As I sat in Starbucks this afternoon struggling to write an eagle-worthy post, the guy across from me set his cup down a bit too hard and launched a spray of foam my way. He was mortified, but I assured him it was not a problem, even though a big white creamy blob landed right on my leg, and another on the edge of my laptop. Bird poop, was all I could think. Eagle excrement. My story was downright shitty, and I needed to move on. Things happen for a reason.
Which is exactly what I had told an acquaintance from my yoga class the other day. We were in my car; I was driving her home because she still had not received the go-ahead from her doctor to drive after having suffered a stroke several months earlier. I hadn't seen her in, well, several months, but I had assumed that was due more to my erratic attendance than her having a near death experience.
A few years younger than I -- which means her age starts with a "4," which in my mind now means someone is barely out of diapers, although I guess I shouldn't joke about that when I'm telling you the story of a young woman who suffered a stroke -- she is active, fit, bright, and incredibly nice. Though she hasn't practiced her trade in a while, she is a gynecologist, which is particularly interesting because the stroke she suffered resulted from a device that gynecologists routinely offer up to pre-menopausal women to curtail bleeding. The device carries with it a three per cent risk of stroke. Just as I was surprised, as a kid, to learn that my dentist's kids had lots of cavities, just as I was surprised, in my thirties, when an obstetrician friend miscarried twins in her third trimester, I was a bit taken aback to hear this woman's story.
The more she told me, the more I became convinced that this had happened to her for a reason. And I told her so; even suggested she enter the world of blogging. As it turns out, her brain is still a little too addled for blogging (not that that would ever stop me), but she has been journaling her progress, and has actually come to refer to her affliction as her "stroke of luck." Well put that in your pipe and smoke it, all you pity party throwers out there. Oops, there I go, talking to myself again.
There's no denying that a forty-something mother of three having a stroke sucks; but here's where the glass looks much more than half full. Her husband is a neurologist. He does this stroke stuff for a living. So when symptoms that none of the rest of us mere mortals would have thought twice about started occurring, he insisted on taking her to the emergency room. Within a half hour of their arrival, she started to seize, but by then, her husband the Jewish doctor (maybe I should have listened to my mom) had gathered together all sorts of emergency personnel and she was intubated and ready for surgery. Half full my ass; that glass was overflowing.
At the time this happened, she was also involved in researching non-traditional forms of treatment for stroke and age-related illnesses. Weird. And she had just gotten out from behind the wheel of her car; she and her husband had been driving their daughter to college. Again, weird. And, because she won't be able to drive until December, she has been forced to walk almost everywhere, which has enabled her to notice the magnificence of the world around her in a way she never has before. And, it's been the warmest autumn in recent memory. So weird. So lucky.
She is expected to make a full recovery, and I hope, when she does, she'll share the story of her "stroke of luck." Things do happen for a reason, and when an articulate gynecologist married to a neurologist suffers a stroke related to a gynecological device while she is involved in researching alternative treatments for stroke victims and, happily, not driving, I don't think she's crazy at all for referring to what happened to her as a "stroke of luck." Good luck, that is.
And even though the guy in Starbucks who accidentally spritzed me with faux eagle poop looked at me kind of funny when I told him the mishap clearly happened for a reason because I had been writing a shitty story about birds, I think if I had taken the time to explain to him how it made me think about the "stroke of luck," he might understand. Or maybe not. After all, his cup had runneth over, and he thought it was a bad thing.
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