If you are old enough to remember the television series, Bewitched, a show about a mixed marriage – Samantha, a witch who marries a mortal man – vows to lead the life of a housewife in a stereotypical American suburban family of the sixties. Her husband, having discovered Samantha was not human and 400 years old, asked a bartender, “What do you do when you find out your wife is a witch?” That’s the plot.
When I was nineteen I read the ground-breaking book The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan, an American feminist prototype. She criticised how women were portrayed as brainless and submissive on sixties television. She must not have seen Bewitched. Samantha was certainly not a doormat for any man.
Samantha had no use for household drudgery. When she walked into a messy room, she would twitch her nose to cast a spell and the room would be magically clean. So much for Japanese superstar cleaning guru Marie Kondo. Despite her unique way to fold t-shirts, Kondo has met her match in Samantha.
Why am I rambling about a sixties sitcom? I could not change the channels on the television in my room at rehab, and I was not able to explain to the staff what the “problem” was with the television – but it turned out I was the problem. Technology was my enemy in the early days after the stroke, so I could not grapple with the television remote to change the channels. My solution was, as many have tried when confronted with confusing technology, pushing every button on the remote. This always disconnected the television. The staff became frustrated with being asked to help several times a night. So, they left me with only one channel on the television, some channel that showed old reruns. Considering I did not understand anything on television, one channel was no worse than another.
One night I turned on the television and Bewitched came on. Out of the blue, I could understand every word. Every word. I could follow the plot, the whole enchilada. I tried to talk to myself, and the words came out in perfect sentences, fluent and grammatically correct in every way. Like Samantha with her nose, I had found a magic spell to fix my brain.
I drifted off into a reverie: a group of doctors crowded around my bed, mouths agape in awe. They all agreed that a Nobel Prize for Medicine was coming my way. In my reverie doctors urged me to write a book about my medical miracle, and then I drifted into another reverie, where Hollywood would turn my book into a feel-good movie. Who would play me? I considered Brad Pitt, but he was too good looking with a full head of hair – I was balding. Clooney? Same again. I think I decided on Australian actor Geoffrey Rush, who once played a concert pianist with a mental illness. Maybe I should send my miracle story to Stephen King? He would know what to do with that.
Sure, I know what you are thinking – Geoffrey was just dreaming or hallucinating – and part is true, it was sort-of daydreaming. But in fact, after a stroke some patients do develop hallucinating, but it is rare. I know I was not dreaming, because after Bewitched finished I left the building – AWOL – I was not allowed to leave the building without a chaperone and only when signed out by staff, a strict regime. I sat on a bench in a courtyard outside in the darkness, astonished that I had been cured, until a patient sneaked out to have a cigarette, which he mentioned the next day (“Don’t tell anyone about the cigarette.”) I sat on the bench thinking about my now much-improved future, especially that I could go to America!
Went back to my room, took a sleeping pill, and when I woke up the next morning I got a newspaper at reception. I wanted to check if I could read after my miracle. But it was just gobbledygook. I tried to have a conversation with the woman behind the desk, but all that came out of my mouth was gibberish. I returned to my room and turned on the television to my only channel, but all I got was more blather. I had truly believed I was cured, I truly believed it was a miracle, like the “weeping” statue of the Virgin Mary in New Mexico.
In the space of ten hours I had gone from despairing to blissful to inconsolable. After my miracle cure it took me more than two years before I could follow much on television or the radio.
What happened that night? Goodbye my new miracle life. Goodbye America. Goodbye Nobel Prize. Goodbye everything. Who the hell knows what happened? And it did not matter anyway. This is what was telling – even now, when I think about that event, the memory is painful. I think about it often. It is all about loss. At that time everything was about loss.
Even in those early days after my stroke, I was looking for a miraculous drug, a quicker way, any short cut to make my recovery easier. It is the worst way to approach recovery from a stroke.