Beauty in the Broken Places

by Allison Pataki

  It has been more than one year since my stroke, and the only real deficit I have right now—at least that I can detect, though my wife might have more to say on the matter when I “forget” to fold my laundry—is in my short-term memory. It is coming back slowly but surely, but it is still an odd experience to feel, in some ways, like a different person. I used to have a memory like a steel trap—almost photographic. I am not saying that I will not get back to that, because I sure hope that I will, but I am having to learn to think through things differently, to make adjustments in life that I never anticipated having to make.

  Many, many people suffer strokes. When I was in medical school, it was, I believe, the third most common cause of death. But not many people suffer strokes at my age. In my rehabilitation group this past year, there was only one person even close to my age, and he had suffered a traumatic accident. That said, strokes in young people are becoming increasingly common, and that’s a troubling trend.

  I remember learning about the artery of Percheron in medical school and thinking about how unusual it was. We learn about anatomic variants as students, and I have seen plenty, both in medical school and residency. I never imagined myself to be one of the select few who have one of them. But, of course, I do. And nearly all of us have some sort of anatomic variant within us that we do not know about. You probably do, too. It may be one of those random shunts in your heart, one of those odd ducts in your liver, one of those different arteries in your brain. But it is extremely rare that one of those variants would threaten your life. Those variants—the life-threatening kind—were weeded out by evolution, right? We have had years upon years of evolution and have changed in kind—all for the better. But some odd variants come through.

  The simple fact is that given the stroke I suffered, there was a good chance that I would not be here right now. That is certainly a scary thought, but, really, it is a reality no different from that facing anybody else; if you suffered a car accident yesterday, you might not be here, either. And therein lies one of the most thought-provoking aspects of my illness—that I have gone through so much yet am really no different from anybody else.

  Father’s Day in 2015 may have been the most special of all to me. I don’t remember a lot of things from my early days after the stroke, but I do remember getting a T-shirt from my wife, who was six months pregnant at the time. It said “Father of the Year” and had a picture of a scene with a father in it from the movie Finding Nemo. I still wear that shirt quite often and love showing it off to our little girl. It is an odd experience to be a father after all of this, but, my God, has it been rewarding. I could not have dreamed of a sweeter baby—a more adorable little girl who is so happy and eager to show love. We are about to enter the “stranger-danger” phase of her life, where she might not be as friendly or open with everybody, but it feels pretty good to know that Alli and I will be exempt from that phase.

  Perhaps that is the greatest gift that Lilly, and fatherhood, gives us—making us feel so whole and loved and happy. That sounds superficial and self-centered, of course, but that is what babies give us—the ability to look at ourselves and to be proud of who we are and the type of father or mother we strive to be. That is essentially the purpose of life—to be the best version of ourselves and to be that way for those we love. And Lilly has helped me find that so easily—and happily. I fall more in love with her every second I spend with her.

  In addition to Father’s Day, both of our dads celebrate their birthdays in June—the month of my accident. It pains me to think that not only did they have to deal with my mortality, but also they had to do it on their birthdays. Instead of thinking of the many wonderful years behind them, they had to grapple with the possibility of my death. One father had to consider a family with one fewer son, and the other had to consider a daughter made a widow at the age of thirty. But both dads have been so supportive; they are both remarkably loving and strong. They have lived almost their entire adult lives for others, for their children. My dad said last year, “If Dave is here to celebrate with me next year, then that will be all the birthday gift I could want.” That’s great, because I have not gotten you a gift yet, Dad.

  I did not die last year and am now working toward making a full recovery. That is an astounding thought, considering where I was last June. But, if anything, I have really learned of the miraculous power of the human brain. There was one moment a couple of months ago when I could actually feel the healing. I was reading a newspaper but could only identify individual words one at a time. I knew what the words meant, but I could not read complete sentences. It was an exceptionally unique experience, and it was scary. Will this last forever? I wondered. Will I never again be able to read? I worried and worried my way into a nap, and, when I woke up, the words no longer appeared to me like that. I look back on that experience as a healing moment—my brain was changing and adapting to the injury it had suffered. Now I only hope that that experience will happen again and again.

  So many doctors, nurses, physician’s assistants, and therapists poured their skills, patience, empathy, and energy into first saving my life and then restoring my life, from the Sanford Medical Center in Fargo, across many of the departments at the Rush University Medical Center, and at the Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago. How can I ever fully thank these talented professionals and wonderful people? I cannot; there is no way that they will ever know how deeply I appreciate all that they did for me and my family. But I can try my best to pay it forward with my own work for my own patients, every day.

  My friends have been an amazing support network for me through this. I have been visited by people from New York to California, and I could not be happier when I think about the people I have in my life. If the measure of a true friend is one who shows up in your time of need, then Alli and I count ourselves truly fortunate to have many, many true friends. When each one of them visits, I wonder if I am going to somehow make them uneasy or uncomfortable, but they all bring their unique love and encouragement. I still feel like myself; I share inside jokes with each one of them, and it is so great to remember and rehash those jokes. I am a fortunate person, and I cannot dream of a world without my friends.

  My family has been through the most difficult of circumstances. They almost lost one of their own at far too early an age. They have had to deal with the recovery of that same individual, who in many ways has been growing up again, from infancy to manhood. But they have handled it so well and have known exactly when to push me and when to love me. We all love our families, but perhaps we do not know how much until one of our family members is in danger. The true colors of family reveal themselves then, and we remember just how remarkable each one of our loved ones is. You understand your family so much more clearly after an incident like this, and I feel such love and gratitude for every single one of my brothers and my parents.

  Finally, I want to reflect on the love I have for the greatest gift in my life, Alli. She has been with me at every turn, and I could not have asked for a more incredible companion through it all. She is the absolute best wife anybody could ever hope for. In the “Fan Mail Book” that Alli put together for me, my brother Andy wrote:

  At one point, I wrote more—more about my feelings during all this; how hard it was to see you not yourself; how much I love you (I really really love you); how great Alli was—but none of that seems to matter now, except Alli, she really is amazing.

  This spring, Alli launched her third novel. While I have loved all of her books, I believe that this one, Sisi, is her best work yet, and I was so grateful to be there with her, cheering with Lilly throughout the launch. Lilly and I even got to make a cameo appearance as Alli’s groupies when she went on the Today show to discuss her work with Kathie Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb. Alli was so nervous about the launch, how she would juggle everything with a new baby and all of the stress of our current lives, but she made it look easy, as she somehow manages to
do with all of life’s challenges. In spite of all of her hard work as a writer, Alli always makes her family and her loved ones her first priority. She works every day to bring her best traits to our marriage and to motherhood. Her level of understanding—both of me and of my condition—still staggers me daily, and I simply cannot believe how patient, faithful, affectionate, and devoted she has been through all of this. She has taken over everything in our lives for the past year, and I am ready to start helping her out.

  My greatest joy is the little family that Alli and I have started, and the love we have in our home for each other and for our baby girl and, yes, for our “first child,” our dog, Penny. I call them “my triumvirate.” Alli asked me recently: “If you died today, would you die a happy man?” That might seem like a morbid question, but, after what we have been through, it is not that outlandish a topic for us. My answer was, “Yes, because of my triumvirate.” I love them with every ounce of my heart.

  I wake up every day amazed that this is the life that God gave me. He somehow brought these incredible women into my life. I am not sure how I would have recovered without my family, but I know that I certainly would not be as strong without them. My favorite nickname for Alli has always been “Angel.” If I need to show anybody me at my best, I need to point no further than the angels I have at home.

  This June, right around the time of the one-year mark from the day I survived, we took a trip out east to Alli’s family’s place on Lake Champlain. It is a special place for Alli’s whole family, but it is especially meaningful for us because that is the place where I proposed to Alli. This time, we went back with our daughter. On our last night, just before sunset, Alli and I took Lilly up to the hilltop where we became engaged. It was the same time of evening and on a night as clear as it had been, there, before the blue of Lake Champlain and the green of Vermont, when we had first made the decision to join our lives together years earlier. We showed Lilly this place, and we thought about what our promises had meant years earlier and what they still meant as we moved forward, back down from that same mountaintop. You know what we found during that visit to Lake Champlain? Something we had not found since our engagement. Another four-leaf clover. We have decided that that one goes to Lilly. Alli has pressed it and put it on the same photo where we have our other four-leaf clovers, right above the words “May we always remember how lucky we are to have one another.”

  How does one move on from this? Where do I go from here? Those are the questions I find myself asking every single day. But the exciting thing is that those questions are no different from the questions that anybody else is asking. And, for that, I am and will always be thankful.

  —Dr. David Levy

  Alli is the third of the four Pataki siblings. From left: brother Owen; father, George; brother Teddy; sister, Emily; mom, Libby; and Alli in upstate New York. The family often spent portions of August in the area while George, then a New York state assemblyman, was in session in nearby Albany.

  Dave is the youngest of the six Levy brothers. Clockwise from left: brothers Jonathan, Erik, Scott; father, Nelson; mother, Louisa; brothers Mike, Dave, and Andy. (Dave is the little boy in front in the denim jumpsuit.)

  An early love of history and drama: Alli (center) plays the role of Cosette alongside her big sister, Emily, and friends in a living room production of Les Misérables at the Pataki home.

  Dave lost his hearing as a baby due to a series of ear infections. He eventually regained it following surgery, but had missed eighteen critical months of cognitive development, necessitating hard work and intense corrective rehabilitation as a child.

  Salad days. Dave and Alli began dating in the fall of their sophomore year of college, though they had met in their first days as freshmen.

  Summer 2005: Alli goes home with Dave to Lake Forest, Illinois, to see his hometown and visit his family and friends. Here they are sitting in the “chaperone chair” that Nelson and Louisa put outside Alli’s bedroom.

  Dave and Marya (called “Mar Mar” by Dave) at a college toga party. Marya introduced Alli to Dave and was ever-present throughout much of their courtship.

  “Take a picture of us,” Grandma Peg said as she took a break from frying eggs to hug Dave. She was the “first Pataki to make me feel like a member of the family,” Dave says of Alli’s grandmother.

  Alli with sister-in-law Emled; sister, Emily; and brothers, Teddy and Owen, on her college graduation day, May 2007.

  Dave as a starting defensive midfielder for the Yale Bulldogs lacrosse team.

  Dave traveled to Central America the summer between his first and second years of medical school to work in a clinic in Guatemala and study Spanish. Here, on a day off, he enjoys a hike and a swim.

  Alli quit her job as a news writer and moved to Paris for a few months, before returning to try to make a career of writing fiction. Dave visited in late June 2010; here they visit Notre Dame cathedral.

  Dave and Alli got engaged in August 2010 at the Pataki family farm in upstate New York. The next day, they found three four-leaf clovers; Alli pressed them to give to Dave on their wedding day with this note and picture.

  Dave and Alli were married in late September 2011, seven years to the day after their first kiss.

  Dave graduated from Columbia Medical School in 2012, a day of mixed emotions: Dr. Nelson Levy flew out to New York City to watch his youngest son realize his dream of becoming a doctor, while Louisa, recently diagnosed with multiple myeloma cancer, could not travel from Chicago.

  Members of the Levy and Pataki families gather at the Levy home outside Chicago for Thanksgiving 2012.

  Alli works on the final edits of her first novel, The Traitor’s Wife, on the porch of their first apartment in Chicago.

  The early days in the ICU. Dave is disoriented and sleeps much of the time, surrounded by family and doctors. Here, he tries to read.

  Magnetic resonance image (MRI) of Dave’s brain on June 10, 2015. The clear white areas near the middle of the brain are infarcts (dead tissue) in both the right and left sides of the medial thalamus. The thalamus is the brain’s major relay center, through which run vital connections between many different parts of the brain. Dave’s brain had, in effect, two big holes of dead neurons at its center.

  Dave’s first memory after emerging from a state of amnesia is this day with his best college friends Peter and Russell, walking along Lake Michigan.

  Friends Margaret and Charlotte made so many trips to Target to stock Alli and Dave’s new apartment that the staff let them take a shopping cart home.

  Dave could not walk on the treadmill without safety harnesses, due to a lack of balance. He fatigued easily and was not at the level of his former athletic self, but he enjoyed physical therapy.

  “I suspect that Dave will be able to participate in the birth of your daughter.” That was what Dr. Richard Harvey told Alli, and she didn’t believe it—but it turned out to be true when Lilly arrived in October 2015.

  Dave with Dr. Omar Lateef, advocate, friend, and surrogate family member. Alli and Dave owed Omar cheeseburgers, as they’d originally agreed, but they went out for steaks instead.

  Just over a year after the stroke, on Father’s Day 2016, Dave and Alli traveled with Lilly back to the spot where they became engaged. They found another four-leaf clover on that visit.

  Dave and Alli, still holding hands, still walking forward on the path together.

  For Louisa & Nelson,

  our lantern bearers on this journey

  And for Lilly,

  the light that pulled us
forward

  By Allison Pataki

  The Traitor’s Wife

  The Accidental Empress

  Sisi

  Where the Light Falls (with Owen Pataki)

  Beauty in the Broken Places

  About the Author

  ALLISON PATAKI is the author of the bestselling historical novels Sisi, The Traitor’s Wife, and The Accidental Empress, as well as the forthcoming children’s books Nelly Takes New York and Poppy Takes Paris, which she co-authored with her friend Marya Myers. She is also the co-author, with her brother Owen, of the historical novel Where the Light Falls. Her books have been translated into more than a dozen languages and her work has been featured in news outlets including The New York Times, ABCNews.com, USA Today, Fox News, and The Huffington Post. Pataki and her husband, David, are passionate about raising awareness of the difficulties of life after a stroke or traumatic brain injury. The daughter of former New York State governor George E. Pataki, Allison Pataki graduated cum laude from Yale University with a major in English, and is a member of the Historical Novel Society. She lives in New York with her family. To learn more and connect, please visit: