Survivors of Stroke: ‘You’re not alone’
SOS Niagara celebrates 10th anniversary of supporting stroke survivors
Every morning, she walks laps back-and-forth across the main level of her home in Beamsville. Beginning at the big window in the front room she takes tiny, every-day-more confident steps, past the sofa, through the ambient light of an attached kitchen, past the photos of her children and grandchildren, and down the hallway to a bedroom door.
Then she turns around and does it again. And again.
As she walks, she thinks of all the good in her life. Her husband, John, often comes to mind. Since her stroke a year ago, he’s taken on many of her responsibilities. Finances. Grocery shopping. And the laundry.
“She tells me not to put bleach in, instead of fabric softener,” he says. “I did that one time.”
Pat and John Stewart, both 74, laugh often.
One morning in January 2017, Pat woke up in bed and felt an odd tingling in her left arm.
She got up and set off for the kitchen to make herself a cup of tea. She made it down the hallway, where she collapsed with a thud. John ran to her side and called 911.
A stroke happens when blood stops flowing to the brain. Pat’s stroke affected her speech and the left side of her body. She couldn’t walk. Couldn’t talk. Couldn’t pick up something as simple as a hair brush.
Even after Pat was transferred to a different hospital for rehabilitation, John was scared.
“I thought she was going to die. I thought she would be paralyzed,” he says.
He pauses, then adds: “That she would not be my lady.”
John stayed with her every day, because in his words: “If we were at home, we’d be together. She’s done so much for me over
all our years of marriage.”
They played cards. He brought dill pickles from home because they were her favourite food. He was so helpful, the other women in Pat’s room started calling him The Butler.
And yet, John watched Pat in therapy struggle to print simple words. He worried they’d have to sell their house. And he was concerned because Pat, who had been a voracious reader, struggled to remember a single line of a story she had just read.
“I was at my wit’s end. I didn’t know which way was up. I was really shaken,” he says.
It was then that John met a group of stroke survivors and caregivers from Survivors of Stroke Niagara, a chapter of March of Dimes Canada. There is comfort in talking to someone who understands, says Bob Mahony, its chairperson, and stroke survivor.
John attended their meetings. Their volunteers visited Pat in the hospital. And slowly the weight of fear lifted from John. These days, the couple attends the monthly meetings to listen to a guest speaker, then separate into two groups — caregiver and survivors — to talk.
“They said, ‘You’re not alone. We’re here,’” says John.
“You form a bond with people going through the same problem,” he says.
The group has grown to some 170 members and celebrates its 10th anniversary in April.
They gather for an activity night every month and plan social events — dinners, boat cruises, shows — throughout the year.
Pat feeds off the positive attitudes of other survivors. It pushes her to take more steps, to go further every day. She’s organized her kitchen pantry and returned to making homemade spaghetti sauce from scratch.
“What will be, will be,” she says.
“We always say: faith, hope and love.”