with her meant to listen and to speak, and every attempt to speak was hard. As I was using the breather, inhaling and exhaling made me feel breathless, and all the while I was fighting to keep my eyes open. Then, it came the time to bring my foot up. No matter how many times I tried, my foot remained on the bed despite my nurse aid’s help.
Finally, she called Eric. Eric took a look at me and suggested that I take a break from exercising. I felt so tired, I said yes. It would be so good to rest… As soon as I put my head on the pillow, I fell asleep. And asleep. And asleep; being awake didn’t last more than a few minutes. Eric was very concerned, so he decided to call the neurologist. The neurologist had thought that since there were only one in five hundred people taking the drug who suffered its side effects, it had none. But the issue was that I was that one. After Eric’s calls, the neurologist ordered him to stop giving me the drug. We all – Eric, my nurse aid, and I – breathed a sigh of relief.
During the days that went by since Eric stopped giving me the anti-seizure med, I’ve had to climb up to my old self – the self I was when I was only taking Kepra and had made significant improvements since my injury. It’s true that I’ve slowly progressed, but my muscles are week. I get easily tired, and balancing requires practice. Yet, I can see a way forward; it’s slow, but it’s there. So, I decided to wait for the anti-seizure meds to leave my body, and keep practicing. But I’ve decided I won’t take any new drug: I can’t go through the same steps again. I can’t experience the same loss I’d experienced before; I can’t relive the past work.
I think I learned some lessons from the effects of this drug, and its lingering effects. First, efforts and patience pay. Second, I must be persistent, yet aware of my limited ability to respond: never push too much. And third, I should never be too impatient; what may look like a quick fix may actually be a trip to the past and the need to go back to the present. And as I’m experiencing, that backward journey may be too costly.
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