The stroke andhow it all happened

the following is from one of my first posts i wrote after the strokei so i thought id resubmit it here. Some of you have wondered about the actual stroke and how it occurred. So here’s the play by play.
on sept.22 of 06 I was in a cabin in the sequoia national forest with my wife, Martha. At about 6:30 am – i must have kept my watch on and glanced at it for i distinctly remember the time. I noticed my left arm and leg felt strangely heavy. So heavy i could not lift either limb. i sat up in bed and decided I was going to try to walk it off, I took one step and fell face first to the floor. Somehow Martha was able to get me up off the floor and sit me on the bed. But of course i still did not feel well as at that point i was having a massive stroke. I was in that realm teetoring between life and death, yet I was aware of everything going on around me, the sunlight streaming in through the window hurt my eyes, so iI turned my head tolook away. The stroke did not affect my vision. i remember looking around with great curiosity at my surroundings. I realized I was probably dying and I wanted to get a last look at my surroundings, as a way of saying goodbye to the world. Though i felt at deaths doorand i recall a conscience effort to pull back, away from oblivion as i did not want to die. but at the same time had a great curiousityabout death. i took mental stock of myself. I had lost the ability to speak, my left side was flacid, i felt my body closing down. so this is what death felt like. Martha got me off the floor again. Later she confessed it was pure adrenaline kicking in, like the stories we have heard of people finding superhuman strengh at times of crisis, of which this was undoubtedly one. Being somewhat hard headed we just had to do it again one more time.
At that point I remember Martha screaming at me “Sal,you’re having a stroke, you're having a stroke she kept repeating. I wanted to tell her you're one foot away from me, no need to scream, But the words would not come out. Later iI asked her -how did you know I was having a stroke? Not till much later when I asked her about it She reminded me that she had seen her father have a series of strokes until he passed away from one as did my dad. She told me I had all the symptoms. – drooling at the mouth, slurred speech, my face contorted, an inability to maintain balance, unable to lift a limb, etc.... she finally left me on the floor with a pillow and a blanket and drove off to get help. She got to the security office and they radioed emergency services. When she got back to the cabin there just happened to be a young man walking by and she got him to come into the cabin, help me off the floor >and into our car. He did us a great favor as we could not have done it by ourselves. I do not even know his name but I said a prayer for him. By then we were informed that the ambulance was coming up the mountain.
Instead of waiting we decided to drive down the mountain and to meet them half ways. And so we did. I remember I was slouched over in the front passenger seat but insisting to Martha that I could drive. Thank goodness she didn’t let me, she just gave me a push so I wouldn’t slouch so much. We met the ambulance half way down the mountain. At that point my left arm and leg was throbbing with pain.was It is clear to me now that my body went into shock and so my memory of those events is not good.They took me to a small clinic in Lake Isabella and then to Mercy hospital in Bakersfield >where I stayed in I.C.U. for one week and a half. Then I was transported by >ambulance to the Good Samaritan in Los Angeles where i stayed for 2 months Thank god for health insurance. we all should have it. Many of you visited me there. I saw many of you theret hough I have but little recollection of it. I would say to martha, "hey so and so hasn’t visited me" and Martha would say yes he/she did when you were inICU ibut that period is truly a hazy time for me and I just don’t have a lot of memory of my hospital stay. Part of the probl
one postscript to this story,over by Lake >Isabella there was a plan to transport me by helicopter to town but it didn’t >happen because the only helicopter in the area had developed mechanical problrms. Oh well. I probably wouldn’t have remembered it..>“The body is silent but the spirit stirs” …bill hamelau. sorry for all the editing problems. At the hospital they couldn't figure out what had caused the stroke as i have never had high blood pressure or a high bad cholesterol count. they finally decided to perform a dna test, the results of which showed i had something called, Leiden factor 5, which is a hereditary thing whereby the blood in my body is predisposed to clot.
one of the main arteries that feeds blood to my brain became completeely blocked and that part of my brain lacking the oxygen thar rhe brain requires began to die. severing the neuro connections. The actual stroke lasted between one to two hours.I ended up never returning to work choosing instead totake an early disability retirement I had to stop all ofmy organizing work that was just starting to show good results. iIrecall the words of the bard robert burns - the best laid plans of mice and men amount to nothing, they are but a wisp of smoke in the tornado that is life. - i paraphrase. peace 2u and love,Sal - i hope i dont dismay you with all these details.