Art therapy

Look, I made this:

It’s a tree. We were at my sister-in-law’s for Shabbos, and we stayed over last night [psst: I wrote this on Sunday, so please adjust chronology accordingly] as well, and this morning I decided to color, because hey, everybody else was doing it. So I made a tree. My girls and my niece were deeply impressed by my talent, as I’m sure, now that you’ve witnessed it, are you. My sister-in-law commented that this tree has a “fat trunk,” which led me to question whether she has some sort of prejudice against fat trunks.

I made this too, though the lighting is lousy so you can’t appreciate it properly, and one of the offspring showed up and “helped,” so I can’t personally claim all the artistry as my own:

It’s the sun shining in the sky over water, and the sun is reflected in the water. That’s what that yellow blob is, see? And that gray blob is the shadow of my hand. This picture is really much nicer in person.

I don’t know what to call this bizzaro state of mind I’ve been in. “Bizzaro,” maybe? I often describe this sort of mood as being “paralyzed,” but since my six year-old daughter had a stroke (by the way, she had a stroke), I’ve been a little hesitant to toss about the word “paralyzed” in such a casual manner. But still. I didn’t do a whole lot last week, and that’s only partly because my beloved laptop is on the blink.  But it won’t be on the blink for long, because my beloved Some Guy has already repaired it, and it’s on its way back to me now.  [psst: it's already back, and in fact I'm using it at this very moment!] [Some Guy totally rocks] So maybe then I’ll be able to take my life back? But why? How? What will really be different?

I was writing a whole long post last Wednesday and Thursday, about my life and how it needs taking back and stuff, and then dumb old WordPress up and ate it.  I do remember parts of it, though. I remember saying that we think she’s coming back to herself a bit more, but we aren’t sure, and we’re afraid to be sure; I remember saying that I stare at her constantly, and that I’m afraid to touch her, and that I can’t touch her enough; and I remember saying that I feel like this paralysis (mine, I mean) is going to remain forever, because we can’t answer, and neither can the doctors, the one thing that everybody wants to know. Why did this happen?

I dunno. Why shouldn’t it happen?

“I can’t even begin to imagine what you went through,” one after another person says to me. “I’m still going through it,” I told someone over Shabbos. But that wasn’t quite true. I’m not going through it, because I’m not going. “Going” implies movement of some kind, and there ain’t been much movement. Because I can’t erase what happened, and the denial muscles are fighting tooth and nail – still – to avoid even accepting what happened.

“Do you believe God listens?” someone asked me last week, totally out of the blue. I do. I know God listens. I didn’t stop davening the entire time R was having the angiogram. I didn’t stop until the doctor came out and said he was finished, and that they had NOT accidentally slipped and poked a hole in her artery and lodged the catheter somewhere inside her brain. He told us what they saw (bulgy things in the internal carotid artery). He told us where the stroke was (middle cerebral artery), and that it was in a different place from the little bulgy things, and that the stroke must have been caused by an embolism (dumb little wad of clotted blood breaking off from the bulgy things and causing problems in the middle cerebral). I asked him what I’d been asking every single person I encountered from the moment it all started. “Is she going to be herself again? Will there be any residual effects, and if so, are they going to last forever?”

In other words: Is the child I had gone?

The doctor, by way of not really answering (since there was no way to answer, see), said what everyone else had said already. “The brain is an amazing thing.” Plasticity, see. It rewires. It rebuilds. It does other cool stuff, yadda yadda yadda.

In other words: Maybe. Maybe not.

When the angiogram was over and she was in the recovery room, I davened some more. Then I went to get coffee. It was 17 Tamuz, and at first I’d said I wasn’t going to fast, because how could I possibly fast? My child had a stroke and no one knew why, and she was in the hospital and all hell was breaking loose. How could I fast on top of all that? Then I realized I was going to fast, because, well, how could I possibly not fast. My child had a stroke and no one knew why, and she was in the hospital and all hell was breaking loose, and, well, there was never a better time to fast. Fasting enables tshuva. Fasting sets aside all things except us and God. Fasting on 17 Tamuz is for Jerusalem, and we raise Jerusalem to the height of our happiness, and, no doubt, of our fear.

So I fasted, until the headache was so awful that I knew I couldn’t bear it. I knew I couldn’t bear it because I felt that part of me slowly crumbling, the part that puts all other things on hold so we can bear what needs to be borne. It started crumbling the moment the doctor said he was finished. It was just like last time, when I didn’t crumble until the Sunday before she came home, when they said the end was in sight and they’d let her go soon. You wait, I suppose. You wait to crumble until much less will fall when you do. And when the catheter was out of her brain and she was safe from that particular danger, the headache just exploded and my strength to bear it was gone.

So I drank my coffee, and I went back to her hospital room to wait for her to come back from recovery, and within seconds I was collapsed on the couch thingie, sobbing so hard I couldn’t breathe. In her room. Can’t stop crying,** I texted G, who was in the recovery room, waiting for her to wake up. Is it ok if I stay here?

Of course, came the reply. So I did. And she woke up, and she came back, and she’s been more and more like her old self every day, and she’s finally off all of her meds, except of course the aspirin, which she’ll be taking, um, forever? Who knows.

[**Got that green-font-for-texting-text thing from BFFZ, who, like Some Guy, lives with this sort of terror, and much, much more, every. moment. of. every. day. Ahem.]

So here I am. And of course there’s been lots of other stuff happening, including not a small amount of work for Client #1, though I’m having trouble getting from them all the information that I need, which is making things somewhat difficult. But I ought to be getting paid soon. Cha-ching.

Then there’s other stuff. My friend just found out she got into medical school (good). I just found out I didn’t get the last job I interviewed for (not good). The official letter stating that I passed my French exam arrived in the mail (good). My cousin from Israel, who I never get to see, is coming to visit tomorrow (good). My son still can’t walk and it’s starting to become disturbing (not good). My friend Daniel, as opposed to not needing surgery, as was the original report, in fact needs about ten million surgeries (not good). G and the girls and I went out for sushi on Sunday evening and had an unbelievably awesome time (good) (yes, the girls eat sushi). G’s cousin is ridiculously sick, again (not good). We leave for our road trip on Sunday (good), and we’ve modified our route so that we’re within appropriate range of a good children’s hospital every step of the way (good?). In case, you know, she has another stroke. God forbid.

Someone else asked me once why I believe God listens, and why I believe in God at all. Don’t you think, the argument went, that you might just believe that because you want to? Because it makes your life easier? Because it’s comforting to feel like there’s something Out There that’s greater than we are, greater than the world, greater than good or evil?

Who cares. Who cares why I believe it. The point, to me at least, is that I know what I know.

Tags: Holidays, Kids, Stroke