EP 124 - The Friend at the End (Reprise) - Part II Titelbild

EP 124 - The Friend at the End (Reprise) - Part II

EP 124 - The Friend at the End (Reprise) - Part II

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 (Reprise Episode) This episode is the second in a series of excerpts from my upcoming book, "The Friend at the End," which tells the story of the major stroke that I suffered in 2011. As the first episode began, I was 62 years old, at a wonderful stage in my life, with everything safe and secure. It was the Saturday of Memorial Day weekend and I was looking forward to the summer, which was just over the horizon. But when I had gone down to the pool at our condo, after a short while, I started feeling a little nauseous. Soon after, an unusual and disturbing white light appeared in my upper left peripheral vision. At first, I thought the light was coming from somewhere on the outside, but I soon realized that it was coming from within me, which was extremely alarming. So, that marked the end of the first episode, now the story continues… In reality, vision impairment is a classic symptom of a stroke, but I just didn't know that at the time. If I had, I would have dropped everything and gone straight to the emergency room. But I didn't have that information. That's the real Catch-22 when it comes to knowledge. You never know what you don't know. You just can't. By definition, the unknown remains unknown until you finally find it out. And hopefully, by then, it's not too late. Anyway, I felt a little tired and laid back down on my lounge chair and tried to relax. I'm not sure what happened next, but I must have drifted off to sleep. I don't know how long I was out, but when I woke up and opened my eyes, I was met with a complete shock. My entire field of vision had radically changed. I could still see, but it was like looking at the world through a splintered kaleidoscope, a bizarre Picasso painting of bright colors and random fractal patterns. I had never experienced anything like it before and obviously, things had taken a major turn for the worse. It was seriously disconcerting. Oddly though, the feeling of nausea was gone completely. Other than this bizarre vision issue, I felt fine. I opened and closed my eyes a few times, but nothing changed. I still saw the world in the same splintered, fractal way. I closed my eyes for a moment to try to stabilize myself and the vision suddenly appeared within. I opened my eyes again, and to my shock and dismay, I couldn't tell whether my eyes were opened or closed. It didn't matter. Opened or closed, my field of vision remained exactly the same. I still saw the same set of broken, fractal lights. What had been bad had suddenly gotten much worse. This was, by far, the most alarming thing that had ever happened to me physically in my life, and immediately, a chilling fear came over me. "Oh my God! I'm going blind!" I thought. It was earth-shattering. I felt like a bug splattered on a speeding windshield, and my mind went wild with a flood of terrifying images of me, living my life as a blind man. The horrible scene went on for quite a while, before I could finally pull myself together. "Whatever's going on, this is much worse than I thought," I said to myself, as I recognized how seriously things had deteriorated. "This is bad. This is really bad." I was stunned and had no idea what to do. "Yeah, this is definitely much worse than you thought," I thought. "And you know what, it might actually be much worse than you think it is now. Forget about going blind. You might actually be dying. This could be the beginning of the end." The unwelcomed idea hadn't occurred to me before and it stopped me dead in my tracks. "Now wait a second," I responded, "Let's not go to extremes here." I quickly tried to pull myself together. Even though I was definitely in bad shape, I certainly didn't want to entertain any thoughts of dying. Why let that in? It couldn't possibly help. So, I quickly decided to put it out of my mind. But a few moments later, it came back again. "Look, of course, the idea is upsetting to you, to say the least. And obviously dying is the last thing in the world you want to think about. But still…" "But still, what?" I countered, sharply. "Still, you don't really have a choice. The way things are going, at this point you have to consider everything. You really do." Okay, so this was the rational, non-emotional side of my mind talking to me in its rational, non-emotional way. And it was probably right to consider the worst-case scenario. But I instantly dismissed the idea again. Sure, it was normal for me to have had a passing thought that I might be dying, but that's all I wanted it to be - just a passing thought. As far as the actual reality of it was concerned, I would have none of it. "No. It can't be. Not like this. Not now. No way." "Well, why not?" Mr. Rationality responded rationally. "You know it's going to happen someday; it has to. There's no way around it. It's written in stone. So why not now? And why not like this? Just because it's sudden and you weren't expecting it, ...
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