Stroke Rehab: an Arch with fading margins

By December of 2006, I was in midst of the first of several experiments with cognitive therapy. One segment involved design and production of “pictoral” representation of my experience with recovery from stroke. The genesis of this project was my participation as “honorary stroke survivor” in the Austin Heart Walk- a fundraising event. Within the context of that role, I used images and narrative about my experience with rehabilitation as components of what proved to be a remarkably effective e-mail marketing and on line fundraising campaign.

This success of the Heart Wak campaign lead to additional occasions to stitch together images and narrative of my experience : first, a thank you card to donors who supported my efforts to raise funds on behalf of other stroke survivors; and then, a “thank you” card to the people who provided “life-altering” therapies and a recovery to a quality of life beyond even the "best case" expectation.

In the midst of all this activity, I passed a few significant mile markers: the one year anniversary of my stroke, a return to a modest routine of jogging and swimming, and a move into a new, independent living situation. I also ran face- first right into several walls: the persistent aggravations of the spastsicity(uncontrolled spasms and cramping in my left leg) , the side-effects of the medications for that condition- that intensify and yet obscure the precise extent of the lingering cognitive impairments from my stroke.

While “pasting” several photo images side-by-side [see above] I could not help but to notice the presence of arches or finish lines in several of the photos and to recall the reference to an Arch with "fading margins" in a poem [Tennyson's Ulysses] I had dissected in preparation for a British Literature class I taught t(inflicted upon) tenth graders as a teacher many years ago.

A brief, Google-aided search returned Tennyson’s use of an arch with fading margins as a metaphor for the challenges unique to the late stages of a long journey – the parallels of that metaphor to my present circumstance were more compelling as I revisited the circumstance and implication of each arch or finish line. In my reality, each finish line was more like starting line. These snapshots, and more specifically the arches capture my experience with recovery from stroke: Arches with fading margins, indeed!!

“Yet all experience is an arch wherethro'
Gleams that untravell'd world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnish'd, not to shine in use!

Tho' much is taken, much abides; and tho'
We are not now that strength which in the old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal-temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.”

Alfred, Lord Tennyson