"The Golden Hour." Can we talk about it for a minute? [View all]

[Teacher of the Year]

Last edited Tue Oct 15, 2024, 06:06 PM - Edit history (1)

On a beautiful August morning my husband was leaving for work. He's a 9-11 dispatcher. I was in bed reading DU. As he was about to walk out the door, our little kitten, (named Pepper Cat, tabby, cute, cute, cute) popped out of a hidey hole so he grabbed her and brought her upstairs to bed before he left.

"I was about to go but brought you a present."

The present probably saved my life.

I tried to say "I love you" and words did not come out. A stuttered out a garbled mish-mash did and we both realized something was wrong. He saw my face was drooping. I couldn't talk, my arm was numb. In an airy whisper, not speech, but "whisper talking"-that trick used in theater so a crowd makes noise, but it isn't actually speech. I whispered out "I'm having a stroke."

9-11 dispatchers have a stroke protocol and he began that as he dialed his own work place. When they answered he told them who he was and that the stroke was at the highest risk level. The ambulance was here in less than eight minutes. I was being wheeled in the hospital doors at 20. At 35 minutes the cat scan showed us what we already knew. Clot. Communication center of the brain. It was getting worse and worse.

Decision time with two choices. Leave it, and when it was all said and done we would pick up the pieces, if there were any. Or, a newer medicine, a clot-buster. It would either bust the clot up, stopping further damage or it would kill me.

I have spent the last ten years public speaking and I am a teacher. My last speech, $5000, was paid to my school and it covered our "food home on the weekend" for more than a school year. My other speeches have been equally weighty. On the steps of the Lincoln Memorial, sandwiched in between Diane Ravitch and Reverend Barber, I spoke about LGBTQ youth and kids with special needs and those kids that get left behind. For ten years, ever since my Teacher of the Year award, I have used my voice to be the voice of my non-verbal students. It has been the voice of gay youth who are being alienated by hate-laws and denigrated by right-wing elected officials. My voice became someone else's voice in 2014 and that has not ever changed.

Mute me would be the waste of the opportunities I can get for those I am advocating for. I love my life. I love my pets. I love my husband but I long-ago realized that some things are bigger than our own lives and comforts. I took the clot buster.

As the hours progressed the clot was destroyed. Now we would find out the extent of the damage. But, in one of those miraculous moments where the professionals were at a loss for words, something became clear. The damage was disappearing. My voice started coming back, my face started moving, the numbness went away. 24 hours later, as I sat, bewildered by what had happened to me, the neurologist shook her head and told me the damages all seemed to be reversed. That's not how the medicine was supposed to work, but, apparently, that is how my brain decided it was going to be.

But the one thing every nurse, every doctor mentioned was "the golden hour." With a stroke, you are on a precipice, friends. At the end of the golden hour, you step off into the unknown. But during that golden hour the drs have the ability to drag you back from the edge. I woke up with numb fingers. I thought I slept wrong. I was wobbly when I went to the bathroom, I thought I was tired. I crawled back into bed and would have spent an hour reading, then made some coffee, then, maybe then, I would have tried to say something to the dog, or a cat and would have then realized I could no longer speak. I would have missed my golden hour.

You cannot miss your golden hour. You must listen to your body and you must act on what it is telling you.

Am I free and clear? No. Residuals from the stroke are ongoing and strange. For several days I had neon colored disco lights flashing across my vision so bad I could not drive or hardly read. For the past week I have phantom smells. Not toast or flowers or my mom's hand lotion but the exact smell of my dad's John Deere power mower exhaust circa 1980-except we are in a locked garage and it is on full throttle. For those of you who remember the smell of leaded gas burning hot, you know the smell I mean. The front half of my brain says, "It's all OK." The lizard brain is running around screaming I am being poisoned and must get out now. Waking up at 2 am when lizard brain just dumped a days worth of adrenalin in your system is not a nice wake up call.

I returned to my classroom last week, only to have it last a day, then get cut to half day, and, as of yet, I have not been able to return. Lizard brain might need a little more time to get used to things. These things are passing, I hope. Some are amusing-like, attempting to put the clutch in and shift even though I have not driven a manual transmission for over a decade. I spent five minutes looking for a can opener, only to realize I was looking for my parent's can opener that I grew up with. When that clicked, it also clicked that the cat food brand I use has a pull top. It is what it is.

I'm rolling with it. I will be voting with it. And I am going to master it.

But in the mean time, I wanted to talk to you about that golden hour. The numbness I ignored was the clock starting. The wobbly walking was the ten-minute warning. The kitten was fate and my husband (and all 9-11 dispatchers) was the hero.

Friends, I ask you remember my golden hour. I also recommend kittens.

(EDITED TO ADD: This post is sitting in the top spot on DU. I have been so honored and will admit to getting the feelings while reading all of your loving comments. Thank you so much. I know I don't write the typical DU posts, and they are rarely short and sometimes not so easy to read. I wanted to write something that was memorable. Something that would pop up in your head if your body was ever sending a message. You made it clear I achieved that, but what I didn't expect was the outpouring of such caring words. Thank you. I've been trying to say thank you individually, and I will, but it will take me a bit. Have a lovely day, you all certainly made sure I would. Cheers)