The morning routine is the worst. First, I wake and take it takes about a quarter hour to get my bearings, to realize, yes, this is my body, and yes, you have to go through the day in this.

Then comes the daily washing, opening the shades, really waking up. After that comes the morning pills. I have about ten medicines I must take every morning, and though usually there are no incidents, lately it’s been an effort swallowing them. Last week, one of the pills, for no reason that I can specify, went down my windpipe and I started choking. It was horrible. For I don’t know how long, it was probably only seconds but it felt much longer, I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. I coughed extremely hard but the pill was stuck in my throat and wouldn’t come out or go in, and all the time I was suffocating and my body begging for air. Finally the pill was back in my mouth, but my throat was in pain and it took me a while to recover from the shock.

This was just some minutes after waking up. Can you imagine going through the rest of the day in such a state as I was left afterwards? I’ve been thinking about it and the problem, apart from the horrible experience itself, is that it comes without any warning. I wasn’t especially tired, or sleepy and there were no pink elephants flying around holding signs that said “watch out for the pill.” It just happened, and I have to be on the constant watch for these things to happen. It’s exhausting. And it doesn’t quite work. No matter how careful I am, something always gets through. Something always happens, but it’s no small, ignorable thing. The pill episode was very frightening. Since that day, I find myself thinking every morning that I take my pills whether it may happen again. I’m very scared.

After the pills it’s time to eat breakfast, but before that starts I have to drink the nauseous iron tonic that tastes like blood. It really is excruciatingly disgusting. Half a shot before every meal. As if it weren’t hard enough to eat, food is now preceded by this liquid piece of hell.

I sip the half shot, and with luck I won’t cough. Then comes breakfast. No, I’m not hungry because I’ve been having my dietary supplements all night. I seem to remember people eat when they’re hungry, but not me. I eat because it’s time to eat. Again I have to be careful not to choke, though it happens less and less with food (but it does happen, and it does feel rotten). I have to be careful that I don’t put too much food in my mouth and that it’s properly chewed before trying to swallow.

I wouldn’t say I don’t enjoy food, but think what it’s like analysing every bite : I say it takes away something like 70% of food enjoyment.

As far as Mexican food goes, it’s not a very ‘Mexican’ sort of dish. There’s a reason for this. Pachuca and the area around it are silver mining towns and there was a large influx of Cornish miners in the 18th century. With them came the Cornish pasty, which is the forebear of the paste. My great grandmother was married to ‘an Englishman’, who might well have been Cornish (I didn’t meet him, only my great grandmother). So the ingredients are originally Cornish, not the usual Mexican mix.

When I lived in Cardiff (Wales) there used to be a Cornish pasty shop in the city center close to the university and once in a while I used to buy a pasty there for lunch. It was the same, except the pastes have been ‘Mexicanized’ and along with the traditional filling (of course) hot pepper has been added. Later a Mexican restaurant appeared in town, but before that it was strange that the only place I could get ‘Mexican’ food was at the Cornish pasty takeaway.

Once a British friend saw me buy pasties and he asked what was up, so I told him the story of how they had always been a family dish for me. His own family was from Cornwall and he didn’t quite believe me. So when he got to his office he looked it up online and there popped up a story of how (then) Prince Charles had been to Mexico to attend some pasty festival. The next day my friend told me he had seen the page and that indeed he had learnt something new.

Browsing through the bookstore was more challenging than I expected. The last time I was there was before the dizziness started, and I remember being able to stand and look at the tables without much problem. This time I was in a wheelchair and browsing was a bit of a pain.

There’s something I hate about Mexican book stores and it’s that they’re organized by shelves with the older books, and the newer stuff is in tables set up by publisher. It makes no sense as a reader, though they’re not really catering to readers. I guess there must be some financial logic to it, but I hate it and it’s only in Mexico that I’ve seen it.

After choosing a couple of books we went to the café that’s located at the back of the shop. When we got there there was a guy who was moving things around and he helped us get in our seat. I’m not sure how, but suddenly he took out a notebook and he started showing me a bunch of drawings that he had made. They were ok, and he asked me if I’d like to paint something.

Honestly, I was afraid. But I said to myself, “just try.” I ordered a latté and a cookie and when I had finished them I grabbed the notebook and a marker he had left and just tried to paint what I saw: the coffee mug plus a few things that were on the table.

I knew things wouldn’t come out as they did. I know because my right hand still shakes a lot no matter what I do. But the experiment came out surprisingly well. Yes, my right hand shook and I know what I drew was not exactly what I saw but it was close enough.

I always used to think seeing was the skill you developed most as a painter and that the rest, actually painting, the hand movement, was secondary. Now that the hand movement is not quite there I appreciate it some more.

I drew something. I never thought this would be possible.

There’s still some tea implements left but they’re all packed away in boxes in San Miguel de Allende. I think somewhere there’s still a clay pot, but certainly the best one was the one I had in the Netherlands, and the same goes for the oolong tea. I’d kept it for many years because it matures as it ages and it (obviously) increases in price. The “brick” I had must have been worth a pretty penny, and it was delicious. You could brew the leaves six or seven times and they were still very fragrant and tasty.

I also lost some commercial but still yummy French teas that I used to order online.

I’m not sure of why I thought of tea today but I could really use a cup right now. The last few days I’ve not felt very good with very low blood pressure and a general sense of tiredness. Today I’m a bit better, though my pressure was low again this morning.

I’ve added quite a bit of salt to my diet and that has helped to raise the blood pressure a bit, though it’ll be one to three months until my body is again normal. We talked to the surgeon who was going to do the reconnection surgery and that has been postponed until I’m well. He said it was too risky to do the surgery in my condition, which I have to agree with.

I feel rather bad about not being able to do my normal routine. I realise now that my body needs rest, so I’ve been listening, but being in bed on top of everything is challenging for me.

Being thirsty as hell because of the salt has had one advantage: I’ve been forced to drink water more often and it has caused less of a coughing fit. This has been strange because on the other hand things that were more or less stable are causing some issues. This morning as I was swallowing my dose of morning pills, one entered my windpipe and made me start coughing horribly, horribly. This had happened before but with just a few coughs the pill had returned to my mouth. It took significantly longer this time and it left me drained of energy.

I make it sound trivial, ‘I coughed’, but it’s not. It’s the whole body rejecting a pill that has gone down the wrong pipe. I wretch and writhe and feel as if I’m drowning (I am) and I can’t breathe and my windpipe is blocked. It’s scary and painful and feels for a moment like I’m dying, choking. When the pill finally comes back out it leaves me shaking because of the physical struggle.

This is what I have to watch out for every time I put something, anything, in my mouth.

Enjoy lunch.

Today has been a strange day. I’ve felt a mix of weakness plus ‘normal’ (non-weakness) all day. I’ve been trying to keep calm and sleep. When it was time to eat I first downed a tonic that made me very nauseous because of its bad taste, so I decided not to eat. This has been my life this week: trying to balance my weakness with the need to do things and get better.

In the evening I had a video call from Brazil with my favorite person in the world. She goes by the weird name Scrappy Oncinha, probably given to her by some equally weird person. It made me very happy to see her. Very.

If I trace the little details, minus a couple of months around the stroke, I can see how that turned into who I am right now. But just looking at me then and looking at me now, as if a stranger, one could hardly be blamed if the connection between the two figures were hard to imagine.

In fact, if it were possible to put me inside one of those children’s “find the similarities” activity-book games, it would be terribly difficult to find any similarities between the now-me and the then-me.

It’s really ‘inside my head’ that I’m the same person in any meaningful sense. And this is where it really gets tricky, because I’m not really the same person inside my head. This is all very confusing. I need to take on trust that I’m the person that had a stroke and was unconscious for about two months. Yes, there are people around me that confirm the story, but essentially I’m running blind here.

I don’t know if what I’m writing makes any sense. If not, it doesn’t really matter.

I have made peace with the fact that I will probably never remember anything in the week prior and the month after the stroke, but this is the first time (there may be others) that I’ve forgotten something outside of that window.

This is not something that I would have taken lightly or fleetingly and I could have forgotten casually. Yet reading it, I was surprised that yes, it came out of my head.

Of course, in my psychology course we’ve touched upon how traumatic events can lead to memory loss, and the effect this has on the individual. Well I’m now living it. While reading a copy of the message it was a weird feeling of “this is me” yet at the same time “this is not me”.

It was a similar feeling when I saw a sketch I had made a few days before the stroke. I remember being in the place (the national museum in Brasilia), but I don’t remember doing the sketch and in my mind it was altogether a different trip. The timeline, my timeline, is all jumbled up yet I remember it very vividly. I have the photos on my phone of the visit, and for months I had put them on a different timeline, until I saw the sketch and then checked the timestamp on the photos. There was no doubt that my brain had made up a story to fit the facts, but I had the facts all jumbled up.

It is now I’m realising that these are actually the last memories I have before the stroke. I’m glad these are my last memories. They include an afternoon spent with a person I deeply cherish.

I wouldn’t have spent it with anyone else.

Of the dizziness I won’t even speak any more. It has more or less always followed the same pattern; the more tired I am, it gets worse.

I’m doing my best to lead a ‘normal’ life and stick to my routines but it’s really hard. It feels like most of the time I’m just trying to survive rather than really living.

Today I watched the last class from my psychology diploma on trauma. Ah, I think I hadn’t mentioned it here, but I’m doing an online course on psychology and trauma.

Many years ago (more than twenty) I was studying an undergraduate degree in psychology, which I left because I was simultaneously doing my physics undergrad. When I finished physics, I had to choose between doing a Masters in philosophy of science (which was full-time) or continuing with psychology. I chose the former.

I had planned to go and finish my undergrad after the stroke, but one of my psychology friends told me it was not worth the effort and instead I should take this online course. The advantage in terms of mobility were clear, so I did, and I am very much enjoying it. It focuses on complex trauma but there are all sorts of things related to psychology that enter into play throughout the classes. Given my condition (not being able to talk quite well) it’s a bit challenging, but so far so good.

Sema

For her there are no lines or shapes,

There’s only colour, tone and hue.

Where you and I see dancing waves

She only sees pulsating blue.

And thus since childhood has she seen

Or not, depending on your view

But at this lack of skill she’s been

Transformed into a visionary true.

Because she’s not encumbered by

The vortex of complexity

She goes beyond where mortal eye

Has ever been or hopes to be.

The fallen snow becomes a bright

Field of tranquillity;

The falling snow a curtain white

Epiphany of eternity.

The rooms were wedge-shaped, all viewed from the nurses’ station and had limited visitation hours and numbers. The wall facing the station was all glass to enable the nurses to look at patients 24/7.

I had a lot of time to think. A lot. There was a TV in the room which I did not watch (partly because I did not have my glasses with me) so there was nothing else to do but read an think.

The first day I was very tired. I mostly slept and drifted from a kind of stupor to a heavy-eyed waking state. I don’t remember much. At night, I found the lights outside (coming in through the clear wall) very annoying, but I was too tired to care.

The second day I was more conscious of my surroundings, and the more I thought about it, the more that IT seemed like a prison: the nurses remained ever-vigilant that rules were complied with (they had prohibited me from drinking water, for example, after I coughed a bit and my oxygen-levels dipped) and reacted quickly to any changes in the markers they considered important.

The room layout reminded me of Bentham’s panopticon and Foucault’s discussion of how the architectural institutional set-up is used (alongside other technological means) to exert control over the inmate. Indeed, visually it was very obvious but patients are also continuously monitored by other means. Every patient wears a puff-up device which every twenty minutes or so reads their blood pressure. There’s also a gadget that clips onto your finger and gives a reading of heartbeat that is sent continuously to the nursing station.

It’s true that these devices give critical insight into patients’ health, but they are also a means to control what the patients can/should do. Take the annoying lights. A patient’s comfort is severely impaired by them, but that is secondary to what is the main purpose at the ITU: to keep the patient alive and within the range of markers considered healthy by a group of doctors.

It doesn’t matter that a patient may not be able to sleep. That person is alive. End of story.

The last day I spent in a normal room, and there it was completely different. The nurses still monitor you every certain period (needle pricks at dawn, fun!) , but otherwise remain unseen. You sleep in a normal hospital bed, are allowed visits all the time, can control the lighting, etc.

Yeah, lots of free time.

Actually, I don’t know how to feel. This morning I began to cry for no good reason, probably because I’m taking a sort of syrup to raise my iron levels and the smell, the taste, reminded me of blood. I know that the danger has passed. I know it with my head, and I know that my body will take a bit longer to heal. I know it, but knowing it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference.

I’m better, but still very weak. It’s hard to speak. It’s hard to walk. Even the tiniest effort makes me tired. Both my arms hurt because of the number of times I was injected at the hospital. They have a nice emerald color that’s there as a reminder.

Though it should feel like back to ‘normal’ now, it’s also hard to feel glad of coming back to this half-broken body. I didn’t want to die, yet this life is, if anything, disappointing.

I didn’t really do anything (consciously) to survive the weekend. I just lived through it as I’ve lived through everything else that has happened to me.

This ambiguity is very stressing.

The surgery was quick. In-and-out of it in under forty minutes. The new feeding tube is a different model that’s much less complicated and would give me much more freedom. I came out of the operating theatre and my mom and aunt were waiting for me. They’d gone to have a coffee while waiting for me to come out and had brought back pastry rolls. I had a roll, it had some sort of jam, which was good since I hadn’t eaten anything in a day as a preparation for the colonoscopy.

Everything was fine. Quiet. We went back home in a very uneventful trip.

Once home I wasn’t feeling hungry enough to eat, which seemed normal after the operation, so I laid down a bit. Then all of a sudden I felt very queasy. I’ve only vomited a few times in my life and it’s always preceded by the same feeling: a bubbly mouth. I knew I was going to throw up. The nurse rushed for the bed pan and it arrived just in time.

I threw up blood. Lots of it. The bed pan was full of a dark, almost black mess. The taste of it in my mouth was strong. I finished and started feeling (I thought) like I was going to faint. Fortunately I didn’t, but I began to have very bad cold shivering. Very bad. Something was very wrong.

I kept on feeling bad so my mom called the doctor that had done the procedures in the morning. She hadn’t sliced through any tissue, and the color of the blood (deep black) was ‘wrong’. She thought it could be dehydration so she recommended we wait it out and she’d do a home visit later to check back on me.

I kept feeling very queasy and every hour or so I’d again get agitated. I felt full, like I’d had lots to eat, and the chills were getting worse. Once when the nurse and my mom came to check on me I completely lost contact with reality for some seconds. All I remember was feeling intensely nauseous and being on my bed shivering, and then I drifted into a dream-like state and suddenly heard my nurse as if at a distance asking if I was ok. They said my face was horrible, my pupils dilated and that I was like that for minutes (to me they were seconds). That’s when I began to feel scared. The nausea was very bad. The shivers were horrid, like a mix between simultaneous extreme hot and cold.

I tried to sleep but the nausea plus the sweat left me very disturbed. The doctor arrived sometime later, and was very upset, since the amount of blood was very high. She recommended they give me some quick IV hydration that calmed me down and let me at least calm down to sleep. She couldn’t think of how the blood could be connected to the surgery, but somehow it had to be. Once I quieted down she left me and asked to be updated.

Some hours later, the shivering started again. It was the same pattern: extreme hot/cold followed by nausea followed by me spacing out. The bed was wet with my sweat. I remember the room smelled of adrenaline, me with it.

That’s how we spent the whole night and I remember my mom still asking me if I could walk down the stairs to take an Uber to the hospital, to which I said yes.

The next hours are a kind of haze. My mom called my gastroenterologist uncle and he said we should ask for an ambulance to the hospital. Normally I would have been against it, but I knew something was very wrong. Plus I was too tired to complain.

The ambulance arrived. This part is a mess. I remember that they strapped me to a sort of chair to take me down the stairs but I don’t remember the trip itself. One of my uncles had also arrived. Once down the stairs they put me on a trolley and inside the ambulance. It’s all very hazy in my head. The nurse got into the ambulance with me and we set off.

Being strapped down inside the ambulance, I thought it was a bit over the top. The paramedic was trying to inject something and I could only see glimpses of where we were through the windows. The stop-go motion made me very queasy. Then I began to throw up blood again. Lots of blood. There were also huge clots of blood amongst it and I then knew this was serious. The paramedic and the nurse were still trying to inject something and I have images of her blood-stained hand trying to help. I remember thinking: this is it. Death. I’m not going to make it to the hospital.

Stop. Go. A constant jerking motion and the paramedic complaining that now he’d have to clean the ambulance. Stop. Go. I’d vomited all over my left-hand side.

We finally arrived at the hospital and I was rushed into the ER. The floor was messy with blood. They tore off my clothes and the rest is a jumble of images. They cleaned me up and doctors came and went, sticking me with needles and connecting various tubes. At some point they put a tube inside my penis which hurt a lot.

Things then quieted down and I was left waiting. After some time my mom finally came to see me and said that things were ok, and I was going to have a gastroscopy. My doctor also went to see me and assured me everything was then fine.

The gastroscopy was done. Somehow (we’re still not sure exactly how) two veins in my stomach had been torn, and they had already been clamped down.

I had been bleeding into my stomach. I lost more than half of my blood. A few more minutes and I’d have died.

So how was your weekend?

The reconnection’s drawing ever closer and it’s just a matter of weeks before it happens.

I’m finishing the second book (of five) of Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (The Restaurant at the End of the Universe) and I am wondering whether I’ll finish all five. Frankly, I don’t see the point. It’s funny, yeah, but the story is only a background (an excuse) for the funny/witty dialogue.

It reminds me of the channel Dave I used to watch in the UK, with reruns of old programs and game shows with (locally) famous Brit humorists showing how funny they are. It’s like a concentrated version of that, but as far as what happens to the characters, I couldn’t care less. There will be some outlandish funny twist and the characters will go on saying funny jokes and so on.

Five books of the same? Tough sell.

The trip was nice but exhausting for me. We went to have (late) breakfast and since I didn’t take a wheelchair (I guessed, correctly, that the streets would be impossible to navigate; the sidewalks are simply too narrow for a wheelchair) the walk from the car to the restaurant was already exhausting.

I had some enchiladas de mole which were quite tasty. For drink I had a café de olla and I didn’t cough at all. It would have been nice to have a stroll about, but honestly walking is very difficult for me and I was way too tired.

I rested my legs by sitting in the main plaza while my therapist went to get an ice cream at the famous Tepoznieves. I had a tropical fruit flavoured one which was quite good. We sat in the plaza eating the ice cream and then we started to make our way back.

It was a short trip but lots of fun.

The enchiladas de mole reminded me of when I was doing my PhD and I invited a Brazilian colleague and his wife for dinner. At that time I was going out with an Indian girl who also liked very spicy food. I wanted my colleague to try mole (I had a bit I’d brought from Mexico) so I ‘fixed’ it, supposing that they’d find it spicy. I added more chocolate and sour cream and made it extra-mild, fit (I thought) for a small child. The dinner started, it was all good fun, and I remember we had put out a pitcher of water. Mid dinner my colleague and his wife rush to drink water and tell me it was a good but real spicy dish!

The second one was Vladimir, a borzoi I had since he was little. He behaved just like if he was Russian royalty, and liked to bite the schnauzer on the tail.

They lived together and got along well. They were very different. The schnauzer was moody, rough, loud and not particularly intelligent, while the borzoi was suave, very quiet and you looked at his eyes and you could almost hear him calling you “idiot peasant”.

I used to go to Coyoacán and sit in cafés with both of them. They drew plenty of gazes (they were both quite large). When people saw Vladimir they more than once said “look at the cow/camel” (he was black and white).

Windchen died of skin cancer and soon thereafter someone told me that there was another dog for adoption, a bouvier des Flandres. I had always wanted a dog like this, and the breed’s character is similar to the schnauzer (physically they’re also similar) so we adopted him. He had a horrible name, so I renamed him Utka, which is Sanskirt for “eager”.

He was very scaredy but got along with Vladimir very well (it was lucky; he hated big dogs and often got into very bad fights). Vladimir was put to sleep when he was ten and some years after that I started with my first prolonged stay abroad. My mother moved to an apartment where she couldn’t have dogs so Utka had to move with another family. And that was the end of my story with dogs.

Windchen, Toby (belonging to an uncle) and Vladimir.

So let’s give it another go.

Imagine your standing on a very small and crumbling ledge. You’re up up high. You look down at your feet which are trying to stand on the ledge and you see the huge void beneath you. It calls you, much as you try to ignore it’s there. You’re asked to walk across the ledge, knowing that any wrong move might make you fall. The ledge is uneven, Sometimes when you take a step you can feel the ledge you took off from fall away into the void and you hear the bit fall and hit the floor. That falling bit, you realize, could have been you.

Now imagine the same, but with your eyes closed.

That’s what ‘dizziness’ means for me. It’s not just the sensation itself, but also a growing fear of… yes falling, but it’s more than that.

My mom recently fell down the stairs and, though fortunately she didn’t break any bones, she does have some nasty and very painful hits. I can only imagine what would happen to me.

I go up and down those very same stairs a few times per week, certainly every time I go out. The last times I was shaking with fear, holding on to the rails desperately. When will my hold fail me? I don’t know. As of now it hasn’t failed me, but I have been sure of things before and see where I am now.

Once I was home, I looked up how to get in touch and sent an email to his publishing agent. McEwan often uses scientific characters in his novels and in Saturday he shadowed a surgeon for quite a while to get his character spot on, which was close to what I was doing for my PhD, so the interview seemed particularly relevant.

To my surprise, some days later he replied, saying that if I was ever in London I should drop him an email and he should be able to find some free time.

I planned a trip to London and wrote to him again and he gave me his home address and told me to come one evening. By then I had of course read several of his books and researched about the Saturday episode. He had indeed so far as to have submitted a fake paper to a peer reviewed journal as a result of having shadowed the brain surgeon.

Being a very famous writer of course has its privileges: the address was in central London in a very chic neighborhood, with a lot of the buildings having the famous blue plaques. Once I found the house I was early, so I walked around the block, completely in awe of the people that had lived there and whose names were on the blue plaques. Looking at the skyline I also realized that it was the same skyline as was in my copy of Saturday. Finally the hour arrived and I made my way to his home. I knocked and he opened the door in his pijamas.

He was super easy going and though the interview was not as I expected (I thought he’d tell me how he’d shadowed a physicist, and surprise! He hadn’t.) He did give me some very useful names. A physicist from Cambridge had helped him write an acceptance speech the character gives. I sought out the guy and met him in Cambridge, which was a very good interview and it also led me to interview other physicists there.

The whole thing was a bit strange and I presented my results at our usual Friday research seminar. My supervisors were surprised. One of the researchers there said to me that McEwan was his favorite writer.

Just a memory…

I didn’t cough with the coffee. I ‘discovered’ a new muscle in my throat. It may have been the coffee’s foam or it may be the therapy, but suddenly it ‘clicked’ that there was some part of my throat that suddenly felt alive, and that I wasn’t conscious of before. It part of the soft palate, I think, which we’ve worked out in therapy, but is still weak. It’s strange, to suddenly realize that I have a muscle that has caused me so much difficulty (the soft palate is crucial for swallowing).

It has been easier to swallow water since that day, when I focus and activate that muscle. I still cough but it’s noticeably less. I still haven’t quite gotten used to it, as I’m still very afraid that I’ll swallow (water) and start coughing. I know in my head it’s much less likely to happen, but I’m still afraid.

I don’t remember anything until about a month after it, but I also lost all memories from the week before. I don’t even remember flying to the Netherlands and seeing colleagues there (I now I met them only because they told me about it). My very last memories are of me overlooking Bute Park in Cardiff (Wales), where I had gone to work on a paper with my PhD supervisor. I don’t even remember waking up and going to the airport (I know I must have, to get to The Netherlands). After that, the next memory I have (a bit groggy) is of me being in the hospital in Mexico. I have some loose memories from Brazil, but they’re all jumbled, from before the stroke. The timeline is all wrong and I only realised they were from my last trip because I saw them on my phone and the pictures have the ‘wrong’ timestamp. I swore it was from another trip to Brazil!

The neurologists say I may never get these memories back, which is just as well, because it was a very difficult and painful period (so I’m told). But it’s strange to have a complete chunk of my life gone. It’s like I know exactly where I was in June, then there’s a huge blank, and next thing I know my life has completely changed, I have completely changed, my world has completely changed.