Let's go back to the beginning. I don't really remember the day of my stroke. It's very spotty. I kind of remember talking about taking an ambien so I could go to sleep. That is strange enough because I tried it once before and I could not stand how it made me feel. I then remember . . . waking up in the hospital two days later. Joe remembers finding me on the bathroom floor and heroically picking me up and getting me to the bed. He called my Mom, he called 911, he called my Mom again. He kind of stopped remembering too. He does remember them saying that I'd had a stroke.

The toes on my right foot curl under. Not all the time, just enough to serve as a reminder in case I'm not thinking about my stroke. I can't wear shoes with heels, or without. I seem to live in flip-flops. Great for LA, bad for the east coast winters. Lately I've taken to wearing the same pair of brown slip-ons. My toes are slowly straightening themselves out. If only everything worked like my old, reliable, brown slip-ons.

After my stroke I was constantly walking into things that were on my right side. I thought this was kind of funny. I mean, how often do you see a grown, sober person walking into a wall or doorway or planter. I didn't laugh out loud about it (because I couldn't), but trust me I was laughing. And you know the funniest thing, I secretly think that my rehab team thought that it was funny. They gave me control of a wheelchair that was occupied by a woman who couldn't talk. So here we are, a woman who can't walk a straight line pushing the wheelchair of a woman who can't tell her to turn left or stop. What's the name of that Richard Pryor movie, "See No Evil, Hear No Evil". What a comedy of errors. The nurses should be fired for that one.