Heart like a hole.
Head CT, May 2019. The white dot in the square shows the dead brain cells affected by the stroke.
It was a typical, sunny spring morning in Zürich. Awakened by the buzzing on my night table, I grabbed my phone and held it up, tracing the familiar pattern on the screen. And then it dropped. Right on my face. It’s a curious sensation—in one moment being able to grasp, to manipulate, to deftly swipe and type on this little machine, and in the next moment— disconnected.
A siren sounds different from the inside of an ambulance. It’s much less piercing than from the sidewalk. And there’s no doppler effect. It’s a constant background as the paramedic guides the needle into my vein, before I can even make a fist.
My left hand is cold. I know my left hand is cold because it feels cold when I touch it.
In hospital there was a lot of “can you move this, can you feel that, this might sting a little,” but as my stay wore on it was the boredom that got to me. My left hand—my fret hand—came alive again about a week after being admitted, but it would take another 20 days to find the hole in my heart that caused the stroke, and to repair it.
