| | V.’s wife [9 months afterstroke]: …like a big cookout, my friends. What normally would be a lot of fun, and just mingling with everybody, and he seems to drop back on wanting to go. He doesn’t—or if he does go, he doesn’t want to stay for that long, you know, a couple of hours or so and he’s fine…And I think it’s because of the communication that—I think it’s because it is hard for everyone to (inaudible), so they talk to him, the whole bit, everybody loves to see him, and everything. But then, I think he feels left out because he can’t contribute, you know, a normal conversation with him. | |
| B.’s partner [6 months afterstroke]: …at the casino we were having a blast…[We] played a couple of slot machines, just hung out for the afternoon.
B: Yes! …
B.’s partner: And B. got off the machine and went and sat at the bar. Sat down to a woman who was hell-bent on talking to him. And she kind of finally figured out, OK, there’s a—you know, an issue going on here. She saw the cane. I walked up at that moment, told her he had had a stroke. She knew all about it. She was his new best friend. She—she was nice.
B.: Yes!
B.’s partner: She asked, you know, exactly how to talk to him, ask him the yes-no questions. And they were there for a good 45 minutes. As far as I was concerned, you had a great day. | |
| | M. [1 year afterstroke]: I think that [driving] is going to make a huge difference. I think the boys, um—you know, I’ll feel better, like—what—what’s my, like, um—being able to help them, you know what I mean? The—the people that help—like, we have so many friends, thank God, that they drive the kids everywhere. So I hope that, you know, I can take their, um, kids, you know. So that will make—big—a huge difference, you know. | |
| | B.’s partner [2 years afterstroke]: And the ones that were my true friends, that I thought were in it for the long haul, eighteen, twenty, twenty-five years of friendship, (claps hands), gone. They are so far out of my life now. The phone stopped ringing. Christmas cards stopped. Everything. | |
| T.’s wife [11 years afterstroke]: …the thing I observed was I think men, it was very scary for them when he had the stroke. And I—I think they sort of avoided him for a while. You know, like it was catching or something.
T. [11 years afterstroke]: In general, um, people that were [friends] before the stroke are the same after the stroke. However, and I think this is true for anybody. There are people who don’t do wonderfully after the stroke, and other people who do. And you can’t predict them ahead of time. | | | T.’s wife: Well, I think, um—one thing I’d say is that people give you a lot of support, you know, as a caregiver. And it’s always surprising who comes out of the woodwork. It’s not necessarily the people you think are going to, but I think that helped me a lot. You know, especially the first year when I was home, and I wasn’t used to not working. And you know, people would call and cheer us on. | |
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