Andre Seguin

On September 1, 2003. I went to play a round of golf with good friends. The weather was damp and my left leather shoe shrunk and exerted great pressure on my foot to the point I abandoned the round on the 16th hole. I had great difficulty to walk back to the parking lot and take off those uncomfortable golf shoes.

When I arrived home I went to my neighborhood watering hole to have a few beers with my golf fanatic friends and shared some good laughs about us keeping our daytime jobs since none of us will be joining the PGA Tour anytime soon and beat Tiger Woods at his own game.

I went to bed at 10PM that evening and felt perfectly normal. I woke up at 2 AM the next morning and powered my computer to send an email to a family member. When I tried to get up I did not have any strength in my left leg and fell on the floor. My vision was blurred; I thought that my cystic nerve had locked up on me. I realized something was very wrong when I could not move my left arm. I started to panic and tried to crawl to the nearest phone to call 911. The carpeting was preventing me from making any headway. I felt that I was struggling for life itself and started to bang my right leg and right fist on the floor in the hope that my landlord would hear me and come to my aid.

My landlord sleeps soundly and never heard anything. I eventually passed out from sheer exhaustion and lay on the floor for the following 16 hours. My employer tried to call me at home to enquire why I was not at work the next morning. The human resource department eventually consulted my employee file and called the person I had designated as the person to contact in case of emergencies, when my lifelong friend got the phone call from my employer, he made a detour to my residence after his workday. He asked my landlord to give him access to my dwelling and found me lying on the floor with severe carpet burns on my knees. The ambulance arrived 30 minutes later and transported me to the nearest hospital.

When I arrived at the hospital I had slipped in a deep coma. I was in severe respiratory distress and a trachea was immediately performed on me, I was then transferred to the intensive care unit barely clinging to life. My friend had brought with him my pocket computer containing the phone numbers of family members.

The next thing I felt is someone holding my right hand and whispering in my ear, my darling this is your sister, don't let yourself go and start fighting with all your might. Her voice registered and I finally emerged from my coma 3 weeks later, to contemplate with absolute horror the gravity of my situation. My emotional anguish was beyond words. My Neurologist told family members that if I survived I would be a human vegetable. The following 3 weeks was the most degrading experience of my life. I laid in bed in a diaper like a newborn and witnessed a lack of compassion and respect for human dignity that borders depraved indifference. When I was able to start eating solid food again I had to evacuate fecal matter in the diaper and was often told that my delivery did not justify a change of diaper. I therefore spent many hours lying in my own excrement while these lower than rat's orderly bastards where on their union cigarette & coffee breaks. My sister had to prevent me from grabbing somebody by the throat and choking them to death.

On November 26, my situation finally changed for the better as I was admitted into the remarkable Montreal Rehabilitation Institute. I started to perform daily speech, occupational and physical therapy. I was finally able to take a shower by myself again and go to the bathroom by myself. My physiatrist was the most caring and perceptive woman I have ever seen, her dedication defies the imagination. The clinical personnel at the rehab institute strive to meet the highest standards of professionalism and are highly motivated.

That exceptional medical establishment was definitely not created by intelligent apes. After 3 week's of physical therapy, I could walk 180 meters with the help of a quadruped cane, climbing stairs was and still is a gut wrenching experience.

When the brain does not receive any tactile feedback you have the impression that your paralyzed limb is a piece of useless dead wood. Basically you feel like a leaf in the wind, balance is precarious. Physical therapists kept on telling me that my skeletal structure supported me in the past and will support me again, my reply was don't tell that to me; tell that to my lame brain. On February 12, 2004, I received my release from the rehab institute and it was obvious that I could not live in my dwelling anymore, because of the 34 steps I had to climb. I then proceeded to call a real estate agent and acquired a condominium unit in downtown Montreal. There went my entire life savings. It is a good thing that I am a frugal individual with an excellent credit history, otherwise I would have been in serious financial trouble.

The first 6 months of living in my condo were uneventful; I did 4 walking sessions every day until May 2004 when I suffered my first epileptic seizure, I was terrorized by this surreal life experience. I felt as if the universe was conspiring against me. You never hit a person lying on the ground. To this day I have suffered 6 epileptic seizures, 2 minor and 4 major.

On December 30th 2004, while surfing the Internet I felt this tingling sensation in the back of my head and grabbed my wheelchair armrest and tried to brace for the onslaught of being run over by a freight train, no use within 10 minutes I was lying on the floor and had to use my medical pager to contact the building janitor to help me get back in my wheelchair again. I severely mutilated my tongue and could not chew for 3 weeks. I have been on long-term disability for the last 18 months listening to classical and Celtic music that brings much joy to my deeply wounded heart and soul. In the month of September 2004, I discovered thru intensive Internet queries an American company called Stroke Recovery Systems that manufactures a most promising neuro muscular stimulation apparatus that as proven very effective in rebuilding new neuro muscular pathways to healthy neurons. I have asked my employer to help me obtain that unit and the answer was a categorical no. You are loyal and devoted towards a moral person for 15 years and they treat you like an expendable piece of trash. I have therefore asked a philanthropic foundation to help me acquire or lease this apparatus.

During the past 18 months I have done a lot of soul searching to identify the root cause of my stroke. My answer is that I was conditioned from birth to suffer a devastating stroke. My parents were born during the great depression and often went to bed hungry and swore that their children would never experience the same hardship. They unfortunately erred on the excessive side and all their children experienced obesity problems during their childhood. We were served adult sized portions and were not permitted to leave the dining table before we had emptied our plates. I rebelled at the fact of being the chubby fat kid on the street and started to smoke as a means of expressing my outrage. Those very unhealthy lifestyle habits finally erupted on September 2, 2003, and changed my life forever. When I had my stroke I weighed 175 kgs. today I weigh 70 kgs. I don't intend to tempt providence and suffer another stroke that could possibly be fatal. I am currently trying various therapies to help me stop smoking permanently. Getting rid of this nasty habit after 34 years is not very easy and requires a most serious commitment. The problem does not really lie in the nicotine addiction but with the dopamine neuro transmitter, tobacco consumption stimulates and increases the level of dopamine, also known as the happy neurotransmitter. The pseudo euphoria that tobacco consumption provides is really the culprit that needs to be addressed. Since I am taking medication for epilepsy, zyban is not indicated in my case. I wake up every morning with the objective of cutting back tobacco consumption by 5 to 10 cigarettes daily. Progress is slow. Mood swings are hard to control when you loose an entire dimension of your being. I was 46 years old when I suffered my ischaemic stroke.

Andre Seguin
Montreal, Quebec, Canada

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