PLACEBO EFFECT

AMENDED

 

 

 Each time I write this, I get closer to that state of being. 

I have no memory of this; I find it very hard these days 

to focus on positivity. Alina Feld said in her study of melancholy. 

'The self knows its light only by knowing

darkness". My darkness is projected from within. 

I live in a state of melancholy, but I hope 

this essay shines a little light in the dark 

and can help other stroke sufferers.

 

A way to accept this blemished acceptance and find hope. 

I live in the right hemisphere and write a blog each day as 

I must keep reminding myself. The Portuguese poet said 

in a poem called The Dream of Being Alive, this

is a blog about being alive.

 

@apfox1961.blogspot.com

 

 

I woke up after my stroke in a cold sweat, in a state of hallucination. 

The drugs that were keeping me alive were making my mind trip like 

nothing else on earth.

 

In the drug world, they talk of a bad trip and a whitey 

this was a trip you didn't want to go on. 

Words can't convey those moments. 

There was a crowd of

 doctors around me administering drugs, a fatal dose.

Hallucination; it seems I had a glimmer of hope, but now 

I think death was knocking on my door. There was 

no great light, but I think the neurons in

 your brain fire, and images resemble how films portray your life flashing before your eyes. 

I was out there locked in limbo.

 

I had no control. I have seen brutality and gore growing up 

in North Belfast, but not on this level. Just when 

they were injecting, I gripped the blankets

 with all my might and took the ride to hell. 

Only I had to take this ride to live or die. 

I was flickering between states of my brain injury 

has now damaged my holographic projector.

The brain flips it like a trip switch; it's survival. 

I was locked-in a locked-in syndrome.

They say I died for seconds in intensive care, and they declared me dead, and after the adrenalin 

stroke boost, I sat upright. It must have been harrowing 

for my family. I recall seeing my reflection 

in my son's eye as he leaned over to kiss me goodbye. 

I looked like a shadow of my former self. 

I saw my face again on the stainless steel elevator 

going to the ward. I had lost three 

and a half stone. Looked like The Walking Dead.

 

I thought the nurses were out to kill me. I even

 tipped up a stainless-steel surgical table, thinking they were

killing a patient and I was following. I was so paranoid. 

Those were extraordinary times. I had nothing on my mind; it 

was empty, like a forty-five-year-old newborn who didn't know

 the difference between fantasy and reality.

 

Those first days were like being in a Stephen King novel. 

A man behind my bed was cutting bodies with 

a chainsaw and tossing body parts into a skip; these 

weren't dreaming states. They were between 

sleep and awake, drifting. My left hemisphere 

was wiped clean, and these images came in 

half-awake hallucination; Is, I was like that for days.

 

 

I have never seen anything like this; a million-dollar film 

director couldn't capture what I saw. I have never seen 

the likes of tripping on L.S.D. psychedelics. 

Aya Waska would need to look in. My long- term 

memory loss was like the film Leaving Las Vegas 

I was leaving humanity.

Hunter Thompson couldn't write this script.

I'm just lucky in a sense to have lost my long--

 term memory.

 

This was like something from the book, 'The Diving Bell 

and the butterfly, the man in the book, died from his stroke 

after reciting to his private nurse by blinking his eyes 

once for yes and twice for no.

For almost a year, I lived like that with no voice

 , just an alphabet board to the point and spelling the letters. 

It was so uncanny in that world of silence; I could see 

the words coming to my mind, but they wouldn't roll off my tongue. 

I have no memory of this, but I know I was there; my brain 

injury caused the blackness behind my eyes and aphantasia.

 

I don't know why or how I am still alive; I have aphasia, dysarthria, aphasia, I am paralyzed down the right half of my body, and 

I can't walk or talk, mumbling my way.

 

I also have a degenerative spinal cord disease now 

bedbound with bedsores, laying immobile due to COVID 

when all physio stopped, I was in bed for three years.

I can hardly move from side to side; I could go on 

but Schopenhauer was right in his study of pessimism 

when he said life is suffering, I would say life is

a suffering fucking hell, but not until we face this 

blemished acceptance can we find hope.    

 

Marguerite Dumas said when you find your

 self in a hole at the bottom of a hole, you

realize only writing can save you.

 

I know I repeat myself, but this the only hope is,

a Keats Ian negative capability, hope in a hopeless world. 

After a year in the hospital, the Royal Hospital did 

surgery on my damaged vocal cords called a Filin-go-plast. 

I was one the first in N.I. to undergo

this surgery, and my voice gradually came back to mumbling 

My left vocal cord is faintly damaged and beyond repair.

I can say all this without an emotional grasp on memory 

I can even deal with the grief of my mother's death 

and my sister's suicide; that's aphantasia. It helps me deal 

with trauma; I think it's a brain reaction of survival to help 

us deal with PTSD.  

I'm not seeking sympathy or pity, but you can keep it. 

All I ask is that you read this and determine your 

own answers, not one that's shoved down your throat, 

I really did believe I would go out in a wooden box.

 

          This is my placebo effect.