KOCHI: On January 14, 2005, Lucy’s life changed forever. Her husband, James, a surgeon, suffered a stroke. There was a huge clot on the right side of the brain. “His left arm was paralysed,” she says. Lucy did not realise it then, but her husband’s career as a surgeon was over. Six years later, Lucy says, “Initially, I thought James would recover completely.But as time passed, this did not happen. I tried to adjust to the situation, but there have been moments of anger and frustration.”In her spare moments, she would hark back to the life they had before the stroke. “I would think about that many times a day,” says Lucy, who works as a nurse in a private hospital. “Now it is much less.” It was a happy carefree family. The couple had met in the Kottayam Medical College, fallen in love, and got married. They have two school-going girls. “We had a good life,” she says. “My mother-in-law stays with us and looks after the children. It enabled me to concentrate on my work.”But now the rhythm of their lives has changed completely. They have to forsake family outings, or social get togethers.“I feel angry with myself, because of my inability, sometimes, to accept the situation,” she says.What has affected the family dynamics is the change in James’s character, poststroke. “He has become anxious about everything,” saysLucy. “James always feels a sense of doom, as if something is going to happen to our children and myself. So, he restricts us from going out.”And when Lucy does go out, James calls her and asks insistently, “Where are you, where are you?’” Earlier, there would be more than a 100 calls a day. “Now it is much less,” she says. “I would get angry with him often.” Clearly, Lucy is under pressure now. “Yes, that is because I have to take the burden of shouldering the family now,” she says. Meanwhile, Margaret Panakal is just recovering from a shattering experience. At 1 pm on May 25, her 50-year-old husband, Fostin, drove a motorbike to the medical laboratory in Njarakkal, which he was running with the help of Margaret. A few minutes later, he suffered a paralysis of the hands and the legs. It was a stroke, although an initial MRI scan did not reveal any clot in the brain. “It takes about 48 to 72 hours for the clot to appear in a MRI scan,” says Dr Sasikumar, of the Kumar Centre for Stroke and Neuro Rehabilitation, at Vaduthala, Kochi, where Fostin is undergoing treatment.Initially, Fostin had a lapse of memory and could not recognise his wife and children, Noel, 18, and Niya, 15. “I wanted to die,” says Margaret. “I felt shattered.One moment, my husband was fine and the next moment, he did not know who we were.” But, over the past month, Fostin has gradually recovered the use of his arms and legs. But his memory is still fragile. So a therapist is showing him photos of fruits, and saying, “A for Apple, B for Banana.” It is an unnerving sight. Says Kumar, “A stroke comes into the brain like a thief.”However, over the past weeks, as her husband began to make steady progress, Margaret’s hopes have soared. “I know that there will not be a full recovery, but I am happy at the improvement he has made so far,” she says. So far, the family has spent `1 lakh. And Fostin has been lucky that his uncles in the USA and Canada have helped him financially.At the rehabilitation centre, Fostin receives electrical stimulation, which is directed at the brain and legs. There is also speech, physio, play and music therapy, apart from weight training. As she recalls the events, suddenly, it becomes overwhelming, and Margaret bursts into tears. Soon, her body is wracked by sobs. A few minutes pass in silence. Finally, she wipes away the tears with the back of her hand, and says, “I pray to God that such a calamity does not happen to another person.” Unfortunately, as life becomes stressful, such tragic stories are becoming common. Families get devastated as the bread-winner loses control of his mind and limbs, and becomes a vegetable.(Some names have been changed)
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