As Jim Wheeler uttered those words the people sitting around the table at the Pollett Room at city hall all listened with an understanding that only they could share.
Wheeler is a stroke survivor and a member of the city’s brain injury-stroke survivors support group.
The group meets every second Tuesday at city hall and this week four of the regular nine members shared their stories, their struggles, their accomplishments and a few laughs.
Wheeler’s story begins with an aneurism he experienced while working in Ontario seven years ago. He spent three months in a coma and during that time suffered two strokes.
Not only wasn’t he expected to live, his prognosis for recovery wasn’t good. At one point Wheeler said things looked so bleak that his family was even planning his funeral.
“Everyone else had a plan for me, but me,” he said.
But Wheeler was determined to recover.
Just like a baby he had to learn to walk and recalls walking around the hospital corridors and falling down.
“But I kept going and eventually it came around.”
After returning to Newfoundland his recovery continued, but not without frustration. For one he could no longer drive and with that he became dependent on others. He also found retirement hard to get used to.
There was also a lack of support and Wheeler felt he had to do something about that.
“I’m supposed to be dead, yet I’m still here,” he said “There’s a reason for that. God let me live for a reason.”
Wheeler said he knew there had to be more people like him out there and decided he wanted to connect with them, to help them.
He got in touch with Katie Colbourne, a local woman who publicly shared her experience after suffering from an aneurism and stroke, and together they started the group to reach out to those people.
People like Debbie Burton, Jean Kelly and Ron Targett, who all said the group has become a big part of their lives. It’s a place where they can talk about their experiences and feelings and know the people around them understand.
Targett describes the group’s participants as his “extended family,” and hopes he can help others by his attendance. His caregiver Maise Hann joins him and said she gets a better understanding of what he’s gone through by attending. Kelly drives all the way from Howley to attend and enjoys talking with the group and getting to meet people who understand what she’s been through.
Burton said when she first learned about the stroke-brain injury group she wasn’t sure if she fit the criteria to join. But she did.
Burton had a brain aneurism two years ago. She was driving home from Benoit’s Cove to Mount Moriah and experienced what she describes as a “nuclear hot flash.”
After that she remembers thinking how she just wanted to get over the bridge at Cook’s Brook and then praying to God to let her make it home. Once there she told her husband she felt really sick and later her symptoms would worsen. At the hospital it was confirmed she had an aneurism and Burton was airlifted to St. John’s where hours later she underwent surgery.
Burton considers herself “very, very lucky,” but still there have been challenges to her recovery.
For one, she wasn’t allowed to drive for some time and depending on others was hard. Added to that, she was told that she could no longer play softball. Those things made her feel like someone had cut off her right arm.
But Burton is driving again and has found a new way to participate in the game she loves by becoming a coach.
She’s only attended three meetings of the group, but said right from the start she felt comfortable there.
“To know that there are other people like me,” she said, makes that possible.
Twitter: WS_DianeCrocker
