This is Home, Part 36 - Uncle Doc's stroke

This is part 36 of my mother's book about her life, written in 2004.



Uncle Doc's stroke

There was an older, little tiny woman who chased Uncle Doc relentlessly during the spring and summer of one year when I was around high school age. She had on spike heels, a flowery summery hat and a suit. She kept finding him when he went to town. He tried to escape.

Then, during the same summer, Uncle Doc had a stroke that paralyzed one side of him. The doctor (an MD I hated) kept coming out to see him, but he said there were other blood clots and a major one that would kill him. He didn't tell us -- he told Aunt Edith. When I told Mom what the doctor had said, she said "No, Uncle Doc is going to get well," with a lot of conviction in her voice. I believed her.

The leather couch in the living room had been made into a bed so Uncle Doc would be close -- and warm when winter came.

In the fall, the little woman chasing him came out to see him. I told Uncle Doc she was getting out of the car, and he promptly closed his eyes and pretended to be asleep. She sat by him for a long time, but he just kept sleeping. She was determined to wait until he woke up, but she finally left, after a woman came back with the car and convinced her that they had to go before dark. As soon as she left, Uncle Doc opened his eyes again. I thought it was funny.

Uncle Doc kept fighting and by spring he could sit outside and enjoy the sun for awhile. Daddy and Charley carried him out and back. It wasn't very long after that, he was walking with a cane. Soon he was walking without it.

He recovered to do all the things he used to do. He drove a car until his 90th birthday, when he didn't renew his license.