A Suitable Case for Rehab

Apologies for being absent from the blog for the past five weeks or so. Apologies, too, for not being terribly responsive on my rather limited array of social media thingies.

As with most things in my life, there is a story.

I will try to tell it as succinctly as possible because it is actually physically hurting to type this out and my progress on it will be grindingly slow and riddled with mistakes.

“Jesus, Ken,” you might well say, “what the hell happened to you?”

Sit back, I’ll tell you and, as I said, I won’t take long.

It will be five weeks ago today, Sunday, that I carried the small aquarium style tank up the stairs in my friend’s house. The tank contained Tiny the Newt, who deserves a blog post all of his own someday. My friends were going on holidays and I enjoy calling around and looking after Tiny when they are gone. This time they were going for longer than usual so I had to learn how to clean out Tiny's tank too. I was carrying the tank back upstairs (less repetition, Ken, this typing stuff burns, remember?) when my legs started to feel heavy and sluggish. I announced I might be coming down with something and went home.

The next morning I drove to work, climbed the four flights of stairs to my office and immediately decided I wasn’t up to working. I went home again – something I had never done in my life before that day. I sat on the couch. I was convinced I was suffering from a post-flu fatigue. I’d had a good lick of it over the Christmas. A day of couch and Netflix would see me right.

The next day, Tuesday, I found myself using walls, chairs and tables to aid my progression around the house. Post-viral fatigue, I said. Couch and Netflix. You’ll be fine.

On Wednesday I offered to give Patricia a lift to yoga. Parking is tricky at the place. Walking might be a challenge but I could sure-as-shit drive a half a mile. I stepped out my front door, holding on to the jamb, and my right leg went from under me.

I went down.

“Hang on,” I said to Trish, “give me a second to get myself organised here. I’ll just get myself back up.”

But I couldn’t.

I couldn’t get myself back up.

Eventually, by some awkward trial and error, I made it to the couch.

Reading this, you’ll reckon that it was ambulance time for yours truly but I am nothing if not a stubborn old fuck. I promised to see the GP the next day. Post-viral fatigue, with a little wonky leg action thrown in. The GP will sort it in a jiffy.

The next day, Trish and I went to the doctor. She parked as close as she could to the surgery and I got inside somehow by hugging walls and window cills and hanging on to doors.

The doctor looked me over and said he had read an article just recently and he reckoned he might know what was wrong with me. In truth, Mr. Google and I had spent some time on the subject too and I also had a fair inkling what I had.

He said, “You need to go to The Accident and Emergency Department immediately. I think you have Guillain-Barré Syndrome.”

And sorry about the repetition, fingers, but I rather thought so too.

As we left his surgery, the kind doctor said, “I hope and pray that this does not prove to be too bad for you.” I agreed with him on that as well.

You can look up Guillain-Barré Syndrome if you want to know more about it. It hurts too much to type it out. Perhaps the most famous GBS sufferer is Sufjan Stevens. When I told my younger son I had it, he already knew a lot about it on account of Sufjan. It is important to say that outcomes are generally good and I do seem to be headed for a good recovery myself.

Fingers Crossed.

I was admitted to hospital and they found a bed for me. Several days, one CT, one MRI and one Lumbar Puncture later, the diagnosis was confirmed. Guillain-Barré. By then, the confirmation came as a considerable relief to me and my family. There were other things this could have been and none of them would be terribly high on anybody's wish list.

There was medical stuff that had to be done to help me and that took five days. During that time, the limited response I could still muster from my legs slipped away and my hands became ungainly and awkward and alive with electrical pins and needles. Which is why it still hurts to type this. I could stop, I know, but I’m a writer at heart and this writing-pain seems to make me feel happier and stronger. That’s writers for you.

After the medical stuff was done, I was rapidly dispatched to an excellent Rehab facility where I quickly started on my brand new hobby – learning how to walk again.

And that’s where I’m at now. Well almost. I’ve been allowed home for the weekend and should be home permanently quite soon. It turns out I’m quite a good student of walking and - no, God, strike that. Out of respect for the other people who have had this syndrome and who fought tooth and nail to walk again, I’ve been fucking lucky. I’ve had it easier than many of you had and I know it. I respect your battles, fellow GBS People. Make no mistake, I’ve had to work hard too, but perhaps not as hard as some of you.

So, anyway, that’s my excuse for missing some blog posts. Good, eh?

I have a way to go in my recovery but I’m on a good trajectory. I don’t need, want, or request anything from you except perhaps your continued friendship, which is highly valued.

I may write more about what it is like to be in hospital for the first time in fifty years. I may write about the excellent people who have treated me and looked after me. I may write about the fellow patients I have met.

But, for now, I think that's enough.

Fingers; rest.

A Little Modern Day Tortoise and Hare Action

On Friday, I was around and about in Tallaght in Dublin. Tallaght has quite a modern centre and, when I was done with my thing, I found myself in my car on a nice long stretch of bright and sparkly dual carriageway which ran along the periphery of the modern bit. The sign said I was allowed to do 60 kilometres per hour so I resolved to do 60. In a major glitch in normality, there was not another single car in sight, even though it was the middle of the day.

So I did 60.

Did I say there was no other cars on the road? I told a lie. There was another car. One other car. A smallish black thing. I pulled up behind it. It was doing 25 kilometres per hour. I gave it a minute. I reckoned the guy was getting up to speed and, any moment now, would cruise up to the allowed 60 and on we would go. I was wrong, the guy was on 25 and was staying on 25. The road ahead of him was clear for as far as the eye could see.

At least he was in the inside lane. I pulled out to the overtaking lane and I overtook him, getting myself back up to my beloved, and permitted, 60.

As I accelerated past him, I couldn’t help but dart a look over. I was expecting an old geezer, wedged in second gear, trundling along. But no. This was a youngish guy, skinny and weedy-looking laid back in his seat, cool and relaxed. If somebody were to play him in a movie, I would have voted for Steve Buscemi. As I drew out in front, the road once more stretched out in front. I stayed in the outside land as I had a right turn up the road a ways. I mumbled a few derogatory thoughts about the dude receding in my rear view mirror. Idiot, slow-coach, some more colourful ones which I will spare you. He got smaller and smaller in the mirror and he dropped from my thoughts in direct proportion to that receding.

On I went, all alone, free as a bird. Then, up ahead, there was a traffic light. It was green. As I approached, it was still green. Then, just as I was almost up to it, it turned first amber and then red. I stopped, all alone at the lights.

My rear view mirror became that desert scene from Laurence of Arabia. You know the one, where Omar Sharif rides out from the horizon. In my mirror, a black dot appeared and then commenced to grow and grow. The dot became a smallish black car which came on and came on at an unaltering 20 kilometres per hour. It drew up, still in the inside lane. It kept coming and kept coming. It didn’t accelerate at all; it didn’t slow down at all. And, just at it arrived at the red light, at precisely 20 KPH, the light changed to green and the car rolled on through without changing pace one single iota.

And I was left sitting.

Now the little black car accelerated. It quickly brought it’s speed up to 60 KPH and left me in its wake.

That’s my story.

I feel there’s a lesson to be learned from this. Something about running around like a headless chicken. Something about how knowledge is power. I don’t know, I’m still trying to figure out what it is.

I’ll let you know when I do.

Do Not Sigh, Do Not Weep

Whenever our Aunt Rosaline came home to visit, it inevitably caused quite a stir.

Rosaline, my mother’s younger sister, had gone to live in Boston when she was just eighteen years old. And we, being just kids, had never known her as a person who came from our home town of Sligo. She was America through-and-through and when she came to visit, she turned our world upside down in all the best possible ways.

As I recall, from a distance of over 55 years, Her coming was foretold in strange ways. My Dad, who never veered into poetic quotation beyond a stray line from Lake Isle of Innisfree, started randomly reciting the opening lines from a poem by James Clarence Mangan, “Oh my dark Rosaleen, do not sigh, do not weep. The priests are on the ocean green, they march along the deep.” All my life since, I have secretly almost-believed this poem was about Rosaleen coming across the ocean green to see us. I also firmly believed that the song, “She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes,” was about the arrival of Rosaleen and the surprisingly circuitous route she might take to get to us.

Rosaline brought with her a blast of warm air from a newer world. She set herself up in the front room of Granny’s (her Mother’s house) and lived out of a set of white suitcases that overflowed with cartons of Pall Mall menthol cigarettes. My Dad took a moment to acclimatise to her American accent, sitting on the winders of Granny’s stairs, looking out the front door over Sligo Quay below, and quietly repeating the affirmation ‘Riiight’ after every time Rosaline used it.

I don’t know what age I was when Rosaline first came home. I know I was small. I thought she was a celestial being of sorts and I was in awe of her. She taught me things that have stayed with me all my life. How to use a nail brush to keep dirt from gathering under my fingernails. The taste and texture of Yogurt (completely unknown to me before that) and most resiliently, the importance of always walking on the outside of the pavement when stepping out with a lady. This is something I still insist on doing in my everyday life, as a given, and Rosaline showed me that.

My beloved Aunt Rosaline passed away on 28^th December 2025. May she rest in peace.

When Rosaline got married, I would say around 1970, her Mother and Father, my Granny and Grandad, travelled to Boston for an extended stay around the time of the wedding. This was an unheard-of excursion for two people of their vintage. My grandad, a stevedore on the Quay below his house, may have dispatched many ships in that direction but could not have dreamed of ever going there himself. Rosaline lifted them across the ocean and showed them her world and, upon their return, they seemed to my young eyes to be bigger and stronger and easier in themselves, having struck out into the wide world and seen their youngest daughter so excellently wed.

Granny and Grandad returned with an album of the most amazing wedding photos. Grandad tall and proud in a white suit. The bride and groom resplendent. They also brought an eye-watering array of gifts for me and my brothers. A cassette tape recorder for one, a Polaroid camera for the other (back when each of these things were James Bond-level exotic technology) and for me, as the youngest, an unthinkably special thing. The story I was told, at seven, was that Rosaline and Evan couldn’t think what to send me until, one day, Evan went out and came back and said, “This is for Kenneth.” A gold watch. A real gold wrist watch. I wore it everywhere for many years. A sign that I was special, all the way from America.

Rosaline’s husband, Evan, was an extraordinary man. He was very tall and strong and handsome while also being very gentle and thoughtful and kind. He came to visit us with Rosaleen and we had never seen his like in Sligo. He struck up a quiet, special, friendship with my late older brother Michael. They were both quiet, special, guys. He scoured the town of Sligo for a bottle of wine because, being Yugoslavian, he liked a tiny tipple with his dinner. He found one of those bottles of Chianti with the straw covered based to the bottle. Years later, I remember reminding him how he enjoyed that type of Chianti and he smilingly whispered how he hated it but it was the only red wine he could find in our town.

After Rosaline and Evan had Evan Junior and then Amy, they all came home on several occasions and it was always a whole new breath of a different air. They were beautiful children with auburn hair and brown eyes which stood out among the Sligo brown hair/blue eye mix. Evan Jnr. ate Ravioli, which we had never heard of, and drank apple juice, which we had never tasted. He had a games console back home called ColecoVision and it annoyed him that the episodes of The A Team on TV in Ireland were months behind his. But he really liked our white sliced bread with butter on. We couldn’t imagine how something so ordinary could elicit anything more than the most basic response… but it did. Amy was littler and didn’t express her likes or dislikes so memorably at that time.

In December 1989, my fiancée Patricia and I set off on a year’s trip around the world and our first stop was in Boston with Rosaline and Evan Snr and Evan Jnr and Amy. We spent three weeks with them, on the run-in to their Christmas. I have never felt more welcomed or comfortable in another person’s home than I did then. I skiied with Evan Jnr and his friends in New Hampshire, gaining an interesting injury and a lifelong scar. I helped Amy with a book project deadline, showing her how reading the first line of every chapter might get her through. I drank Evan Snr.'s Draft Mickleob from the little bar in the corner of the kitchen. This, I feel, was when I got to know Rosaline best. The excellent cook, the ultra-generous host, (which was always echoed by gentle hard-working Evan), the feisty defender of her family and her beliefs. We sat up late into several nights in her kitchen, conversations ranging across all kinds of broad subjects. Her energy never waned, no matter the hour. Her light was always burning brightly, from where I was sitting at least.

To my regret, I lost touch with Rosaline after my Mother – her sister – died. No good reason, just life and perhaps stasis on my part.

Although I will continue to regret that falling off of communication, I will know that Rosaline Mihaich has always been, and will always remain, a very large influence in my life and in how I deal with people and challenges.

My Dad’s ancient recitation of ‘Dark Rosaleen’ may not offer much ease, at your sad passing, but his fall-back material of ‘Inishfree’ may offer us some word or two of solace.

“And I shall have some peace there, for peace comes dropping slow…”

Rest in peace, Dear Rosaline. 

You were very special indeed.

K x