Relentless

by Ted W. Baxter

In the city, there was no way I could avoid the people who lived in our building, in the streets during my walk to RIC, or in the various businesses I patronized—Starbucks, restaurants, the gym. I was immersed. It was a big city and, at times, overwhelming. I was surrounded by people conversing, so I needed to learn to do so as well. I had to figure out how to answer them, and that was a tough job. In the meantime, I found ways to avoid conversation and took advantage of those quiet, relaxing moments.

  I often went on walks by myself at six thirty in the morning, when the sun wasn’t up yet. Of course, there were street lamps in Chicago, so I could see well enough, but no one was out walking that early in the morning but me, so I’d have some alone time. It gave me the opportunity to speak to just myself, in my own head, and I understood exactly what I wanted to say. Conversation aloud, with others, wasn’t possible at that point. I still had so far to go in the recovery process.

  Kelly

  It was hard. But then, he slowly started to show his independence again. I caught him running on the treadmill in our townhome one day. I said, “Hey, you can’t run on the treadmill!”

  He shooed me away with his hand, so I said, “If you’re going to run on the treadmill, you have to put the little leash on so if you fall, it shuts off.”

  And he said, “Fuck that.” I remember that so clearly: “Fuck that.”

  After maybe eight months, he didn’t want me to go with him to his doctor’s appointments. Because he was able to do it, he wanted to do it by himself. He’d figure out what the doctor said we needed to do, and I knew if I had questions, I could call the doctor myself. So I let him go to the appointments by himself.

  That was the good thing about moving downtown. He couldn’t drive early on, but he could walk to Starbucks. Of course, they looked at him like he had twelve heads because he couldn’t say what he wanted. Sometimes, he’d write it down on a piece of paper before he left our apartment and then point to it when he got there.

  “Yeah, it says a tall latte,” I’d say. Then, he’d show the paper to the guy at Starbucks. But he was never embarrassed to try to talk. He was never embarrassed.

  Adjusting to Aphasia

  Acceptance. They say it is a phase of recovery, a phase of dealing with loss. And I was contending with a loss of sorts. I had to recognize what had happened, what it meant, and how bad it was. I had to accept that it was not going to completely go away. Before I could make progress with my recovery, there had to be acceptance. I had to recognize that I had aphasia, and I couldn’t simply make it go away. In time, I might be able to lessen the effects by following a rehab plan, but it would always be there in some form.

  The words were no longer there. It’s like someone deleted my databanks. It took me through the summer and into the fall to accept that. Then, I had to figure out what to do that could make the aphasia less blatant when I had conversations with people. My hope was that I wouldn’t have to worry about being able to talk to people after two or three years of working hard to fix my speech. It was a problem, a set of parameters I needed to deal with. It might take me some time, but I was young and resilient, and I knew how to conquer problems. I understood physical therapy and working out and rebuilding strength. I could do all that. But, speech . . . that was a totally different concept. I didn’t know how to get mine back. It required mental adaptation and a lot of practice.

  Those early weeks and months after the stroke, part of my mind honestly believed I could push my brain to a reasonably quick recovery, in the same way I was powering forward to recapture my body. I was using my anger, determination, and natural drive all the way through RIC Northbrook to bring the right side of my body back to life, to get rid of my limp, and to regain my physical strength. I privately assured myself that my speech would follow the same course.

  “You have aphasia, Ted,” Melissa, my therapist at the time, essentially a jack-of-all-trades, would reiterate quite often. She knew that I wasn’t happy with the rate of improvement.

  I have a window . . . a small time frame. I have to make progress, fast. Time is ticking . . . I need to get back to my job, I thought. She didn’t understand.

  “You have to face what you have been dealt,” she’d say, as if reading my thoughts. I didn’t want to accept that there was a chance that the state I was in—the aphasia—was permanent. I wasn’t ready to accept it yet, and without acceptance, the recovery I sought was out of my reach.

  There wasn’t one tried-and-true route back to full, unimpeded speech. And not having a way out, a way through, forced me to face what I tried so hard not to. This was permanent. This wasn’t just my present but my future as well.

  This was my lowest point. Not during the stroke and not right after when everyone and everything was a blur I couldn’t decipher. This moment when I realized the aphasia was perpetual was the one that dragged me down, deep into the darkest parts of myself. It took longer still to accept that my previous life, my job at Citadel, was no longer in my future.

  Acceptance was something I put off as long as I could until I felt my recovery was hitting a wall.

  Acceptance was what happened when I realized that wall was me.

  The Book Club I Didn’t Join

  The director of the aphasia department at RIC in Chicago is Leora Cherney. She and I had a conversation about my speech progression not too long after I realized my aphasia was stubborn and continuous.

  “Our department does offer a few options beyond the usual therapies, if that is something you would be interested in,” she said. She had my attention. “We host a weekly aphasia club, which has a wide range of activities that are meant to be fun but will also help you regain your speech. That club meets in the morning, and then after the lunch break, many come back for the book club designed for people with aphasia.”

  She hadn’t even finished describing the clubs before I had put up a figurative wall. I didn’t want to join the aphasia club or the book club.

  “You might want to consider the club, Ted,” said Barry Schaye, an older man who’d had a stroke five or six months before me. I met him through Kelly, who was introduced to him by his wife. Kelly met Barry’s wife at one of the stroke caregiver sessions that was offered by RIC. He became a good friend of mine, though the effects of his stroke were completely different from mine. While he found words and sentences much easier than I did, his speaking was slow. But when I listened to his sentences and words, they sounded perfect. He had a limp on his right side, and he couldn’t move his right leg and arm. He taught me what to expect in my life as a person with aphasia. He was more experienced than I was, and he was able to explain how his life had changed.

  “The people who meet at the book club are just like you and me. They will make you feel welcomed,” he said, but I didn’t want to hear that. Joining a book club was just going to get in the way of my recovery. I had steps to take to reach my goals, and I didn’t see how joining a club and sharing recovery time with others was going to help me recover faster. I needed one-on-one involvement. At least, that’s what I convinced myself.

  He quickly let the subject drop for the moment. “Let’s go get some coffee,” he offered, and we did. Barry and I started routinely getting coffee each day. After that, we started going to the movies each week and out to dinner often. We explored other things that the city had to offer, too. It was nice to have someone who understood where I was in my recovery and in life. Barry was the first person I truly let in, and I knew, even then, that he was good for me, and he soon became a great friend. I always bounced my ideas and comments off him to get an honest perspective. This was a person who had experienced a stroke, like I had. Every so often, though, he would return to the topic of the aphasia clubs. “You should come to our book club. It’s a great place to practice your speech. Or, you can just listen to the teacher and what others have to say about the books.”

  I didn’t listen to that advice. I don’t need that now. I can do this on my own, at my own pace. I won’t have time for that. I
’ll be better soon and back to work, I thought.

  I saw my recovery as another exercise, another project to accomplish, like passing the CPA exam, earning an MBA from Wharton, or studying for and passing the Series 27 regulatory test for finance officers in the securities industry. If I stayed on track, I would beat it. After all, isn’t that what I’d been doing my entire life? Work hard. Be the best I can be. Climb the ladder. Get to the top. I started that ascent in elementary school. But as time passed, I realized having a stroke and recovering from aphasia was far more than a single course.

  As I started to realize that I couldn’t tackle recovery in the same way that I had tackled various hurdles in my career, I started to seek advice on where I should go next to push my recovery along.

  “What do you do with your days, Ted?” Melissa asked me at one of our sessions. She was a wonderful therapist and divided her attention between adults and kids with many different types of speechrelated conditions.

  I said as much as I could, searching my brain, working out words like deli, gym, therapy, and others. As we spoke, in this and other sessions, it became clear to both of us that I needed more help, different help, especially with conventional language, so I could begin to have real conversations. She gave me the number for Doreen Kelly Izaguirre, a private speech therapist.

  But Melissa wasn’t the only one who had ideas regarding what I should do next. I knew that Kelly had been doing a lot of research, so I asked Kelly what she recommended. She had another option for me—one that I would not have expected.

  “We’re going to make a trip to Michigan,” she responded.

  CHAPTER 8

  Relentless Since Birth

  I had the drive to be the best quite early in life, even in elementary school.

  I was born November 17, 1963, the fifth of five boys. The only sibling younger than me was my sister, Nancy. It went Tom, Gary, Jeff, Scott, me, and then Nancy. Tom is eleven years older than me; Nancy is four years younger. I shared a room upstairs with Scott, and my three oldest brothers shared one downstairs. We lived with our parents and our maternal grandmother in an average-sized house in Valley Stream, a small town on Long Island, New York.

  We were a close-knit family. My mother and father were all about us kids. Whenever they took a vacation, it was with all of us. I remember all eight of us in my Dad’s station wagon, driving across the country to see relatives. I was just an eight-year-old kid, but I sat in the front seat, reading the maps and figuring out how to get from Long Island to Missouri, where my aunt, uncle, and cousins lived.

  One night, when we all went to a restaurant for dinner, the waitress gave me a kids’ menu. But I wanted the fish filets on the regular menu. The kids’ menu had cartoon food, stuff like burgers and hot dogs named after clowns.

  I moped, and my brothers started to laugh at me.

  My mother was sitting next to me and scowled at my brothers before turning to me. “What’s the matter?” she asked.

  “I don’t want the kid food,” I answered, pushing the folded paper menu away from me. I got the fish filets that night.

  Our family was also bound by our love of sports. From my early childhood on, I was a jock. Our whole family played a lot of sports. That love of athletics further fueled my desire to be the best.

  From a Psychology Report That My Brother Tom Wrote in College

  The center of Ted’s life is sports. It is here where Ted is going to succeed or fail in life. All aspects of his life are touched by it. Eating habits are affected because everyone in the family eats at different times, since no one is ever home at dinner time because of practice. Or else someone must eat early because he’s going to practice that night. Even awakening in the morning is different. On a typical Saturday morning, Tom will go out at eight o’clock to baseball practice, while Gary and Jeff go out at nine o’clock to practice. Scott will have his practice at ten o’clock, and Ted’s practice is at twelve o’clock. Dad will probably make two trips to take Gary, Jeff, and Scott to practice, while Mom takes Ted to his practice. Nothing in this family is done by routine, and everything is centered around sports. In many cases, this unorthodox method of routine might inhibit a family’s relationships, but in this case, it strengthens them.

  All four of Ted’s older brothers are or were outstanding in athletics in high school. They stood out in baseball, football, and basketball. Ted was part of this because he always attended these events . . .

  At this point in Ted’s life [nine years old], he has not reached full physiological development and cannot use his small muscles to his fullest advantage . . . I think he is being inspired by his need and desire to be as good as his older brothers . . . I feel he tries to compensate [for this lack of skill at this point in his life] in two ways:

  Ted reads and studies sports to such a degree that he can talk about sports on the same level as any one of his brothers. He doesn’t do this only because he feels he has to but because he too loves sports.

  Ted has a great imagination and sometimes tells tall stories . . . I don’t think this is bad, because he is trying to make an impression and follow in the footsteps of his brother [Tom]. I think it is a good sign because it shows Ted has the imagination to be thinking all the time.

  Finding Focus in Finance

  I was inspired, not just to do well on the field or court. I wanted to be the best in the classroom as well. There were good reasons for me to strive for that. For one, I knew my father was paying for my three older brothers to go to college, but he wouldn’t be able to pay for Scott or me to go to college. I also knew that getting As in my high school courses would give me more opportunities to select and go to a better university that suited my needs. Eventually, getting a better college education equates with a great job and a great company. I also had an accident when I played football in eighth grade that shifted my focus.

  I was playing quarterback in football, and one night while we were practicing, I took the football, faded back, and threw a pass—but there was an offensive lineman blocking the defensive lineman, and he backed up so far that he was right next to me. My right index finger went through his helmet, scraping his face mask. My finger was so badly broken that the laceration affected the skin and the bone. This was the first time I had to make a big decision. I could try to play quarterback when my finger healed, or I could still play basketball and baseball and let football go. I was on the small side for football anyway. Plus, I knew academics were going to be important in my life. Between my throwing injury and my size, I could see it was time to stop playing football. I redirected my energies toward baseball and basketball instead, while focusing on my academic success.

  This was a small decision regarding my pastime, but it affected my life greatly, and it influenced the way I made bigger decisions later in life. After my stroke, I redirected my energies away from my professional aspirations to focus on my recovery. I was determined to do so, because I didn’t want to recover partially. I wanted to get as close to 100 percent as possible.

  I also stopped playing trumpet around the time I stopped playing football. I had been using Gary’s hand-me-down trumpet to play in the school band and orchestra, as well as in an extracurricular jazz band. Scott and Jeff played instruments too; I guess playing music was something my parents thought was a good thing for us kids to do.

  “I don’t want to play an instrument anymore,” I told my parents one day when I was in eighth grade.

  They looked at me for a few moments, like they were shocked by the statement. “Why is that?” my father finally asked.

  “I don’t like it anymore. I’d rather replace music with accounting classes.” The accounting class I wanted to take was held during the same period that I’d been going to band practice. “Besides, you’d know already if I was going to be a brilliant trumpet player. If I was, I would be applying to the Juilliard School. Then, I would be taking a different route.”

  I’m sure my parents were taken aback by the statement. I was you
ng, but I knew already what I wanted. I loved math, and I loved working with numbers. Also, my older brother Jeff had taken accounting in college, and it seemed interesting to me. Jeff had a job taking care of financial matters for his friend. He showed me his college textbooks and told me what he was doing. I thought it all looked pretty cool, the complexity of numbers, so I made it my objective to master accountancy right then, in high school. It gave me a purpose. I always liked having a purpose.

  My family said I was always very serious. I thought of it as being determined. I always had that drive within me, all the way back to when I was a little kid. When I was very young, I didn’t know the difference between fractions and decimals. Even before the school wanted me to know such things, I was frustrated that I didn’t know. My mother was patient with me.

  “Don’t worry, this will come—but you have to practice it every day. I’ll teach you this,” she said. That was good enough for me, so I practiced it every day after school. I wanted to learn a lot of things immediately. She wasn’t willing to do that with every subject, though.

  “It’ll come,” she’d say when I got frustrated with something. “You can do this, but it’s not going to be right now.”

  I guess it stuck in my brain that I could do anything if I was motivated and determined enough. I never thought I can’t or I shouldn’t. Determination means you’re going to do it. It meant avoiding statements like “I can’t do that.” Those words weren’t part of my equation.

  My favorite athlete, the famous role model in my life, was Magic Johnson. But he wasn’t the only one I emulated. I had older brothers who were all-star athletes and set a bar I had to get over. Sports, particularly basketball and baseball, had a pretty big effect on my life. My goal was to make all-county and all-league for basketball and for baseball, and I achieved that in my junior and senior years of high school.

  The sports, though, had to take a backseat to schooling. My high school offered advanced placement courses, which allowed you to earn credits that you could transfer into college. I took them all through my tenth-, eleventh-, and twelfth-grade years. I studied hard, as if I were taking the actual college course, then I took the test. I took all the classes—biology, chemistry, history, trigonometry, precalculus, calculus, and so on—and passed all the math tests with a 4 or 5 out of 5. I passed the rest with 3s or 4s. All in all, I earned thirty AP credits, a full year’s worth of classes, before I had even decided which college I would attend!