Chapter 17

“Plastic.” I’d never known it was a word that could describe a human brain, but it was something we heard all the time in those early days and weeks after the stroke. “Neuronal plasticity.” A cursory Internet search will tell you that neuronal plasticity is “the brain’s ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections throughout life. Neuroplasticity allows the neurons (nerve cells) in the brain to compensate for injury and disease and to adjust their activities in response to new situations or to changes in their environment.”

Sizable portions of Dave’s brain were dead, wiped out from not having received oxygen. Neuronal plasticity would be Dave’s best hope for recovery. Neuronal plasticity became our buzzword, our lifeline, our mantra, and our hope. All brains have this plastic quality, which is why even Alzheimer’s patients in their eighties can and should work to stimulate their brain’s functionality. We are all encouraged to do things to facilitate plasticity, even something as simple as brushing your teeth with your nondominant hand or taking a shower with your eyes shut. New experiences and challenges force us to get out of our automatic routines and encourage the brain to form new neuronal pathways, thereby staying active and agile.

The brain is the most remarkable and least understood organ in the body, and its ability to regenerate and evolve defies scientific understanding. But here’s the thing: neuronal plasticity, that nebulous characteristic that allows for “miracles” in victims of traumatic brain injury, changes over the course of a life. A huge part of plasticity is related to age. Newborns are incredibly plastic. Anyone who has ever observed a baby knows this to be true: their brains change very quickly, on a daily basis as they learn and grow. Plasticity decreases with age, so the older you are, the less plastic your brain is. The cutoff for when this neuronal plasticity begins to decrease? Around age thirty to thirty-five. Dave was thirty years old.

If Dave had had this stroke even one year later, his hopes for recovery might have been significantly reduced. If he had had this stroke five years later, he very likely would not have survived. At thirty, Dave had youth—and more neuronal plasticity—on his side, and that helped his chances of recovery.

We needed this plasticity because while my husband was there physically, he was still not there mentally. As we checked days off the calendar, Dave still did not know where he was, even though it was the hospital in which he had spent every single day for the previous three years. What was especially heartbreaking to me was that Dave did not remember that we had a beloved black mutt named Penny. Dave and that dog were madly in love; the last thing we had done together before getting on the plane was look at photos of her. At one point, he told me we had a cat (we’ve never had a cat). At other times he told me we had a yellow Lab or that her name was Xena, who had been his childhood dog.

On Monday, June 15, the rain was absolutely apocalyptic over Chicago. My mother, who was staying with me for a couple of weeks, drove me home from the hospital, and we thought we were going to get stuck in the flooding. The voice on the radio informed us that there had been a tornado outside Chicago earlier that day. “I hope the game doesn’t get canceled,” I said. Dave’s favorite hockey team, the Chicago Blackhawks, was playing to win the Stanley Cup that night.

Dave watched from his bed in the ICU with Brad, one of his best friends, as I headed home after a long day. The Blackhawks won. The old Dave would have been so happy. He had followed the whole season and postseason with a giddy hope. He had planned to watch the championship games in Hawaii. I would not have cared, to be honest. In that alternate life, given the time difference, I probably would have been outside reading by the ocean and would have come inside to Dave’s smile and happy proclamation that his team had won. I would have been happy that he was happy, but I would not have been moved.

But that was in the alternate life. The one that was no longer going to happen. In this life, I cared. I watched every minute of the game that night in Dave’s honor, deeply invested. When they won, I wept. Dave’s friend Russell texted me, elated: “That was for Dave!”

Our apartment faced west, looking out over the Chicago River and the western suburbs. I stood before the window and stared out; I could see Rush in the distance, where Dave was, across the flat Midwestern landscape. I could see, not too far from Rush, the United Center, where the Blackhawks had just won hockey’s highest honor. Fireworks burst across the sky. All of Chicago was celebrating as I stood at the window and wept.

The next morning when I arrived at Dave’s hospital room, he did not remember that the Blackhawks had won. He did not remember that he’d watched, that Brad had come for the game and that they’d sat together and eaten pizza and that his favorite player, Patrick Kane, had scored the game-winning goal.

The letters I wrote to Dave at the end of each day became all the more important. If he came back, he could read these letters and understand what he had gone through. If he came back. God, it hurt. If he came back. I loved so many things about Dave, but, most of all, I loved his brain. I loved his mind. I loved his wit. That, over the years, we had developed our own shorthand of inside jokes and code words and shared experiences. These were the things that made Dave mine. That was what made this injury so completely devastating: an arm, I could do without. But his mind? How could I live without Dave’s mind?

Dear Dave,

I need to be patient. I just miss you so much.