Diary of a stroke survivor by Japhet Mesa

My state of mind immediately after I returned from my 10 hour - state of unconsciousness was rather warped. Though I could remember all my loved ones and was able to learn and remember the names of all the medical staff that were attending to me (bless their souls), something bizarre was happening to my mind. I am told that on the second day of my rehabilitation in ICU I could not speak vernacular. In fact, I am reliably informed I was speaking English with a British accent. No, I have never lived in Bri'in bruv! "mkushi accents". I vividly recall reciting biographies of Martin Luther King Jr, Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, and Trevor Noah. These are books I had read long before my ordeal but apparently, all that I read was running through my head and I was vocalizing. Quite brilliantly I should add. Charmaine says that it was as though the brain was rebooting, more like a computer. She has read these materials with me and is familiar with the content, so she found it qu...

  It all happened in a blur. In very inexplicable circumstances. Approximately 8hrs between my initial respiratory failure and total organ shut down. As promised, here is chapter 2 of my story, told through the eyes of my sister-in-law, Esoko, and my cousin, Ken. In their own words. I cried when I read the narration from Esoko. What an ordeal it must have been for her, Ken, and the medical team. I am grateful for the quick response at Coptic hospital because, without it, someone else would have been telling my story today. It all just seems to have been God orchestrated. Esoko Esoko Samantha Chibangulula (42) is the older sister to my wife. The firstborn in a family of seven (7). Bubbly and calm by nature, she is someone my kids and I have come to count on for pretty much anything. This is her narration of what happened to me on that fateful day. I was dosing in my favorite chair at home when I received a frantic phone call from my sister, Charmaine, informing me that Japhe...

My maiden article received a great many raving reviews. Thank you all for taking the time to read it and for the love and concern for my health. If you have not read it yet, you can read it here . This is not the chapter 2 I had promised. That one is still in the oven. Since this blog is about sharing my journey, I wish to share my current pit stop so to say. See, after my ordeal, I gained quite a lot of weight. Largely because I was immobile for some time. Although I used to have daily physiotherapy sessions coupled with walks the effect on the weight gain was minimal. The magnitude of my weight gain struck home about 3 months ago. I was scheduled to attend a medical review and was feeling pretty good about myself. I decided I would wear a suit and tie. But alas! All my suits could not fit me anymore. That was it. Something needed to be done.  Seeing as I could not engage in rigorous workout sessions because my hip was and still is weak, I embarked on an intermittent fasting ...

These are the chronicles of a stroke survivor. To be honest, I had never given this subject any thought before my incident. It all seemed so far away, in another world from mine. I led a seemingly healthy lifestyle, no drugs, no alcohol, no cigarettes, I ran every other day, I did aerobics often, I slept well, etc. So I never expected this to happen to me. I shudder to think how slow my recovery would have been if I did any of these vices. You may be wondering what has led me to start this blog. See, what happened to me was life changing and it can happen to anyone despite lifestyle. I wish to help people who are going through it or might, God forbid, go through it at a later stage in life; it is also a healing process for me and it is my story to tell for I have lived to see another day. It is not always that someone survives a stroke, let alone two strokes (according to my neurologist, I suffered two strokes at once). Although it is inconclusive, my doctors informed me that I had...