david capogna

I can't speak! (stroke)

On Sunday morning, April 24, 2005, I woke up around 8:30am, and didn't take a shower because I was still attached to my Jack Spade baby food bag. I went downstairs, my parents were already up, and had breakfast already (with their decaffeinated Folgers.) I collected my supplies from my labeled bins in the kitchen, and I already had a Williams-Sonoma placemat laid out on the dining room table. My parents sat down across from me, it was like they were watching David Blaine escaping from that big ball full of water, as I disconnected the bag, lots of oh’s and ah’s. I was giving them a full play-by-play of what I was doing. My finishing touch was to do the final saline injection to clean out my veins. I hadn't really cleaned up yet, and I was just sitting there among a lot of discarded alcohol wipes, chatting with my parents about my "performance."

That's when it happened. I had to consult my mother, because she wears the pants, regarding what transpired next, because I was unconscious for about a week and a half after that moment. All of a sudden, I stood up and my face went totally blank, as if I was a walking corpse. I didn't faint, at first. I just stood there, in silence. From what I know, my father called 911. Not really knowing what happened to me, when someone picked up the phone, my mother said “I THINK DAVID HAD A STROKE!" Neither one of my parents had ever witnessed a person having a stroke (which at their age. you would assume they had.) But my mother assumes that that's what I had, and she was right. I'm not sure what really happened to me after they called 911, I think my mother said my father put me on the couch, and the only word I could speak was “yes.” You could have asked what time I woke up in the morning, I would've said “yes,” or where do I live the answer would still be "yes,” and if Gore won the election, I definitely would have “yes.”

All of those encephalopathy episodes (or Mr. Snuffleupagus,)which I experienced the last six months were definitely the cause of the stroke. If you remember, but you probably forgot, because I mentioned it on page 2, the meaning of “Encephalopathy: deterioration of brain function…,” this combined with the gargantuan snake-like tube running up my arm probably caused me to have a clot. And you know what that creepy doctor, the one who invented the artificial heart, said about clots on that commercial “… and lead to heart attack, or stroke."

Like I said, I didn't remember anything after the stroke for about a week and a half. I didn't remember having a seizure in the hospital. I didn't remember the IV being yanked out of my arm, while my arms were flailing around, and my eyes turning back into my head, as I was frothing at the mouth. Oh, but my parents did, they had front row seats, along with Manuel, who cleans our apartment, and just happened to be there, just at the right time. My parents, who hadn’t witnessed a stroke or a seizure, were very lucky that week, they got two for the price of one. You don't really want to witness someone having a seizure; I’d take a stroke any day. In addition, that's seizure, which I had, would cause some troubling times for me about six months later. But that's for the next chapter. (This is the antithesis of having a seizure. It's Christy Turlington, in a Gap ad, doing yoga. Christy is in Lotus position, which is extremely good for meditation and concentration. You have total control of your body, and I think Christy looks pretty hot! Like I said, it’s the antithesis of a seizure.)

When I came out of my stupor, I found myself in Rusk, the Rehabilitation Center of NYU Medical. I knew I was in a hospital, but this wasn't Tisch Hospital, with panoramic views of the East River. I was at Rusk on the first floor, there's actually a ground floor (very British,) facing the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Drive, which, like most highways in New York City, are raised. The FDR was actually higher than my floor, I couldn’t even see the cars, but I heard them. And then, I forgot to mention the heliport landing strip, constantly busy with helicopters taking off, and landing every waking moment. Although Tisch was connected to Rusk, the floors started much higher up, like at 8, and the building itself was 18 stories high, and the windows were permanently sealed. So I was kind of annoyed, and the fact that I couldn't speak, was also very frustrating, to say the least.

I remember my partner’s friend Doug, who’s also a brilliant doctor, who knew that after a stroke the ability to sing familiar songs, would be the only way for the patient to express himself without actually speaking. So, I immediately pulled out Madonna from the archive of my brain, and sang “Lucky Star” over, and over, and over again! At this point all I could say was “yes,” and somehow I added “no” to the vocabulary. And I used them correctly! If someone asked me if the helicopters were annoying, I would say “yes,” and if they asked me if I liked my first floor view under the FDR, I would respond “no.” But none of the nurses were really concerned, they were too busy changing my dirty diapers.

Regarding the diapers, why don't we go back in time before I had the stroke? Because those first few weeks I was basically unconscious, and I couldn't speak, or use any type of electronics, and all I could do was look at pictures in magazines. I definitely had a sense of design, even during my stroke; in fact, I think it was enhanced. I'd like to give a little airtime to my boyfriend. He was very helpful in many different ways. And he loves to talk on the phone, especially to customer service people. He's was always asking how the weather in Omaha, Nebraska or Lincoln, Kentucky. Many companies have customer service areas in the Midwest, because it's centrally located (FYI.) So for some reason, my boyfriend was doing some research on diapers. The diapers that I had were for full-grown adults, but I was only 115 pounds, and my Depends were leaking. He explains that I had HIV, and I was wasting, and luckily, he wasn't on the phone with a born-again Christian customer service representative. He spoke to a woman, who was very nice, and explained that there is a junior line of Depends, called GoodNites. GoodNites were intended for use by grade school kids, who still had trouble wetting their beds. The customer service representative said that there was a size 13, which would fit someone from 60 to 125 pounds, perfect for me. The only problem was that they were printed like boxer shorts, and there wasn't a white version at all. They actually had two styles, one for girls (I never really actually looked at them, but I'm assuming they had something like ponies or princesses on them,) and then the boy version, which I got, with dudes on ATVs.

But you would think that I had never been near an ATV (All-Terrain Vehicle,) spending half my life in New York City, and traveling to the Caribbean on vacations. But there's a side of me you don't know, my current boyfriend and I had a long list of National Parks in North America that we wanted to visit. At the end of August 2000, we planned a trip to go to Banff, Canada's oldest National Park. This was an adventure vacation, we were whitewater rafting, horseback riding, canoeing, and we found one day to ride ATVs. So I was very comfortable with the All-Terrain Vehicle printed diapers; in fact, I thought it was this kind of appropriate. (And I actually have photographic evidence that I was on an ATV, while crossing a creek!)

The nurses at NYU did not like my ATV printed diapers, at all. Not because they weren’t printed with Yankee logos all over them (many of the nurses at NYU are really into the Bronx Bombers, FYI), but because they didn't have Velcro tabs, which made it easier for the nurses to take off. For example, if you have an unconscious patient, which I was for about a week, one nurse can completely stripped a bed, and remake it with clean sheets, simply by rolling the patient over on her or his side in both directions. Actually, I witnessed a nurse stripping a bed with an unconscious 200-pound man. It's kind of like origami, well not really. So when I regained consciousness, the nurses were not having my ATV printed diapers. So I was left with these hospital issued, oversized, Velcro tabs, which were supposed to make the diapers adjustable, but they were just too large to fit around my 25-inch waist. That was an unfortunate tangent, but it’s a story that has to be told.

So it's the beginning of May 2005, and I'm in Rusk Rehabilitation Center. Like I said, I was very frustrated from all of the above circumstances, and I took it out on the woman who carried me for nine months, during the hottest summer on record in upstate New York. (I was born August 29, 1970.) I have never heard either of my parents curse, they're not Baptists or Mormons or born-agains, they’re just really pleasant people. So I don’t curse when I'm around them, that's just the way I was brought up. I'm now in an aphasia group, as part of my outpatient therapy, and we were having a discussion about being very frustrated, and not being able to talk, and how a lot of people use curse words to express themselves after a stroke. I really couldn't relate, I was definitely frustrated, but I would just point at the door, and looked at my mother every time she entered the hospital room. After a while she got the idea, so she would just sit in the waiting room doing her "WordFinders" (games for senior citizens, who are worried about getting Alzheimer's.) That went on for about a week or so, and then I got over it. I mean if you think about it, my family didn't have air conditioning in 1970, all they had were a bunch of fans. And it was before headbands came into vogue, so my mother put Kleenex on top of both ears to stop the sweat. And unfortunately, she was surprised by a baby shower organized by my neighbors, nine months pregnant, in a housedress, and tissues on her head. When I was in kindergarten, my 40-year-old mother took up tennis, and she discovered the ease of wearing headbands.

The different thing about Rusk, was that it was a rehabilitation center. I woke up at 5:30am every day (not by choice,) but because the nurses were preparing for a fun filled day of therapy. We had the weekends off, and a lot of times we would have raves organized by the patients (just kidding!) So I had a full schedule of appointments which were conveniently clipped to my wheelchair (in a plastic sleeve protector, just in case someone vomited on it.) I could walk, but everyone was subjected to a wheelchair in Rusk, it was mandatory. And you weren't really allowed to wheel yourself around either. So you needed to wait for a nurse, or the elevator operator. There was this long line of stroke victims waiting for the elevator every day at nine o'clock to take the elevator to the third floor for physical therapy. And yes I was the youngest guy there, and most of the time I had diarrhea running down my drawstring Patagonia pants. Good times!!!

The best thing about my day was my 50 minute, occupational therapy in the greenhouse. Rusk Rehabilitation Center had a greenhouse and a large garden, right in the middle of Manhattan. At the Rusk greenhouse, we were propagating plants, as form of occupational therapy. We had to learn different facts about the plants, if they had flowers, when they bloomed, what part of the world they were from, if they could be used for medical purposes, etc. etc. I could conceptualize everything that the instructor was saying, my mind was functioning fine, and I enjoyed learning about the plants. But I couldn't speak or write, and boy, was that annoying. We could take the plants back to our room, or have the greenhouse temporarily housed them, and then we would take them when we left the hospital. At this point, I had a really hard time writing, so one of the greenhouse interns would have to help me to spell my name, and the date I propagated the plant. Every now and then one of the patients would fall asleep, while in the greenhouse. (After a stroke, the body takes a long time to recover. Because of the lack of oxygen to the brain, some patients are either in a coma, or sleep a lot of the time.) While others were totally alert and could write, and speak. Not all of the patients had strokes; some of them had knee or hip replacements.

I remember a glorious sunny Sunday at the beginning of May 2005. My parents had been living at my apartment for about three weeks, and my two sisters came down from upstate New York for the day. It was a Sunday, so I didn't have any therapy, and we decided to go down and visit the greenhouse. It wasn't easy explaining that there was a greenhouse, because I really couldn't talk, and you wouldn't think there would be a greenhouse in a hospital in the middle of Manhattan. I didn't have any plants in my room, so I didn't have a point of reference. I think I took out House & Garden, and was fumbling through the pages to find an article about some fancy Hampton’s conservatory. My family was still totally clueless, so they had to find a nurse to explain what I was talking about. So after what seemed like an hour, the whole family headed down to the greenhouse and garden, with my dad wheeling me along.

Before I can go into this, I need to explain what was going on in my brain. After a stroke, you are aphasic. The definition by the American Heritage Dictionary: "aphasia: partial or total loss of the ability to articulate ideas or comprehend spoken or written language, resulting from damage to the brain caused by injury or disease." Once the brain cells are 86’ed (dead,) they don’t regenerate. I can't stress this enough. If brain cells die, from going to Iraq and being a victim of a roadside bomb, or teenage boy’s helmet boxing on YouTube, or having a plain old stroke, they’re six feet under, or swimming with the fishes (dead!) It’s unlike the liver, which can heal itself, or regenerate. Of course, I didn't even know that I was aphasic at the time. I think the first time I heard this was from Ilana, my cognitive therapist, 10 months after my stroke.

“Aphasia” is NOT an alternative rock band. And even though they cite David Bowie as one of their influences, I still to this day have not heard a song by them, and I have no plans to. (I intentionally do not have a link to Aphasia the band, but I can tell you this, I'm sure none of them are aphasic, unless they're into head boxing!) For several months, I didn't have the mental ability to use my computer because of the brain injury. But when I Googled aphasia, I was directed to blogs by twenty-somethings talking about how great the band was. So you can see why I was frustrated!

And there are different degrees of aphasia symptoms, and it all depends on what part of the brain was affected by the stroke. Some people are able to produce sentences, but may have some difficulty formulating them, or using word substitution, if they cannot think of the exact words. Expressive aphasia comes in many forms, some aphasics can produce just single words (usually curses are very popular, as I mentioned before,) sounds, phrases, and while others can speak fluently, but the patient will make errors in word choice. Some aphasic people have difficulty understanding and processing language. And once the brain cells die, they don't grow back. So it's unlike the liver, which can regenerate itself. I suffered cognitive damage, as well as having speech problems.

There are different degrees of aphasic symptoms, and it all depends on what part of the brain was affected by the stroke. Some people are able to produce sentences, but may have some difficulty formulating them, or using word substitution, if they cannot think of the exact words. Expressive aphasia comes in many forms, some aphasics can produce just single words (usually curses are very popular, as I mentioned before,) sounds, phrases, and while others can speak fluently, but the patient will make errors in word choice. Some of aphasic people have difficulty understanding and processing language. It all depends on what area of the brain was damaged. I suffered cognitive damage, as well as having speech problems. The phone in my hospital room, my cell phone, my iPod, and my beloved Palm Pilot were useless to me. I could turn on the TV, there's a simple remote control with three buttons on it: volume, channel, and the on and off switch. A world away from when I produced a short film on my computer called “Through the Years," for my parents’ 50th wedding anniversary. Their anniversary was May 8, 2004. (Here’s a photo of my mom & dad, taken October 1989. The photo was taken by me, with a medium format camera, when I was studying photography my sophomore year at college.)

Reading and writing are also involved for some aphasic people. The aphasic individual will learn to bypass the dead brain cells (I call it “using the back roads,”) as a way to counteract whatever disability they have. Over two years since my stroke, I've regained my speech, but I suffer from dysgraphia , which I will go into in the chapter "I'm not myself?!" In a nutshell, dysgraphia is having trouble with the written language, and that's why I use voice recognition software to make up the content of this website.

I'm presently in an aphasic group, which meets once a week at Rusk Institute. Some of the people have had a stroke, and others have suffered (TBI) Traumatic Brain Injury, caused by some kind of accident. “That’s 8 times the number of people diagnosed with breast cancer, and 34 times the number of new cases of HIV/AIDS each year." I'm not sure where that leaves me. This quote is from the website Brain Injury Recovery Network . I thought you might find this interesting.

Now I'm going to tell you about one, of many episodes, which I experienced being aphasic. My parents, my two sisters, and I, in my wheelchair, were relaxing in the Horizon House garden, adjacent to the Rusk Greenhouse.) It sounds like its some Jane Austen novel, but it was so far from that. The garden and the greenhouse were beautiful; don't get me wrong. My family isn't from the English aristocracy, it was 2005, we were in a rehab unit, and I was wearing leaky, disposable undergarments.

At this point, I was expressing more than one syllable at a time. I wasn't making complete sentences, but I was showing signs of improvement. What started out as my sisters asking me, “So David, what were you planning on getting mom and dad, for their 51st anniversary?” turned into a two hour, game of charades? (I missed the anniversary, because I was in a coma.) If only my boyfriend had been there, but he always has office hours on Saturdays. Both my sisters were so into the game of charades, they would slap each other five, if they got a question right.

My mind was working a mile a minute, but my voice was working at a snail’s pace. I was having a full on conversation in my own brain. My parents, god love ‘um, never throw anything out; they both grew up during the Depression of the 1930’s. We still, to this day, have a typewriter, from when I was in high school! When I asked my dad why he hadn’t thrown the typewriter out, he responded, “Your mother is going to get around to typing up her recipes, someday.” (My parents have been married for 53 years, if she hadn't typed up them by now, forgetaboutits!”) You get the idea.

Somebody, I wouldn’t name names, had this great idea to give my parents TracFone, which, at the time (10 years ago,) was a perfectly good option. You would think, after their TracFone was over a decade old, they would want to upgrade, and either donate the phone to their church, or to the Salvation Army. Most of the time, my parents would leave the TracFone plugged into an outlet in the kitchen, when they went aimlessly shopping through the mall, or perusing the grocery store. When my mother decided to take the phone with her, she had to carry an extra bag, because it was so gargantuan, and it weighed at least 10 pounds. I was consumed with this relic, and I had been in and out of the hospital, having trouble finding my parents, because they were in Florida, or upstate New York, or at the grocery store, without their TracFone! I was already preoccupied with my own gizmos and gadgets, I wanted my parents to embrace the technology, and come into the 21st century. I mean, what if I had a stroke! Oh, that already happened. (See what I mean, my boyfriend definitely had a premonition!)

My idea was to get my parents a real cell phone, and hook it up to a family plan. I was trying to explain that I looked at all the different styles of phones; ease-of-use, accessibility at home, car chargers, hands-free, and how I was researching Verizonwireless.com. The only word I spoke was "INTERNET!... INTERNET!... inTERnet!... INternet!... interNET!" I kept repeating it over and over, as if I said it in a different voice, or enunciated a different syllable, they would get it. My sisters had their cell phones, and I could've grabbed one, and pointed to it. But there was a disconnect in my brain, between possessing an object's function, and expressing thoughts. I wasn't really playing charades. My family couldn't read my thoughts, and my sisters loved the two-hour game! They're 14 and 15 years older than I am, I was always known as "Little David," so I guess they felt a sense of nostalgia.

In addition, I had physical therapy, and occupational therapy, which were basically, the same if you ask me. I didn't like either of them. I immediately had a dropped foot, after the stroke, which was caused by neuropathy. To translate this into English : My right foot was the problem, it's like I was dragging around dead weight, and this was especially apparent, when ascending or descending stairs. When I say, it was caused by neuropathy, that's when you have pins and needles in your arms or your legs, because of nerve damage. It was also a problem walking, I had to walk very slowly to keep my balance. And the pins and needles have stayed with me, until this very day. Unfortunately, we live in a duplex, and our bedroom is upstairs. We do have a foldout couch in the office on the first level, which my parents, or my home nurse were sleeping on. I really needed to use the stairs, not only were the stairs uncarpeted, but they were fully open, with no handrails. This became a huge issue, which I'll get into in "Penthouse Prison." When I was in the hospital, I used the stairwells to practice on. The only thing was that they had railing on both sides, and there was a landing in between each floor, so I had a chance to take a long extended rest before coming down to the next floor. If you've read my blog, you would know that I was just treated for neuropathy in May 2007. ( This is an image of "Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2" painted by Marcel Duchamp in 1912; which happens to be one of my favorite pieces of artwork, and just to let you know, I've study art history!)

Back to physical/occupational therapy: the worst part about it was when you were corralled in your wheelchair waiting for it the elevator operator to pick you up. We, I and the other stroke patients, were assembled in a line facing the open, double-doors looking out on an expansive hallway. You think they could have shut the door, but I guess the elevator operators are too limited to know when therapy ends (at the same time every day!) I think I spent more time waiting for the elevator, I couldn't read, there wasn't a TV with an old episode of Ellen , so I just sat there staring out, and watching all the young physical therapist interns skidding about, going up and down the elevators, and walking out to get a late lunch, on their own. There was always a patient in the group, who fell asleep, and was snoring. "Patience is a virtue" ; whoever said this, wasn't waiting for the elevator operator, while in a wheelchair, with diarrhea running down their leg.

I loved speech therapy! But it was only a half an hour long, it was my first appointment of the day, and I was always late. Karen, my speech therapist, made me a book (I guess she does this for everybody else who had a stroke, but I felt like I was special.) It was a very simple picture book, with a doctor, a nurse, (the pictures of the nurse and the doctor were not very PC; they showed the typical male doctor, and the female nurse,) a plate of food, a toilet, a telephone, etc. etc. This was to help me communicate without speech. There was a little delay in getting me the picture book, so I didn't have it on the afternoon when I was trying to explain "INTERNET!" I adored my picture book, I carried it around with me in my plastic sleeve attached to my wheelchair, everywhere I went. I had no idea what aphasia, or dysgraphia was, and I think it was too soon to explain it to me. But Karen was really helping me relearn how to communicate, and I loved that it was one on one attention. Karen and I would meet alone in her office every day at 10 o'clock, and the allotted time was only 25 minutes, not even a full half an hour. And I was always coming in late, because of the wheelchair back up. I'm reconnected with Karen as an outpatient, just over a year after my stroke (I will discuss this more in "I'm not myself?!" ) I found out later that Karen loves Weeds , that airs on Showtime. (And I know she'd kill me, but I really think she looks like the lead character, played by Mary-Louise Parker, so I included a photo!)

My parents are the greatest, even though I was so enraged with my mother after the stroke, that I couldn't be in the same room with her. When I was writing this, they had been married over 53 years, and they were high school sweethearts. They're inseparable, whether traveling in their RV to Florida , or just staying at home, and watching Wheel of Fortune. I bring this up, because my parents were supposed to stay for a long weekend during Passover 2005, which turned into over a month in our New York apartment. They had left their RV , and their GMC pickup truck, and got on the first JetBlue flight to JFK. My dad is NOT spontaneous; he's a Capricorn (another earth sign.) A Capricorn is described as "practical and prudent, ambitious and disciplined, patient and careful." One day, my father decided that they needed to return to Florida, while I was still in the rehab unit. He was getting nervous, and this made my mother nervous, so it was best that they go - or so I thought. I was completely devastated by their departure. The stroke caused aphasia, as well as, mental disorder. I couldn't deal with change at any kind, and the thought of being alone frightened me. (I will expand on this in "I'm not myself?! ")

I had a lot of visitors, don't get me wrong. But all of them had jobs, including my boyfriend. And my boyfriend didn't visit me every day, he stayed for less than an hour, and a lot of the time he took a nap in my hospital bed, while I was in it. When my parents were there, I knew that every day I would have at least two visitors, when they would be arriving, when they would go out to have lunch, and when they would leave for the day. They had a whole routine set up, my mother is an avid speed-walker, and rather than taking a cab, or the subway, or a bus, they would hoof-it to the hospital every day. Our apartment is in Chelsea, on 8th Ave, and the hospital is on 34th Street and 1st Avenue, which according to MapQuest.com is a total of 2 miles, and by car, supposedly, you can get there in seven minutes flat. (I've been back and forth to the hospital so many times, either in a cab, or on the bus, and it's taken me close to a half an hour to get there, and when there's really heavy traffic it can take over an hour! The people who invented MapQuest, obviously, do not have a sense of New York mid-town traffic!) My parents, who were at the time, 71 and 74 years old, could hike it in under 45 minutes.

At first, they would go straight up 8th Avenue, and take a right on 34th Street, and then cut over to 1st Avenue. When they got the hang of it, they took a different route going to and coming back from the hospital. One time they walked across 17th to 1st Ave, another time they went up 6th Avenue on my old Gap office, and crisscrossed over to the East side. My mother was obsessed with going to Bath & Body Works , so I was trying to explain that there are a lot of "mall’s stores" (chain-stores you would find in the suburbs,) on lower Fifth Avenue in the Flatiron District. But the only thing I could say was "MALL!" Lo and behold, they discovered Bath & Body Works after a few weeks zigzagging through Manhattan. And my father exclaimed "Oh, its right near the Flatiron Building !" So who needs those double-decker buses from London touring around Manhattan, why don't you just take a walk with the Capognas. (I think this photograph says it all! But for those of you who can't see, and I have a good friend that is going to read this who is blind, this is a picture of the Flatiron Building. The front of the building is plastered with a wrap-around ad of H&M Clothing running right up the front of the facade, from the ground level to the top floor, like a really distasteful Christo !)

Now, I was totally alone, I couldn't read, or listen to my iPod, or even use the phone, but at least I had therapy to keep me busy. I'm not really sure when my parents left, but it felt like years since they showed up all sweaty from their cross-town speed-walking adventure. And there I was, me, myself, and my diarrhea. I was already on the Lactulose, which helped me digest the protein, and caused Hershey squirts! In addition, I found out I still had the TPN tube running up my arm. The TPN was given to me as a drip (on a pole, so I didn't even notice I was getting it,) and I was hooked up to the pole whenever I wasn't in therapy. That's what was going on; the Lactulose, combined with the TPN (sugar water) caused me to open up like the Hot-Lava-Mississippi River Delta! The funny thing about this, and there isn't a lot that's funny, was when I was researching this, no one knew if the TPN line was still in me. My parents knew it was still in my arm, when I had the stroke. But no one could remember, not my dad, not my boyfriend, and not even my doctor (who suggested I contact a hospital, and sort through my medical history.) I started to give up hope, I knew there was something going on, and it wasn't because of the loose-fitting diapers. My mother has a lot of senior moments, she’s have had them since her late 20’s, somehow she remembered that no one had ever taken the TPN tube out. (This is an illustration of the Mississippi River, showing the Delta “lobes,” who knew a delta had lobes?! That’s science for ya! I think it looks like somebody made in their pants!)

I remember the last two days at Rusk, probably because I was having a hysterical tantrum, from being cooped up for almost a month. So many patients had come and gone, and it felt like I was the only one, who wasn't being released. I directed my anger at Dr. Valery Lanyi, the head of rehabilitation at NYU Medical Center. My boyfriend had this special connection with Dr. Layni, they were both Hungarian, they were both doctors, and my boyfriend was semi-fluent in the Hungarian language. Dr. Valery Lanyi got her doctorate at the University of Budapest in 1954, when my boyfriend was one year old, and living in New York City, that's where the connection ends. Dr. Lanyi was no Zsa Zsa Gabor (like my boyfriend's mother,) she was more like an evil headmaster, especially with that eastern-block accent!

One day after therapy, I was alone with this decrepit old man in my room. I usually had four roommates, they'd either checked out, or were having a CAT scan that afternoon. I was trying to figure out if this man was gay, he wasn't married, and one, of the two people that visited him, was a young guy in his 20s, who was a former student of the man. The guy was obviously a professor, or something. The young student was coming to take the man home that day, and I was watching the whole thing like an invisible Gollum from Lord of the Rings , churning with rage. Why was I being left alone, where was my boyfriend? I wanted to go home, too! I was so stir crazy, it was as if time was going backwards, but I couldn't even read my digital watch. I watched as the old man packed up all of his belongings in see-through plastic bags with purple NYU Medical Center logos plastered on the front, while his teacher’s pet escorted him to the elevator.

I immediately grabbed my drip bag pole (I could've maneuvered that thing around on the sidewalks of midtown Manhattan, because I had been hooked up to the IV for so long,) and I made a bee-line to the nurses station. You could get a sense of what was going on in my mind, because I couldn’t express myself verbally, so I resorted to tapping my foot loudly, and breathing heavily. And there was Dr. Hungarian-Headmaster, herself, her back turned to me, rummaging through some paperwork. (Before I go on, I eventually got over my disdain for Dr. Lanyi, now we have the best relationship between doctor and patient, and she's very impressed with my progress after the stroke.) I felt like a trapped rat, I wanted to be home, I wanted to be in my penthouse duplex apartment with 1000 square-foot terrace, with the picture perfect view of the Empire State building. But the only thing I could say was, “I WANT TO LEAVE!!!” I was thinking complete thoughts, the speech therapy definitely helped a lot, despite my disgruntled attitude towards it. Dr. Lanyi ensured that I could be released tomorrow, but they needed some kind of mumbo-jumbo paperwork signed by my doctor. I begrudgingly went back to my room and sulked for while. But then I noticed I was alone, all my roommates had left me, and this was kind of peaceful. (The peacefulness was later broken, by an Orthodox Jewish Rabbi, who probably had a stroke from wearing a wool suit, a fedora, and God knows what else, during the heat wave of May 2005. And did I mention all of the family members, it was a Jewish posse! First the guys came in; women aren't allowed in the room with the men or something. Next, all the girls would come in and they would feed him a bunch of kosher food.)

Regarding Jews at New York Medical Center: one of my parent's main complaints, was that on Friday and Saturday there was one designated Sabbath elevator. From Friday night at sundown, to sundown on Saturday night, it’s the Sabbath . This is the Jewish day of rest, no work and be done: this includes driving a car, using a telephone, or pushing buttons on an elevator. They kind of take it to the extreme! And because there are so many Orthodox Jewish patients at NYUMC, and any other hospital in the New York area, that's why they have a Sabbath elevator. The first time my father was in the elevator, he couldn't understand why all the buttons were pressed, he thought some kid was doing a prank. My boyfriend, who was born and bred in New York City, and it's also a Jew, had to explain the Sabbath elevator to my parents.

As planned, my boyfriend picked me up the next day, and I was free, at least for a while. He had arranged for a home-care nurse to take care of me, while he was at work. I couldn't function alone; I couldn't even walk up and down the stairs, without Eddie, the home care nurse, following close behind in case I fell. There was no banister, because during the renovation, I thought it took away from the integrity of the apartment. Eddie spent a few nights a week, sleeping on the fold out bed in the downstairs office. And to this day, my boyfriend believes that Eddie stole his Breitling watch from the desk drawer. (Eddie, this is your chance to redeem yourself!)

Eddie, like my mother, was annoying in the most loving way.  I know he only wanted to help me, but I was delayed by his presence!  I also started home physical and speech therapy, with two other nurses.  Just press PH on the elevator, and you'll be ushered into the home therapy party!!!  All of this was cut short, because of the nearly lethal infection I got, which I will discuss in the next chapter.