Stroke recovery: lessons to learn

In Room M829, at the end of the seventh-grade hallway at Rising Starr Middle School, Greg Parsons watched his math students take their seats.

Parsons had just finished walking his pupils through four practice problems and explained his expectations for completing homework assignments.

"OK," Parsons said. "I would like to do some review. But before we do that, do any of you have any questions about me and where I am in my recovery?"

It was the beginning of January, the middle of the school year. But Parsons was conducting his first class of the year. Six months earlier, Parsons had awoken early one morning with a slight headache. He fumbled his way in the darkness to the bathroom for some aspirin.

"When he came back in, he sort of fell on the bed, and I turned the light on to find out what was going on," his wife, Barbara, recalled. "That's when he was looking at me with this eye closed and the other one wide open. I thought: 'Something's not right at all.' So I picked up the phone and started dialing . . . 911."

Parsons, an otherwise healthy 57-year-old, nearly died that day. But he wasn't going to let the crippling effects of what turned out to be a severe stroke keep him from teaching again.

Parsons was always the first teacher to arrive at Rising Starr and one of the last to leave. Before classes at the Fayetteville campus, he would tutor students through the complexities of algebra, pre-algebra and seventh-grade math.

Barbara Parsons was shocked a dozen years ago when her husband told her he wanted to go into teaching after nearly 20 years as a lawyer in the Army. She thought she knew her husband --- an impatient and demanding man --- well enough to know he could never make it in a classroom, especially in a middle school. 'Dependence Day'

But Parsons knew math --- during a tour as an artillery man in Vietnam, he calculated where to aim the Army's big guns --- and he knew that he could teach the subject to others. Two years ago, he earned the school's Teacher of the Year title.

Parsons now refers to July 5 as "Dependence Day." If the Fourth of July is the day Americans celebrate independence, then the day after --- the day he had his stroke --- was surely the day he lost his.

Once an avid runner, Parsons can no longer perform the slowest jog. He cannot take his springer spaniel Maggie for her morning walk or steer his black pickup truck through the streets in Peachtree City.

Parsons' stroke --- caused by a blood clot that traveled from his heart to the middle of his brain and lodged in an artery there --- partially paralyzed his left side from his shoulder to his foot, forced his right eyelid shut, weakened his voice and nearly took his life.

After Parsons, his wife and youngest daughter arrived at Fayette Community Hospital in the early hours that Monday morning, they were told that he needed to be airlifted to Atlanta's Piedmont Hospital. During the flight, Parsons stopped breathing.

"What we presume is that he was threatening to have a larger stroke than he ended up having," said Dr. Doug Stuart Parsons' neurologist at Piedmont. "Had he not been with medical personnel when it occurred, that could have been it."

Days after the stroke, Parsons told colleagues who visited his bedside that he'd be back at school in August.

Hundreds of get-well cards poured in. But as the days piled up and he continued to lie in his hospital bed, Parsons began to realize his recovery would take longer than he wanted. He wouldn't make it to the first day of school.

Two and a half months of physical and occupational therapy helped Parsons regain limited use of his left arm, hand and leg. But by the end of October, he still needed a walker to move around the house, and he couldn't stand in the shower.

"You can take the strongest guy, and after a stroke, it can take all the strength they've got just to stand up and go to the bathroom," Stuart said.

At some point --- Parsons can't remember when --- one of his doctors began talking to him about finding a "new normal," coming to grips with the fact that physically he would never be the man he used to be. But Parsons knew he hadn't lost his ability to teach. Every time he had a checkup with Stuart, he pestered the doctor about returning to school.

"When do you think I can go back to work?" he would ask. "I want to go back to work," he would say. "Can I go back to work?" "All right, go back to work!" Stuart finally said in December. "But do it part time for a while and see how it goes."

In the weeks leading up to his first day of teaching, Parsons studied pictures of his students, memorizing their names and personal details that substitute teacher Nina Little had asked them to jot down: Kevin DeOliveira, likes math. Kourtney Kowal, plays tennis. From walker to cane

Throughout the fall, Parsons had kept in frequent contact with Little, keeping up with lesson plans and students' progress through e-mail and phone calls. Every night, he would read the chapters assigned that day and work through the homework problems.

By the time he returned to Rising Starr last month, Parsons had graduated from his walker to a cane he barely used. Because his left side was still uncooperative, he walked the hallways with a considerable limp. But he had mastered the ability to stand and balance his weight on both feet, which was important if he was going to be writing on the white board.

Parsons still lacks the stamina to teach four classes of algebra, pre-algebra and seventh-grade math. Instead, he teaches two classes in addition to homeroom. But he hasn't given up on returning to Rising Starr full time.

On his first day back, Parsons wore a black patch to cover his right eyelid, which still hung like a drape over his eye, and a matching black cotton sweater with the Rising Starr logo.

"OK," he said midway through his first class. "I would like to do some review. But before we do that, do any of you have any questions about me and where I am in my recovery?"

"Are you good?" Qajuan Webb, a boy seated near the door, blurted out. "Are you OK?"

Parsons smiled.

"I'm getting there," he said.

Copyright 2005 The Atlanta Journal-Constitution