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Stroke Trek - Chapter 6
The Journey Ends
November 2000
And so now the journey has ended. Yes, I am now back home in the United States. Happy to be surrounded by family and friends. Happy to have conveniences, simple conveniences at hand. Close to seven months on the roads of Asia have supplied me with a wealth of experiences. The road, once again, has introduced me to faces that could have been easily overlooked, passed by, blurred by the natural speed that seems to be everyday life.
A tea man in the humid back streets of Rangoon, Burma. A family on the northern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in western China. Two families in towns where turquoise tiles dance across walls into the skies above Uzbekistan. And a man with a voice and a breath that navigates its way to the very marrow of our being in Istanbul, Turkey. These are the human beings that I met on this journey. Yes, human beings; surviving, fighting, questioning and debating human beings in societies and cultures most of us could never imagine.
This event happened in July and to me has many meanings in regards to stroke....
In the Central Plains of Mongolia, our jeep bounced along the tire tracks with Lake Ogi Nuur as our target destination. The plains of Mongolia have many different shapes and curves, depths and lines as well as sensations, feelings and emotions. And on our way over the velvety green grass, where an occasional herd of camels or horses or goats grazed, our driver, Gana, lost his sense of direction. He stopped the jeep. Looking from one side to the next, squinting ahead in the distances, searching for a recognizable landmark (an odd shaped rock or unusually curvy hill), we saw a small ant-like figure so far ahead in the distance it merely looked like a black dot on the green grass running all the way to the horizon. "Maybe he'll know," Gana's expression spoke.
Larger and larger the object became as we grew closer and closer. And with the ever decreasing distance, I could see the figure's body swaying back and forth, left and right, with every new step.
Mongolia: a place where the words, space and solitude, openness and silence, write themselves out in your head as you watch one day pass into another. If people consider the word, foreign, to simply mean (far away) Mongolia and the people who live there couldn't be more foreign. At least that is what I thought, until this moment on this one day in the July of 2000.
As we approached the man, I could see the space of grass in between his legs as they moved. I could see his head move from side to side and I could also see three other features of this man. A locked right arm at a 60 degree angle, a third leg, being his can and an outward swinging of his right leg. And then we, the jeep, met with him. I couldn't and didn't day anything, as Gana asked this man, this human being, this survivor, for directions. He pointed us in the right direction and five minutes later he was once again a speck against that of the green hills of Mongolia.
I look back at this moment and think of how this unknown man with out a name, represents so much to me. So much about stroke survivors. So much about stroke. I didn't have the opportunity to sit, look into his eyes and listen to this man tell me his story, but in many ways, like most of Mongolia, my imagination spoke for him.
Are we in the West lucky? My answer, in light of all of the worlds we have individually created for ourselves...Yes! And from what I have seen in the eyes of those I met in the world during the past 7 months, they, too, are lucky.
Stroke: A sudden loss of brain function caused by a blockage or rupture of a blood vessel to the brain, characterized by loss of muscular control, diminution or loss of sensation or consciousness, dizziness, slurred speech, or other symptoms that vary with the extent and severity of the damage to the brain. Also called cerebral accident, cerebrovascular accident.
Misunderstood: Incorrectly understood or interpreted. Not appreciated or given sympathetic understanding
Disabled: Impaired, as in physical functioning
Suppress: To restrain from a usual course or action, to inhibit the growth or development of
Survivor: One who lives through affliction
5 words that completely relate to all of these people I've met, as well as those millions elsewhere in the world, in the U.S., in the West, who have been impacted, affected, and tested by this thing called in English: a Stroke.
Yes, you Survivors, are everywhere in this world! We hear of celebrities, politicians, so-and-sos, etc, who have had strokes. The public hears of new drugs that help curb the effects of a stroke. They might even know what happens to a person when a stroke occurs. But do people really know what happens to a man's, woman's, family's life after that stroke?
The public seems to be sufficiently educated on many diseases and illnesses. Diseases that, when diagnosed, can lead to disability in the future, and, yes, can even be prevented. Diseases that can be fought with medicines and treatments, bringing the inflicted back to a recognizable and familiar lifestyle.
A stroke. Do people know that this is something where, most of the time, the unfortunate will live out his/her/their lives with an untreatable, incurable and unwanted disability? I don't think so.
Disabilities, for most, represent something physical. Disability, for me, specifically after meeting those on this trip, represent something within all of us that can never be repaired, let me say...rehabilitated. Emotional Disability, makes us question our value in this life, and to me, a stroke results in an emotional disability that, right now, the public has no concept of.
Can all of us help to educate the public of these disabilities, so the Realities can be understood? So that all of you Survivors can be understood? I know I will, in one way or another, continue to try.
©Greg Constantine, available at www.strokesafe.org with the author's permission. For inquiries or reprint permission, contact gregc@strokesafe.org.
