Recovery vs Progress

“I saw the ramp is no longer installed in the front, I hope that’s good news!” My landlord texted me. As far as landlords go he’s relatively harmless, but he’s still my landlord. Him knowing my personal life makes me feel kinda gross. In the past he has offered to send us his realtor’s information to “help us buy a house” when we are ready, because that is “something he likes to help his renters do.” I thanked him politely but I felt weird about it, if he really wanted to help couldn’t he charge less rent? He charges the going rate in our neighborhood, which is not cheap. Anyway, like it or not he knows my business because I am living in his house, like some sort of pretend capitalist daughter that he imagines he’s teaching lessons in economics to.

“Yes! We no longer use the wheelchair in the house. I keep it in the car and Matt walks down the front steps with my help!” I bite my nails wondering if he’s going to gripe about the small holes left in the concrete driveway from where our friend Bobby attached the ramp. I know we had every right to install the ramp but I’m still nervous that Daddy Warbucks will be mad at me. He sends back a gif of Jimmy Fallon doing prayer hands. It feels like he wants to prove to me that he’s a good guy. Especially since Matt had a stroke and I had a baby, five days apart. I want to suggest to him that perhaps decreasing our rent would relieve some of that guilt, but I’m sure he would offer to help set up a gofundme. Listen, I’m not saying all landlords are evil, but I just don’t want to be his friend. I’m paying him money to live in his house, I’m paying the going rate in money, I don’t want to pay friendship too. I actually have enough friends, I’m very lucky in that way.

The next thing he texted was “I’m praying he makes a full recovery [repaired heart emoji] as it sounds he is determined to get back to where he was before the incident.” Which, I know is very nice, and I sound like a jaded bitch, but it hit a nerve. He’s not the first to say something like this, my most favorite, most cherished loved ones have said similar things and I never know how to respond. I know everyone means well when they wish Matt a “full recovery” but it’s simply not possible, some parts of his brain are dead and never coming back. Read that again if you have to. Don’t send me messages about this, please. It’s ok, we’ve faced it. If you feel the need to send me something like “anything is possible with God/science/whatever fantasy you have” please know that is you processing, not me. We’ve faced it, but it is heartbreaking to face over and over when people say it, and even worse to see them face it. I usually just smile, say thank you and mentally replace the word “recovery” with “progress.” Progress is possible, brains are more plastic than we can imagine and yes, parts of Matt’s brain will never recover, but he can make progress into new parts. Uncharted territory, baby!

Who wants recovery anyway? Me, I want it, obviously, I want it so bad, as does Matt. But that’s backwards movement. We are moving forward, because it’s the only path open. The second part of my landlord’s text says so clearly what people are hoping for when they wish Matt a “full recovery”, they want him to “get back to where he was before the incident.” It’s a wish to simply erase the whole thing, go back, redo. I understand that wish, I’ve been there, Matt’s been there, but it’s a waste of a wish. Time travel is only possible in one direction, one second per second. Plus, if we are constantly looking backwards we will miss what is in front of us.

Matt told me recently that the stroke is the best thing that’s ever happened to him, because it forced him to stop anxiously searching for answers. It forced him to slow down. As hard as this has been, with the leg twitches and hip pain and bathroom issues, I do look at our life and I’m happy. I love how much time we get to spend together and how much we really see each other.

In the past I was often off performing or producing shows and he was on tour or recording or streaming or guesting or writing. You’d be surprised how hard a podcaster can work. When we weren’t working we were on our phones scrolling or posting. Or we were partying. He partied hard. Sometimes it was fun socializing, but sometimes he partied with a fierceness that scared me. I’m an escapist, but he brought it to a whole new level. Sometimes he partied like a little kid covering his eyes in a scary movie, so afraid to look that he misses the plot. The stroke forced his eyes open. Just in time to see our daughter.

That’s not to say we are so happy that we are complacent. Quite the opposite. Matt wants to make as much progress as he can, to be in our daughter’s life. He wants to hold her hand, to read her stories, to hug her with both arms, to walk her down the aisle. Too much backwards yearning is detrimental to Matt’s progress. If he is constantly comparing himself to pre-stroke Matt, the task of getting back there is insurmountable, he loses steam, as do I. But, if we compare to where he was just after his stroke the progress he’s made is unbelievable and inspires us to make more progress. For the first month he could barely sit up. When he first came home we (he and I together) had to use a board to slide on from wheelchair to bed and back. When he first came home we had to have a special hospital bed in the nursery. His aphasia was a lot worse too, he would get words mixed up more. I remember a particularly frustrating night where he was urgently asking for the ”laptop” but what he was trying to say was “bedpan.” Luckily we figured it out but what a post that would be.

Right after the stroke he was recovering. In the first six months his brain swelling was steadily going down, and we waited to see what parts would come back online, while doing as much therapy as he could stand. After those first six months his brain had done all the de-swelling it was going to. Which means, since it’s been one and a half years, that all of the progress he’s made in the last year is 100% his own. Moving from a hemi-walker to a quad cane to a single point cane, that’s all Matt. Going from two word phrases to full sentences to riffing on the podcast, that’s all Matt.

Another difference between recovery and progress, progress is active. When I think of recovery I think of the saying “time heals all wounds,” but progress is less a healing wound, and more like your muscles tearing a little to grow bigger muscles. An idea that makes Matt groan when I tell him, because he detests exercise. But he does it anyway, and though he plays it down, I know he’s proud. I can see he’s proud when people come to visit and tell him how much progress he’s made, or when friends and family text him, or when I read him comments from the episodes of Chapo he’s been on. We do read those! He’s proud and he should be, he worked for those gains.

The other wonderful thing about progress is there’s no ceiling. We don’t know where this track ends because we’ve never been there. Before the stroke Matt never wrote a single poem. If you told him he would one day read a poem he wrote onstage, in a wheelchair, in a Santa costume, he would have called you crazy. Not because of the wheelchair or Santa costume. Someone asked me recently “is he going to continue to make progress?” It seemed like a silly question to me, of course he is. He’s still breathing, isn’t he? I wanted to ask if they thought they would continue to learn and grow as a person. I hope we all do. I still believe as I told him in the hospital and as I texted back to our landlord, “the best is yet to come!”