On Family, Hockey and Healing

by Walter Gretzky

  KIM: I think my dad’s stroke was toughest on Glen. He always looked up to Wally, and though he left home when he was eighteen, he spoke to Dad almost every day. When he got to Hamilton from Edmonton, for a while he couldn’t bring himself to enter the hospital because he was so emotionally distraught. Perhaps it was because he was the only family member who had to fly in on his own, and he had four hours to think of the worst scenario.

  Following the stroke, Glen stayed at the house in Brantford for three or four weeks (after everyone had left to go back to their “normal” lives) to make sure Wally and Mom were all right.

  KEITH: I remember we didn’t skate that day—we had some time off. The San Diego coach, Donny Waddell, and I went for a walk, and he said he wanted to talk to me about something else later on. Nothing to do with my dad. A couple of hours later, he called and said to come see him. I went and he said, “Your dad’s sick. You need to call Mike Barnett [Wayne’s agent].” I called, and they told me what happened. They were in L.A. So they flew to San Diego and picked me up. It was Wayne and Janet, their kids, me, my wife and my daughter Kayla. We flew into Hamilton. We went straight to the hospital. At that point, we didn’t know what was going to happen to Dad. He looked so helpless.

  WAYNE: I was at home in L.A., getting ready to lie down for a rest before a game. It was about 1:30 in the afternoon. I heard Janet running up the stairs to tell me that my sister was on the phone and that my dad was really sick. Kim said the doctors had told her and my mum he had only a 5 to 10 per cent chance of making it through the night, and we all had to get there. It must have been two or three in the morning when we finally got to the Hamilton airport. We were all pretty scared of what might happen. One of the people who met us there was a good friend of the family, Brian Cooper, and I asked him what was going on. He just said, “Wayne, I’m not a doctor, but from everything they’re saying, it looks bad.” Obviously, as with any family dealing with something like this, it’s the unknown that makes everyone nervous. I don’t think any of us knew what a brain aneurysm was, or what kind of chance my dad had for surviving what was happening to him. It was a long seventy-two hours. My mum was really the pillar of strength who pulled everyone through.

  That was the first frightening period we all had to survive. By now, our extended family and friends also knew what had happened, and the local and national media were starting to run stories about my condition. Everyone was really getting prepared for the worst. Hard as it is for me to believe, it was big news, and many people were concerned about my condition. Telegrams literally poured in. Thoughts and good wishes came from the prime minister at the time, Brian Mulroney, from entire hockey teams around the continent, from school kids, and from ordinary people who didn’t know us personally, but simply wanted the family to know they were praying for me. So many flowers were delivered, there wasn’t room for them in the hospital, and Phyllis didn’t want them going to the house, because no one was ever there—she and Kim pretty much moved into the hospital for the first weeks. So, they enlisted Phyllis’s mother as the keeper of many of the arrangements. One was a massive plant from Magic Johnson, whom I’d met through Wayne in Los Angeles. It was so tall, they had trouble getting it in the door!

  PHYLLIS: My mom and my sister Shelley were a big help. There was nothing they could do for Wally, but they were crucial in taking care of Ellen, handling all the telephone calls and making sure everything was fine at home. I’m not sure we ever thanked them enough for that.

  Of course, I was unconscious and oblivious to all this. It’s only now I can say how much I and my family appreciated it. Most of the expressions of concern were positive and helped my family feel supported at a very difficult time. There was just one unfortunate incident: a Toronto radio station actually announced that I had died. I don’t know how this rumour got started, but as you can imagine, it infuriated those closest to me, because in the midst of worrying about me and trying to cope, they had to scramble to assure everyone that I was not dead! Our good friend Ron Finucan from the CNIB recalls that he was driving in his car, listening to the radio, when he heard the report and went into shock. He’d just seen me at the hospital, and although I was in rough shape, I was definitely still among the living! He and many others spent a few hours under the impression that they’d soon be at my funeral, before the confusion and distress were cleared up.

  Meanwhile, there was nothing the doctors could do, because of spasming in the blood vessels in my brain. It was a Wednesday when it all began. They couldn’t operate until the spasms stopped. On Saturday they did another angiogram, and within an hour of determining that the spasms had ceased, they did the surgery, which took five hours. Then they had to pretty much just wait and see how I would do. When Dr. de Villiers came out and spoke to my family, he said, up front, that I had had a brush with death. He said they actually found scar tissue, and that it was possible I’d had a previous bleed in my brain and didn’t know it.

  The kind of stroke I had is called a subarachnoid hemorrhage, which means there’s bleeding on the surface of the brain, between the brain and the skull. This kind of hemorrhage is usually caused by an aneurysm, which is a weak spot on a blood vessel—probably something you are born with—and when it breaks, it causes a hemorrhage, and that in turn injures brain cells. Of course, that was only the beginning of my stroke-related problems. Along with the surgery done on me to repair the burst blood vessel, which, in the end, saved my life, I also had to have a permanent shunt inserted to drain fluid from my brain. You can see the tube under the skin on my neck, but it doesn’t bother me.

  When I finally did wake up in the ICU after all the surgery, surrounded by my family, I was utterly, profoundly disoriented— “completely out of it,” as Glen would say. It must have been a difficult sight for my loved ones. I was hooked up to a tangle of tubes and machines. My hands were bound up in so much gauze it looked like I was wearing boxing gloves. My arms were tied down so that I wouldn’t grab at the staples on the shaven side of my head. The doctors weren’t even sure I’d ever open my eyes. (I finally did, of course, and I sometimes wear glasses as I did before, but one of my eyes will droop a bit when I am tired.) I’m sure everyone was anxiously waiting for me to say something, anything, and hoping that whatever it was made sense.

  The first thing I did was speak Ukrainian to Phyllis, and Phyllis doesn’t speak Ukrainian. Fortunately, my brother Albert understood that I was mumbling about feeding the chickens, and knew that I was recalling my very early life. I guess that was better than nothing, but apart from that, I couldn’t remember a lot. I was extremely agitated. I’d say something in Ukrainian and be very frustrated when the person I was speaking to didn’t understand.

  After a short time, I did revert to speaking English. I knew who most people were, vaguely, but my sense of time was completely shot. It gradually dawned on those around me that my memories were severely scrambled or gone altogether. I thought Brent, who was nineteen at the time, was still a baby. I recognized my granddaughter Paulina, but I didn’t know her baby brother, Ty. He’d been born in the year before my stroke, and that period really seemed to have been wiped out of my memory bank, along with most of the decade before that. That’s what my family had to absorb and accept in those very early days, along with the fact that not even the neurosurgeon could tell any of us just how much of my old self I’d get back. The only thing they knew was that whatever recovery I did have, it was going to take a long, long time. Years, as it turned out, of hard work, perseverance and the patience of saints.

  After a week or so, Brent, Keith and Wayne had to get back to playing hockey, but they kept in touch, phoning and visiting in the months following, whenever they could. Glen stayed on a few more weeks, and Phyllis and Kim resigned themselves to making hospital visits a part of their lives. They were really heroic about it, I have to say. It was obvious that I needed twenty-four-hour care and couldn’t go home in the shape I was in. At one point, Wayne even suggested that I be moved down to C
alifornia, where he had been assured I could receive excellent private care, but Phyllis steadfastly said no to that. She felt instinctively that it would be best for my recovery if I was close to home.

  Fortunately, there was a spot for me in a small, well-regarded rehabilitation facility for people with brain injuries of all kinds at the nearby Chedoke Hospital, of the Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation. It was suitable because for one thing, the building was separate from the main hospital, so they could protect our privacy. There was a lot of attention drawn to my situation, especially when people learned that Wayne was going to be visiting me on and off, and my family wanted to keep the visits and my recovery as confidential as possible. No one wanted reporters wandering onto the ward. Because there was so much media curiosity, the hospital issued a press release stating that I had been transferred from Hamilton General to Chedoke for rehabilitation. They were just as concerned as my family was about maintaining our privacy. All visitors were screened before they came. I was absolutely in no shape to meet members of the public or comment on what was happening to me.

  So on November 17, 1991, I was released from the hospital and to the unit at Chedoke, which is secluded and designed to be somewhat home-like, so that people can practice routines they’ll follow once they really do go back to their homes. There’s the main hospital, and then across a short field, there was a building that stood alone, called the East Cottage. There were five people in the program at the time, and I was one of them. Whether I knew what was going on or not, moving from the Hamilton General to this new “home away from home” was the first step along the way to being able to function again in the outside world.

  Back then, it really was a question of taking everything one day at a time, and it was not easy. Phyllis and Kim recall coming to see me during my first week at Chedoke. I was eating lunch, and I started crying. That, they would learn, was another side effect that stroke victims frequently experience: a complete lack of control over emotions. One minute I’d be laughing, and the next, sobbing. You never knew what might trigger one of these episodes. It made no sense, and certainly was not my normal manner of being. On this occasion, Phyllis said, “Wally, why are you crying?” I startled her and Kim by saying, “Because they’re so mean in here.” Of course, this upset them, and they started crying, too. They asked me, “How are they mean?” and I said, “They’re so mean to Butch.” Now Butch is a very good friend of mine who would regularly come to visit, and no one at the place was ever mean to him! So they could tell I wasn’t thinking straight. And I was still having such a hard time remembering things: where I was, why I was there. There were language difficulties, too, that lingered after I made the switch from Ukrainian to English. They would ask me what I had for supper, and if I’d had French fries, I’d say cucumbers. I knew what the right word was, but I was having trouble saying it.

  It was a hard time. Hard on everybody, because nobody knew how much better I would get. My friends and family were faithful in coming to visit and happy if they got any kind of response or recognition from me. It’s strange for me to this day to stare at photographs of myself from that time. It’s like looking at someone else. But there I am with all sorts of different people. Bobby Orr came, and even Gordie Howe and his wife came to see me when I was still on the hospital ward. Although I only know this because I’ve been told about it since then (and have the photos to prove it), I am very touched and grateful to so many people for caring so much and taking the trouble to visit. I know it might not have seemed like it at the time, but I’m sure it all made a difference to my recovery, as little by little, I latched on to glimmers of the familiar, and connected together all the parts of my past, bit by bit, to form a whole picture that once again made sense to me.

  GLEN: That first Christmas after Wally’s stroke, we weren’t sure if Dad was going to make it home. As it turned out, he was able to come home for a few days. My mum was having a Christmas Eve party for family and friends and I thought it would be a good idea to dress up as Santa Claus to lighten the mood and add some Christmas spirit.

  I went to the front door and rang the doorbell. Dad answered the door, looked at me, turned around and said, “Phyllis, it’s Santa.” I don’t know who was more excited to see me, Wally or Ellen … At that point, everyone in the house didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, because my dad actually thought I was Santa Claus.

  So I sat on a chair, with Ellen on my left knee and my dad on my right knee, and told Ellen that Santa would bring her chocolates, and I told my dad that although it was a tall order, I would try to bring his memory back.

  A silence came over the room. I looked over at my mum and saw tears rolling down her cheeks. It was at that moment that I wondered to myself if my dad would ever be the same.

  You might be reading this and thinking it all sounds awful, and in lots of ways I guess it was. But I still count my blessings. I could have died. Instead, I lived, and I had phenomenal care. I consider myself incredibly lucky to have met up with one individual in particular, who would be instrumental in helping me to heal from my injury and getting me back on my feet again. His name is Ian Kohler, and he was one of the rehabilitation therapists in the Chedoke Acquired Brain Injury Program. He was just a kid; twenty-two years old, starting a new career and paired up with me on my journey back to myself. When I met him, I thought he was the spitting image of Greg Stefan, another Brantford kid who made it to the NHL and was playing with the Detroit Red Wings at the time. “Stef” was what we always called him, and “Stef” is what I called Ian, although at first he couldn’t figure out what I was talking about. When Wayne first met Ian, he said to me, “I see what you mean,” because he could see the resemblance, too. I’ve said it many times, but really, without Stef, I don’t know if I would have made it.

  IAN KOHLER: I was always a hockey fan, always a fan of Wayne Gretzky. Wally’s a pretty recognizable person, and when I heard about his aneurysm that October, I was watching the papers every day for any word on whether his condition had improved. About a month earlier, I was at a Canada Cup game in Hamilton with my dad, and I happened to see Wally, and I remember pointing him out and saying, “Oh, there’s Walter Gretzky.” Little did I know I’d be meeting him soon, and what kind of impact he’d have on my life.

  A big part of rehab with a person who’s sustained a brain injury is having somebody work with them hands-on, someone they can have a rapport with, someone they trust. Because of the background I have in sports, they paired me up with Wally as his auxiliary therapist, which meant that his treatment program was developed by the clinical director and by the senior rehab therapist and I was part of their team. I was probably a bit in shock after learning that I’d be working with him. A bit scared, excited, but nervous. We get some pretty challenging people who’ve received brain injuries. We have behavioural therapists and psychologists, and a high staffing level. It’s really one-on-one. It has to be, for the treatment to be effective.

  I remember the first day Wally came. He was transferred from Hamilton General, where he’d been in ICU and a stepped-down ward for one month after his surgery. Usually, once you’re ready for rehab, you’re no longer a medical risk, you don’t need a team of doctors and nurses close by. When he got to that point, he was transferred to our program. He had a lot of rehab needs, but medically speaking, he was stable.

  My first meeting with him was when I came in to work an evening shift the day he was admitted. They had a car parked across the entranceway of the East Cottage, with security guards, and I had to show them my hospital ID to get in and go to work! They screened everybody, and all the curtains were drawn, because we were prepared for the worst in terms of invasions from curiosity seekers and the press. Nothing ever happened, though. We just wanted to protect the Gretzky family’s privacy and prevent the public from seeing Walter in that state. The first time I saw him he was playing pool, but somebody had to stand beside him or he’d fall over. Actually, he wasn’t doing badly at the game, considering
everything he had been through! The side of his head was shaved and you could see the big incision from the surgery.

  Ian had had an opportunity to read my records and get some information on what had happened to me, but he really didn’t know what to expect. I was unsteady on my feet, so I needed somebody to help me walk at all times. I had a really vacant look on my face—I can see that now myself, looking at those early photos. I was completely unaware of my surroundings, still pretty much in a fog. I was on a lot of medication, which contributed to that. I had no idea that I was at this place to get better. In terms of how bad off I was in relation to what they normally see, Ian says I was at the lower end of the scale of functioning. I was conscious but disoriented to time and place, confused and agitated. Communication was very difficult. I wasn’t in a teachable state yet, but I had a lot to learn, or re-learn. I had a very fresh injury— from the perspective of a brain aneurysm, one month is still very recent—so Ian’s goal initially was just to keep me safe, and the less stimulated I was, the better. If a person in this condition is in an atmosphere with a lot of noise and commotion, he or she becomes overstimulated. So it’s best just to keep things low-key, and provide a quiet environment with a lot of assistance and reassurance. And that’s what they did. Apparently, I wandered around that place for hours. Ian and the other staff would be with me while I tried to figure out where I was. I was saying a lot of things that didn’t make sense. Mumbling a lot. All they could do at the time was make sure I didn’t fall, and keep on reassuring me.