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A friend of mine had a stroke last night, and tried to sleep it off before heading to the hospital in the morning. It is hard to know how to deal with sudden changes out of the blue, especially when they are to something as fundamental to your sense of self as your body or mind… I’m not sure how to think about such things, or how to prepare for them.
When my father suffered a stroke (on being hit by a bike), I remember one of his first reactions was to avoid the world, to refuse to indicate next of kin and hardly to interact with his speech therapist until (practicing when noone was around) he had fully recovered his faculty of speech. The most lasting side effect was that he forever after doubted his body, measuring sub-second delays in speech or reaction where, to my eyes, he was if anything quicker than before for his determination to be so.
I wonder if some people feel the same way after reaching puberty, when they lose a sense of control over what their body does. Please share your own experiences…