I was struck by your reference to The Seagull and the words ‘I’m in mourning for my life’ written so expertly by the brilliant Chekhov. It’s a phrase I’ve been using for many years after an accident left me unable to live my previous life. I do have a rather dark sense of humour and also tend to always wear black (very well I may add!) so whenever asked why I’m dressed in black that is my stock answer and people laugh. I laugh with them and that then stops any questions about the wheelchair and so on. I’m on a lot of meds for pain relief and mood which helps keep me on an even keel most of the time. I’m busy with my teenage lads, I read, I write and I listen to music, watch films and so on which helps me live in a balanced way. I regret what happened but I try not to dwell on it as then I do become enraged and bitter and so tearful but holding on to those feelings are so painful I try to let them go by meditation or listening to Buddhist chitchat on a million and one podcasts.
So in other news I finally got a stairlift fitted which I hate and love equally. It’s very whizzy and I’m getting used to it I think. Using the stairs was becoming impossible and this way my energy and pain levels behave themselves- so yay. I wanted black but they only do white so I may have to pimp it up a little.
When you go home you’ll be asked about all sorts of gadgets to help you for now which may well be removed if you no longer need them. It’s all just a process; well, more a rollercoaster for us survivors, us warriors. You’re doing better and that’s the thing - holding a bottle for a second or two is a real achievement - keep moving forwards. And yes sometimes we do too much which knocks us back but it’s only a blip. I’m giving you access to my almost permanent internal pep talk. I drive myself mad too so apologies for my chirpiness - it’s just my hard-wired survival tactics!
And I love hearing from you! As soon as there is a post, if I am near my computer, I read it. This one was somber- it really brought it into focus how utterly miserable it was for you to have that accident. And the mini-stroke issue is certainly not something any of us can feel smug about not having to consider.
I'm older than you are. And in the last ten years, since I stopped traveling as much, my ability to manage flying has diminished considerably. Going to Italy for probably the last time, next week, it will be very obvious how much has changed for me, not just for Italy, which is far more politically weird than it was when I was last there but for me, my body, my mind, my energy. I used to hop on a plane and love going through it all just to feel a part of the weird country of airports. I'd arrive and inhale the rental car smell, indistinguishable from the odor of Italy. I'd enjoy the new clothes I was wearing. I'd think with excitement about who I was about to see, and the new impressions, and the sheer enjoyment of that country. This is all in the past. So many friends have died since I was there last. I'm making a will before leaving, having put it off until now. I will make appointments for several physical tests when I get back- even wonder if I ought to go with so many things of concern. But I want to.. I want to... I want to see my friend, and that wonderful country, one last time. Isn't it strange, one last time? As so many say, we never really know when the last time will come because it comes often without warning.
Thank you thank you! Speaking to my aging.. and my lost traveling fervor. . No one in my life right now to talk peacefully w about our experience of this meandering path ... travel w joy !
It's very meaningful to me to know that what I expressed is not my experience alone- Thank you so much for your generous comment and I will remember your words.
Have you heard the song Goodbye Mr Blue. google it, - we never want to say cherio and it's the last one. but we won't know I don't think. You go and have a wonderful time - x
I was telling my sister today that I admire people who keep travelling because I don't really feel like going anywhere anymore. However, I hope you'll enjoy your trip.
No, I don't feel like traveling either. The pandemic "took the stuffing out of me" as my grandmother used to say. Thanks for your good wishes. I'm testing my courage by doing this, and keeping my mind steady- one step at a time.
A shining gem of hope glinted from your melancholy post: you gripped a small bottle with your left hand; you managed to stand for fifteen or so minutes. These are celebratory accomplishments, the first steps through the door to freedom, to your old life. When I read those words,my heart lifted for you. I want your own heart to lift.
About 30 years ago I went through about 4 years of post-traumatic stress syndrome because of past memories finding their rightful place. At the time it was as though I had broken into a thousand pieces and no one could see. For a while it was hard to get through each day. One day in the midst of it all I was watching a documentary about a girl who had had a riding accident and was paralysed. She was in the swimming pool with her mum and a therapist in the rehabilitation centre. The question came to me as I watched. What do you see? My answer was – I see the mum doing all she can to help and will her daughter to get better and to come through this. But I see the girl not trying as hard as her mum. I wanted to say to the girl, don't give up, your mum loves you so much, please love yourself as much as she loves you, and it will help you come through this. It gave me fresh courage to find my way through what I was having to face - a very different experience but somehow the same.
My question is: I wonder who it is who shows you how to love yourself just now.
Your refusal to do those siimple tests reminded me of my 'at the third stroke' father. He was very uncooperative when I bought a child's book to try and to get him read out loud when he'd had a stroke that affected his speech. He was a master engineer in the RAF. He made it clear in a howly sort of language that I was patronising him and I got annoyed with him because I thought he could have been more amenable, under the circumstances. I told him he was missing the point of the exercise, which was not a test of intelligence but an exercise in enunciation. We had a heated row and the book went in the bin. One day, he showed me a technical drawing that he had laboured over with his left hand. He was right handed but that hand was now gripped in a permanent fist. The drawing was the electrical circuitry of a Shackleton bomber. It was, in its own way, an explanation and an apology. I'm sorry you've been in hospital such a long time and that you're bored and the stuff they make you do causes you pain. You still know the circuitry of prose though. So, that's good.
I just wanted to tell you that I once had the immense privilege of working as a PA to an amazing woman who had been paralysed suddenly when a hospital in Oxford made a mistake with her drip. She is the founder of a children's mental health charity in Nigeria and had been living a very exciting and active life leading the charity till she came to the UK for a wedding and everything changed. She was in a coma for about a year and then on recovery was paralysed. What I learned from working with her and trying my best to support her, including typing her words as she dictated them to me, is that even though she was exhausted, even though some days she got very angry with us, it was sure grit and mental fight (as William Blake might call it) that kept her alive and kept her going and yes, with the help of Doctors and physios she started to walk again. This was not an easy solution and perhaps became her life's work but I know that it was awe-inspiring to watch the consistency, almost meditative way she instilled a routine everyday in order to cope. She didn't do this alone in fact I got the job because a dear childhood friend asked me to help and it was her family, friends and community who were her reason to see a future and move forward. This may not be helpful to you but it occurred to me that maybe recounting this experience could be useful or at least provide some comfort? The physical life and dramatic changes to our bodies will test us but our souls (with many shades of dark and light), our identities, personalities, our needs even are what makes us who we are and that, in some way gives us strength. Even as I write this I feel like I am being cliché and I know it is not easy but I wanted to say, there is hope for life after disaster, just a different one. Be bloody minded and do not cease from mental fight!
You picked something up; a bottle. In my mind's eye I pictured a bottle that used to occupy the ledge of a small, square window in my grandmother's bedroom: A heavy flask with a rounded body and a tall slender neck. It was made from thick, lilac-coloured glass, that had been acid-washed, and was deeply embossed with an amorphous pattern of leaves and flowers merging into each other. After my grandmother died, I took the bottle down from the shelf and lay it on the bed along with everything else that I had harvested from the room. When I removed the glass stopper I was hit by an acrid floral scent of perfume residue that had turned to powder.
The bottle that you picked up probably contained pills, but my mind made the leap towards something more exotic. Perhaps your rehab assistant set out an assortment of different bottles on a tray in front of your bed. He told you: “One is the home of a friendly genie; two contain dangerous djinns that have been imported from the great desert of Yemen at significant cost to the NHS. The hospital is at a loss as to what to do with them. The others are empty.” Then he closed the door to your room and left you to it. With considerable effort, you managed to pick up one of the bottles. it was one of the empty ones.
You also stood for a considerable length of time, albeit with mechanical assistance. If you can do those two things that previously lay beyond your physical abilities, then what else can you do? What will you be able to do next week, or next month? A pint of Guinness may yet lie within your shaky grasp.
At the hospital where I worked, the friends of a man who had suffered a serious stroke took advantage of a three for two supermarket offer on wine. They smuggled it onto the ward during visiting hours and were caught feeding it to him through a straw. He too could not hold a cup. I mention this as an anecdote rather than as a suggestion of what you might do with your abundant spare time.
I know of people who lost their balance during a transient ischemic attacks and who suffered a greater injury from the fall than they did from the mini-stoke. Is it possible that this is what happened in your case?
Before and after are ubiquitous in fiction – I suppose that it forms part of the call to action; the jumping-off point in the hero's journey. Last night I watched a film called 'Nurse Betty'. I saw it many years ago in the cinema. The only thing I could remember about it was a scene where Morgan Freeman gets caught up his own daydream and ballroom dances with himself beside the Grand Canyon, while Chris Rock looks on with a mixture of contempt and incredulity.
In the film, there is Betty's life before the brutal murder of her philandering husband, and there is her life afterwards, where she suffers a mental breakdown and believes herself to be a character from a popular soap opera set in a fictional Californian hospital. Much like life, the film is filled with moments of comedy and tragedy and realisation.
The ribbon of the universe has twisted. In that warping of reality, a kind of reversal has taken place. You, a storyteller, have become a one-man audience, while a portion of your audience have been recast as oral storytellers, collectively filling your hospital room with their disjointed narratives, as life condenses itself around you and bends down to place itself within your reach.
As always such an intricately woven comment, full of insights and marvels, and memories and enticing thoughts, a map of possibilities. I enjoy your comments here as much as your Substack.
And, with all the incredibly hard work you are putting in to your recovery, there seem to be improvements, so slight that you are dismissive of them. I imagine that you will regain quite a lot of movement and strength over the next year. You may see improvements in your abilities, so much so that all of us will be only a memory, those strangers you used to write for, who wished to be able to lift your spirits with our attention.
I feel a little excitement every time I receive a notification that you’ve published another note. I am eager to read about your progress, your thoughts, and am relieved you are OK even though you don’t know me. Isn’t that funny - I care more the well being of you than I do of some of my friends. It’s because I am more inspired by you- your fight, your writings and musings, than I am by daily goings on around me in Kansas. You are a wonderful teacher and you have an amazing family who is willing to share you with all of us. Many thanks.
I love the Q and A addition. My question is this - when the final version of your book, screenplay etc has been printed, are you content to appreciate it, leave it alone and move on, or do you hold on to any regrets and wish you could keep editing it?
Be well and contract those gluts/core when you’re standing.
Hi dear Hanif, So moved by your posts. This one had me thinking a lot about Magic Mountain - the disappearance of the Sense of Time. The consuming of oneself by the Hospital. You are not alone. Thank you for sharing your soul with all of us.
Hanif. You are an inspiration. I subscribed right at the start of your posts and still am. I asked a question also but maybe you have answered a similar one to others. Today I am despondent. The pain continues though my accident was eight long months ago. It is hard to maintain self belief but I continue to write and send out. Plays only. Poetry is no longer possible. Your posts help me to keep going. So thank you. Any chance you can read my play? I too love the seagull ref by the way. Checkhov is the fave for me. Take heart. And thank you. Alison
I’m smiling at you refusing to do the test to judge impairment. I had a stroke in my early 50s, a real surprise. But I was very lucky and seem to only have come through it with an altered sense of taste…more taste…than before. But very frequently in my time in the the ICU, another dr, nurse, or student would come in and want to do the assessment for impairment. I had to do it many times. I memorized the steps and actions and questions. Finally a poor, flustered student came in in the dark and stumbled through it. I put him back on the right track with the steps in the right order. He must have reported that, as the testing stopped after that and the doctor came the next day and told me he had heard I had conducted the test myself, assuring him I wasn’t impaired. All your doctors would need to do is read your blog to know.
Poor Carlo is trying to tell you that the pint of beer in the pub is close! I bet you will be able to have plenty again. It will only take time. As for the strokes, if your cholesterol is controlled and your blood pressure is measured there is nothing to fear. We love you Hanif! And we pray for you! It will work, promise.
OH a miracle I would like to happen to Hanif has happened to me and I can respond to his latest dispatch. Carlo if you hadn't said anything, don't think Hanif would have run that one past us (gripping and standing). If it was me and it isn't, and there was a pint let's make that a half to be going on with, of Guinness - that dark, cream topped velvet bitter cold alcoholic beverage sitting on the bar waiting for me to get it - Hanif I'd be planning that journey now. There is nothing - nothing like a good Guinness - it is so hot too hot for me to check whether Guinness has one N or two. You have been out of your comfort zone for a long time, incarcerated in the hospital world - just going into a hospital used to make me feel sick and dizzy so without sympathising with you - that wasted emotion - if I were laying there instead of being nicely in the existence I'm in, god knows what would be the result. That mental test they forced that upon my mother and if you had met her, you would laugh your head off - tricky, out there, forceful, and like a bare human - you would wither in her spotlight - well yes so she had to traipse through a set of banal questions to see if she still had it all upstairs. I was the original affronted frothing at the mouth daughter - obviously she had the full set of marbles. As do you. Carlo has suggested to you that there are tiny signs of improvement - possibly this has annoyed you too. Well hold onto that annoyance and such - use it. In the meantime you are bursting with creativity. You said anyone could ask you a question. What is your biggest regret if you have one at all? and I must immediately share one with you a million years ago I visited a sufi retreat with friends - some were friends. there was a man there who for some reason, one of these said friends revered - held him in a sort of worshipful esteem - I think he was a 'high up ' Sufi. Anyway he was sitting away from everyone at a wooden table and I wanted to go over and speak with him - the chap who seemed to idealise him said no you can't - I will have said why not blah blah but the upshot was I didn't do that thing - that is a permanent regret. As a life long seeker of all things spiritual and ready to learn from those who might have sampled this, I know he would have helped me. anyway my life has been the long way round Hanif - are you sick of people telling you or intimating that what is happening to you is your lot? Accepting things of course makes them easier to bear, but you are fighting this one - keep fighting. and definitely fight to walk across the bar and pick up a guinness. With much love and good wishes Maddi from that tiny vlllage in deepest and very hot North Yorkshire. xxxxx
Hello, Madeleine, I have a similar regret- a great teacher who I felt a huge and instant connection with, invited me to stay at a retreat he was giving, but I had made other plans and said no. What can we do with things like this? I like your question.
For me the actual regret of not following my own instinct was the lesson I was seeking!
It told me to always follow that push from inside - to trust it and stand by it. We can all ask for help anyway and it will come - through dreams, through conversations, through reading, maybe random meetings - but your question will be answered. X
Hi Hanif,
I was struck by your reference to The Seagull and the words ‘I’m in mourning for my life’ written so expertly by the brilliant Chekhov. It’s a phrase I’ve been using for many years after an accident left me unable to live my previous life. I do have a rather dark sense of humour and also tend to always wear black (very well I may add!) so whenever asked why I’m dressed in black that is my stock answer and people laugh. I laugh with them and that then stops any questions about the wheelchair and so on. I’m on a lot of meds for pain relief and mood which helps keep me on an even keel most of the time. I’m busy with my teenage lads, I read, I write and I listen to music, watch films and so on which helps me live in a balanced way. I regret what happened but I try not to dwell on it as then I do become enraged and bitter and so tearful but holding on to those feelings are so painful I try to let them go by meditation or listening to Buddhist chitchat on a million and one podcasts.
So in other news I finally got a stairlift fitted which I hate and love equally. It’s very whizzy and I’m getting used to it I think. Using the stairs was becoming impossible and this way my energy and pain levels behave themselves- so yay. I wanted black but they only do white so I may have to pimp it up a little.
When you go home you’ll be asked about all sorts of gadgets to help you for now which may well be removed if you no longer need them. It’s all just a process; well, more a rollercoaster for us survivors, us warriors. You’re doing better and that’s the thing - holding a bottle for a second or two is a real achievement - keep moving forwards. And yes sometimes we do too much which knocks us back but it’s only a blip. I’m giving you access to my almost permanent internal pep talk. I drive myself mad too so apologies for my chirpiness - it’s just my hard-wired survival tactics!
Much love,
Kate x
Wonderful chirping here, Kate! Thank you🎶
And I love hearing from you! As soon as there is a post, if I am near my computer, I read it. This one was somber- it really brought it into focus how utterly miserable it was for you to have that accident. And the mini-stroke issue is certainly not something any of us can feel smug about not having to consider.
I'm older than you are. And in the last ten years, since I stopped traveling as much, my ability to manage flying has diminished considerably. Going to Italy for probably the last time, next week, it will be very obvious how much has changed for me, not just for Italy, which is far more politically weird than it was when I was last there but for me, my body, my mind, my energy. I used to hop on a plane and love going through it all just to feel a part of the weird country of airports. I'd arrive and inhale the rental car smell, indistinguishable from the odor of Italy. I'd enjoy the new clothes I was wearing. I'd think with excitement about who I was about to see, and the new impressions, and the sheer enjoyment of that country. This is all in the past. So many friends have died since I was there last. I'm making a will before leaving, having put it off until now. I will make appointments for several physical tests when I get back- even wonder if I ought to go with so many things of concern. But I want to.. I want to... I want to see my friend, and that wonderful country, one last time. Isn't it strange, one last time? As so many say, we never really know when the last time will come because it comes often without warning.
Thank you thank you! Speaking to my aging.. and my lost traveling fervor. . No one in my life right now to talk peacefully w about our experience of this meandering path ... travel w joy !
It's very meaningful to me to know that what I expressed is not my experience alone- Thank you so much for your generous comment and I will remember your words.
Have you heard the song Goodbye Mr Blue. google it, - we never want to say cherio and it's the last one. but we won't know I don't think. You go and have a wonderful time - x
I listened to that- thank you! Thank you for your good wishes.
I was telling my sister today that I admire people who keep travelling because I don't really feel like going anywhere anymore. However, I hope you'll enjoy your trip.
No, I don't feel like traveling either. The pandemic "took the stuffing out of me" as my grandmother used to say. Thanks for your good wishes. I'm testing my courage by doing this, and keeping my mind steady- one step at a time.
Hanif,
A shining gem of hope glinted from your melancholy post: you gripped a small bottle with your left hand; you managed to stand for fifteen or so minutes. These are celebratory accomplishments, the first steps through the door to freedom, to your old life. When I read those words,my heart lifted for you. I want your own heart to lift.
You can do this.
Dear Hanif,
Thank you so much for your piece today.
About 30 years ago I went through about 4 years of post-traumatic stress syndrome because of past memories finding their rightful place. At the time it was as though I had broken into a thousand pieces and no one could see. For a while it was hard to get through each day. One day in the midst of it all I was watching a documentary about a girl who had had a riding accident and was paralysed. She was in the swimming pool with her mum and a therapist in the rehabilitation centre. The question came to me as I watched. What do you see? My answer was – I see the mum doing all she can to help and will her daughter to get better and to come through this. But I see the girl not trying as hard as her mum. I wanted to say to the girl, don't give up, your mum loves you so much, please love yourself as much as she loves you, and it will help you come through this. It gave me fresh courage to find my way through what I was having to face - a very different experience but somehow the same.
My question is: I wonder who it is who shows you how to love yourself just now.
Katherine
Your refusal to do those siimple tests reminded me of my 'at the third stroke' father. He was very uncooperative when I bought a child's book to try and to get him read out loud when he'd had a stroke that affected his speech. He was a master engineer in the RAF. He made it clear in a howly sort of language that I was patronising him and I got annoyed with him because I thought he could have been more amenable, under the circumstances. I told him he was missing the point of the exercise, which was not a test of intelligence but an exercise in enunciation. We had a heated row and the book went in the bin. One day, he showed me a technical drawing that he had laboured over with his left hand. He was right handed but that hand was now gripped in a permanent fist. The drawing was the electrical circuitry of a Shackleton bomber. It was, in its own way, an explanation and an apology. I'm sorry you've been in hospital such a long time and that you're bored and the stuff they make you do causes you pain. You still know the circuitry of prose though. So, that's good.
Dearest Hanif,
I just wanted to tell you that I once had the immense privilege of working as a PA to an amazing woman who had been paralysed suddenly when a hospital in Oxford made a mistake with her drip. She is the founder of a children's mental health charity in Nigeria and had been living a very exciting and active life leading the charity till she came to the UK for a wedding and everything changed. She was in a coma for about a year and then on recovery was paralysed. What I learned from working with her and trying my best to support her, including typing her words as she dictated them to me, is that even though she was exhausted, even though some days she got very angry with us, it was sure grit and mental fight (as William Blake might call it) that kept her alive and kept her going and yes, with the help of Doctors and physios she started to walk again. This was not an easy solution and perhaps became her life's work but I know that it was awe-inspiring to watch the consistency, almost meditative way she instilled a routine everyday in order to cope. She didn't do this alone in fact I got the job because a dear childhood friend asked me to help and it was her family, friends and community who were her reason to see a future and move forward. This may not be helpful to you but it occurred to me that maybe recounting this experience could be useful or at least provide some comfort? The physical life and dramatic changes to our bodies will test us but our souls (with many shades of dark and light), our identities, personalities, our needs even are what makes us who we are and that, in some way gives us strength. Even as I write this I feel like I am being cliché and I know it is not easy but I wanted to say, there is hope for life after disaster, just a different one. Be bloody minded and do not cease from mental fight!
Love,
Ishani x
I think you have every right to be pissed off and indeed furious, but starting to regain the use of a hand is a great achievement. Courage, mon brave.
You picked something up; a bottle. In my mind's eye I pictured a bottle that used to occupy the ledge of a small, square window in my grandmother's bedroom: A heavy flask with a rounded body and a tall slender neck. It was made from thick, lilac-coloured glass, that had been acid-washed, and was deeply embossed with an amorphous pattern of leaves and flowers merging into each other. After my grandmother died, I took the bottle down from the shelf and lay it on the bed along with everything else that I had harvested from the room. When I removed the glass stopper I was hit by an acrid floral scent of perfume residue that had turned to powder.
The bottle that you picked up probably contained pills, but my mind made the leap towards something more exotic. Perhaps your rehab assistant set out an assortment of different bottles on a tray in front of your bed. He told you: “One is the home of a friendly genie; two contain dangerous djinns that have been imported from the great desert of Yemen at significant cost to the NHS. The hospital is at a loss as to what to do with them. The others are empty.” Then he closed the door to your room and left you to it. With considerable effort, you managed to pick up one of the bottles. it was one of the empty ones.
You also stood for a considerable length of time, albeit with mechanical assistance. If you can do those two things that previously lay beyond your physical abilities, then what else can you do? What will you be able to do next week, or next month? A pint of Guinness may yet lie within your shaky grasp.
At the hospital where I worked, the friends of a man who had suffered a serious stroke took advantage of a three for two supermarket offer on wine. They smuggled it onto the ward during visiting hours and were caught feeding it to him through a straw. He too could not hold a cup. I mention this as an anecdote rather than as a suggestion of what you might do with your abundant spare time.
I know of people who lost their balance during a transient ischemic attacks and who suffered a greater injury from the fall than they did from the mini-stoke. Is it possible that this is what happened in your case?
Before and after are ubiquitous in fiction – I suppose that it forms part of the call to action; the jumping-off point in the hero's journey. Last night I watched a film called 'Nurse Betty'. I saw it many years ago in the cinema. The only thing I could remember about it was a scene where Morgan Freeman gets caught up his own daydream and ballroom dances with himself beside the Grand Canyon, while Chris Rock looks on with a mixture of contempt and incredulity.
In the film, there is Betty's life before the brutal murder of her philandering husband, and there is her life afterwards, where she suffers a mental breakdown and believes herself to be a character from a popular soap opera set in a fictional Californian hospital. Much like life, the film is filled with moments of comedy and tragedy and realisation.
The ribbon of the universe has twisted. In that warping of reality, a kind of reversal has taken place. You, a storyteller, have become a one-man audience, while a portion of your audience have been recast as oral storytellers, collectively filling your hospital room with their disjointed narratives, as life condenses itself around you and bends down to place itself within your reach.
As always such an intricately woven comment, full of insights and marvels, and memories and enticing thoughts, a map of possibilities. I enjoy your comments here as much as your Substack.
And, with all the incredibly hard work you are putting in to your recovery, there seem to be improvements, so slight that you are dismissive of them. I imagine that you will regain quite a lot of movement and strength over the next year. You may see improvements in your abilities, so much so that all of us will be only a memory, those strangers you used to write for, who wished to be able to lift your spirits with our attention.
Hanif!
You’re on your way to a new freedom!
Keep telling us EVERYTHING please... you’re a Champion in my head & heart! Complain and weep and Keep on Going!
I’m SO PROUD to be w you on this path💕🎶
Hi Hanif -
I feel a little excitement every time I receive a notification that you’ve published another note. I am eager to read about your progress, your thoughts, and am relieved you are OK even though you don’t know me. Isn’t that funny - I care more the well being of you than I do of some of my friends. It’s because I am more inspired by you- your fight, your writings and musings, than I am by daily goings on around me in Kansas. You are a wonderful teacher and you have an amazing family who is willing to share you with all of us. Many thanks.
I love the Q and A addition. My question is this - when the final version of your book, screenplay etc has been printed, are you content to appreciate it, leave it alone and move on, or do you hold on to any regrets and wish you could keep editing it?
Be well and contract those gluts/core when you’re standing.
In your corner, cheering you on.
Carol
Hi dear Hanif, So moved by your posts. This one had me thinking a lot about Magic Mountain - the disappearance of the Sense of Time. The consuming of oneself by the Hospital. You are not alone. Thank you for sharing your soul with all of us.
Hanif. You are an inspiration. I subscribed right at the start of your posts and still am. I asked a question also but maybe you have answered a similar one to others. Today I am despondent. The pain continues though my accident was eight long months ago. It is hard to maintain self belief but I continue to write and send out. Plays only. Poetry is no longer possible. Your posts help me to keep going. So thank you. Any chance you can read my play? I too love the seagull ref by the way. Checkhov is the fave for me. Take heart. And thank you. Alison
I’m smiling at you refusing to do the test to judge impairment. I had a stroke in my early 50s, a real surprise. But I was very lucky and seem to only have come through it with an altered sense of taste…more taste…than before. But very frequently in my time in the the ICU, another dr, nurse, or student would come in and want to do the assessment for impairment. I had to do it many times. I memorized the steps and actions and questions. Finally a poor, flustered student came in in the dark and stumbled through it. I put him back on the right track with the steps in the right order. He must have reported that, as the testing stopped after that and the doctor came the next day and told me he had heard I had conducted the test myself, assuring him I wasn’t impaired. All your doctors would need to do is read your blog to know.
Poor Carlo is trying to tell you that the pint of beer in the pub is close! I bet you will be able to have plenty again. It will only take time. As for the strokes, if your cholesterol is controlled and your blood pressure is measured there is nothing to fear. We love you Hanif! And we pray for you! It will work, promise.
OH a miracle I would like to happen to Hanif has happened to me and I can respond to his latest dispatch. Carlo if you hadn't said anything, don't think Hanif would have run that one past us (gripping and standing). If it was me and it isn't, and there was a pint let's make that a half to be going on with, of Guinness - that dark, cream topped velvet bitter cold alcoholic beverage sitting on the bar waiting for me to get it - Hanif I'd be planning that journey now. There is nothing - nothing like a good Guinness - it is so hot too hot for me to check whether Guinness has one N or two. You have been out of your comfort zone for a long time, incarcerated in the hospital world - just going into a hospital used to make me feel sick and dizzy so without sympathising with you - that wasted emotion - if I were laying there instead of being nicely in the existence I'm in, god knows what would be the result. That mental test they forced that upon my mother and if you had met her, you would laugh your head off - tricky, out there, forceful, and like a bare human - you would wither in her spotlight - well yes so she had to traipse through a set of banal questions to see if she still had it all upstairs. I was the original affronted frothing at the mouth daughter - obviously she had the full set of marbles. As do you. Carlo has suggested to you that there are tiny signs of improvement - possibly this has annoyed you too. Well hold onto that annoyance and such - use it. In the meantime you are bursting with creativity. You said anyone could ask you a question. What is your biggest regret if you have one at all? and I must immediately share one with you a million years ago I visited a sufi retreat with friends - some were friends. there was a man there who for some reason, one of these said friends revered - held him in a sort of worshipful esteem - I think he was a 'high up ' Sufi. Anyway he was sitting away from everyone at a wooden table and I wanted to go over and speak with him - the chap who seemed to idealise him said no you can't - I will have said why not blah blah but the upshot was I didn't do that thing - that is a permanent regret. As a life long seeker of all things spiritual and ready to learn from those who might have sampled this, I know he would have helped me. anyway my life has been the long way round Hanif - are you sick of people telling you or intimating that what is happening to you is your lot? Accepting things of course makes them easier to bear, but you are fighting this one - keep fighting. and definitely fight to walk across the bar and pick up a guinness. With much love and good wishes Maddi from that tiny vlllage in deepest and very hot North Yorkshire. xxxxx
Hello, Madeleine, I have a similar regret- a great teacher who I felt a huge and instant connection with, invited me to stay at a retreat he was giving, but I had made other plans and said no. What can we do with things like this? I like your question.
For me the actual regret of not following my own instinct was the lesson I was seeking!
It told me to always follow that push from inside - to trust it and stand by it. We can all ask for help anyway and it will come - through dreams, through conversations, through reading, maybe random meetings - but your question will be answered. X
Yes! That is it!