A MAN AND HIS CAR ARE REBORN
Journeyman boilermaker Pat Bell was levelled by his first stroke in 1996 at the age of 36. He died en route to hospital but was revived by paramedics.
He came back from paralysis learning to walk and talk all over again in his long road to recovery. He subsequently went back to work installing and maintaining boilers in pulp mills all over B.C.
But life dealt him another tough blow when he collapsed in 2011 as he and his wife were moving into their new home in Chilliwack. Pat fell ill and ended up in a coma for 11 days.
When he awoke, he had lost 50 pounds and had difficulty communicating, as his voice was just a whisper.
Three days later, he was released from hospital and had just been home for 24 hours when he suffered a second stroke. He was in a coma for four days and when he awoke he was unable to speak, move his right side or do anything for himself.
That was seven years ago and Bell has written a manuscript on his fight to gain back quality of life. His major lifetime interest has been working on cars. His lightly customized and performance enhanced 1983 Chevrolet Malibu station wagon was his pride and joy. But since he was unable to drive, the car remained parked in the driveway and was gradually covered with a thick coat of pitch from a balsam fir tree. He managed to clean all the pitch off and get the car back on the road for another three years.
During rehabilitation, a major victory was walking a few steps unaided. After seven weeks, he could move his right thumb. It would be three months before he could lift his right arm. The recovery was excruciating and he would not regain full use of his right arm and hand.
Colleen, Bell’s wife of 38 years, was involved in his recovery during every step along the way.
Every September, each member of the Stroke Recovery Association of B.C. support group Bell had joined sets goals for the next year. Bell wrote that he was going to restore his Malibu station wagon and do as much of the work himself that was possible given his disability.
To illustrate how difficult that would be, Bell recalls installing a new water pump in his truck — a job that would normally take 90 minutes. Instead, it took him almost 40 hours over four days to complete the job.
“I found I couldn’t pick anything up from the floor — I was about one foot short to the ground. When I dropped a bolt, I had to fall over to get it. I finally managed to hold onto the bolt and then I had to get up. That took 45 minutes working in the driveway in the pouring rain. But I did it.”
Bell determined that the body on his cherished wagon was beyond economical repair. A fellow enthusiast gave him a similar car with a better body that had been abandoned in blackberry bushes.
Bell set about transplanting all the good parts from the Malibu, including engine and transmission, to the new car.
He stripped the car down to the frame in his driveway and then erected a portable garage so he could continue the work during winter months to make one good car out of two. He worked on the car seven days a week overcoming challenge after challenge without the full use of his right arm and hand.
“The car has so many parts that, to a rehab physiotherapist, the restoration will seem as if in a dream. Well, that kind of puts it over the top. But, when you break it down, there are so many things that are hard to do and I will do them,” Bell wrote in his journal before he tackled the work. “Sitting, laying or kneeling on the ground using my leg or foot, using my arm and hand to the whole range of movements to use tools, use my head and try to remember. The car will be the new car.”
He did all the work on the car himself apart from wrestling the hood into place and the paint job.
Bell has mobility issues and expressive aphasia — which means he has some difficulty expressing himself, explains Anna Markey, program co-ordinator with the Chilliwack and Abbotsford Stroke Recovery Association.
“It was a monumental challenge for him to restore his car. His recovery and all the work he did on the car are amazing.”
She says the two flaming 8-ball decals that Bell displays on the back windows of his car exemplify his recovery.
“When Pat was in hospital after his second stroke, he was in a wheelchair and told that he might not walk again. His friends and family promised that they would do everything they could to help him regain his mobility.
“His brother Kelly bought him these decals and promised to put them on his cane, when he got up and was walking again. Pat was confident that, not only would he get up and walk, but that he would eventually have no need for a walker or a cane.
“He kept the decals for almost four years. Indeed, he now walks independently without the use of a mobility device and displays the decals on his car as a tribute to his determination and resiliency.”
Bell explains with slow and measured speech how important the
restoration of his car was to his recovery.
He now volunteers at the same stroke recovery group he once was a part of, and brought the car he completely restored to show group members what can be done with grit and determination.
“If you are down, I’ve been there,” he tells stroke survivors.
Bell will exhibit his car at the Art After Stroke event at the Roundhouse Gallery in Vancouver on Oct. 25.