Local Authors. Local Books: My Stroke in the Fast Lane: A Journey to Recovery
It was Easter Sunday morning. I was picking up my mother in Westport, Connecticut, to bring her back to Tarrytown for Easter dinner. This was the first time I was driving her to our house. At 86, visually impaired and deaf in one ear, my two siblings and I put the kibosh on her driving. What if – God forbid – she had an accident and killed someone? The family couldn’t bear the thought of it, especially with my son getting married that year.
On the return to Tarrytown, my mother and I chatted about wedding plans. What to wear? Yep, I had the quintessential dress for a June afternoon country wedding. Even had the shoes: slingback kitten heels with diamonds and pearls on the vamp, in the exact blue and yellow print on leather as my dress. (How do they do that?)
The lovely mother-daughter banter ensued. Then, only 10 minutes into the ride, while driving 65 miles per hour on I-95, I looked down at my right hand trembling on the console between us. I heard my mother shriek in the distance.
Bonni!
As the car barreled down the highway, my gaze remained fixated on my hand. My mother began to panic.
Bonni, pull over! Pull over!
She grabbed the wheel, veered it hard right, and crashed us into a guardrail. I was one of the more than 795,000 people a year in the United States to suffer a stroke.
I was taken to Stamford Hospital in critical condition and given a tPA, or tissue Plasminogen Activator. It didn’t work. I was soon transferred to Yale-New Haven Hospital, which had a more advanced neurology center. My condition remained critical: My heartbeat was 30 beats per minute, with occasional eight-second pauses in between. I was teetering between life and death.
The accident made my words vanish and my thoughts confused. I was left unable to walk, talk, or swallow. But since waking up in the ICU, I felt determined to tell my story and what it’s like to be inside of someone who had a stroke. As a writer, I had to find the strength to voice my journey, hoping it would inspire others.
I am lucky. Most people don’t think I had a stroke, although my vision is double with ghost images. I have right-side weakness, which affects the tremor in my hand when writing or eating (especially soup). Mild aphasia stilts my conversation.
But I am blessed with an inner strength. It doesn’t always work together as smoothly with the awkwardness I often feel with my outer physical being, but I accept my vulnerabilities.
I wrote My Stroke in the Fast Lane: A Journey to Recovery for anyone who has ever endured not only a medical emergency but any experience that requires strength to go forward. With this book, I want to share the importance of staying motivated, persevering, and being a person with positivity, optimism, and grace.
Live each day as if something dire awaits you, like a stroke. Like me, you could be driving along the highway and …
. . .
My Stroke in the Fast Lane: A Journey to Recovery is available at your favorite bookstore and on Amazon.
Bonni Brodnick is also the author of Pound Ridge Past. Formerly with Glamour and House & Garden magazines, she has written scripts for Children’s Television Workshop and is a member of the Pound Ridge Author Society. She lives with her husband Andrew in Tarrytown.
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