Front Porch: Stroke’s effects may linger, but don’t necessarily keep person from full life

I’m writing these words just after the Oct. 25 nationally televised debate between John Fetterman and Mehmet Oz, the candidates for the open seat in the race for U.S. Senate in Pennsylvania.

The debate drew more attention than it otherwise might have because Democrat Fetterman, the unconventional lieutenant governor and a former mayor, was going up against Republican Oz, the retired cardiothoracic surgeon and current TV personality, best known as Dr. Oz, who was endorsed by former president Donald Trump. And because Fetterman is dealing with an auditory processing issue in his recovery from a stroke in May.

This is personal for me. Like Fetterman, I had a stroke in middle age. He’s 53. Mine happened when I was in my 40s, some several decades ago. I know a fair bit about not just the physical fight back to wholeness, but also the perceptions that have to be overcome.

To be clear, what he is experiencing – which, according to Fetterman, may (or may not) have some lingering effects – is noticeable because sometimes his words don’t come as quickly as he wants them to, or they don’t come out as smoothly as he’d hope.

Or in simpler terms, it may make it appear that he has cognitive issues, a matter which his doctors have already addressed.

While experts overall largely agree that his disorder does not diminish cognitive functioning or intelligence, it certainly does impact how people view the mental capacity of anyone who is dealing with it during recovery. And, for sure, a circumstance in which a man’s brain is decoding the meaning of the words he’s hearing more slowly than it did before the stroke is certainly not helpful in a debate.

I think a lot of people tuned in to see what kind of train wreck the debate might be, kind of like watching hockey for the fights or car racing for the crashes. We are not always kind.

Personally, I think the bravest thing Fetterman ever did in his life was get up on that debate stage. I’ve been reading reports and analyses of the debate, which have described it as everything from heroic to a disaster, catastrophic to amazing. Judge for yourself.

The closest I came to any kind of speech issue myself was a general feeling of numbness on one side of my face, including my tongue, meaning that I had to speak deliberately and carefully for a while lest I bite my tongue. Even now, more than 30 years later, if I get the flu or a hard cold or am overtired, I can feel a slight sensation on that same side of my face and a little heaviness on the side of my tongue.

Anyone who knows me would laugh out loud if it was suggested there’s anything wrong with my ability to talk or express my opinion or be verbal in any way.

My stroke after-effects were more on the physical side. My right arm and leg were numb and rather useless at first, though I did get sensation back after physical therapy and a bit of time. I had to learn to walk again, though in so doing, have been circumducting (swinging my affected leg out from my hip as I move forward) ever since. Most people can’t spot it, but any physical therapist sees it instantly. And now I have returned to physical therapy for balance and gait issues, due in part to that circumduction and lingering right-sided weakness, but also because of knees needing replacing due to age and arthritis.

I also had to learn to reuse my right arm. I never could get back some of my fine motor skills there, so I trained myself to use my left hand to do some things it hadn’t done before. For example, I am left-moused at the computer now.

I mention these things to illustrate that while there can be echoes of the stroke that remain, they don’t automatically deter you from a full life. After hospitalization, I returned to my family, finished raising children and continued to help my husband with his business. I returned to work, where I became the public information officer for Eastern Washington University and later editor of the alumni magazine before retiring. I traveled overseas. And I have been a columnist and contributing writer for this newspaper since 2006.

While Fetterman was ahead of Oz in the polls by a few points before the debate, I don’t know how the public will respond now that they’ve so visibly seen him dealing with his stroke’s after-effects (which are reported to be ever improving).

There are two senators now serving who have had strokes this year (Ray Luján of New Mexico and Chris Van Hollen of Maryland). Not much fuss about that (nor should there have been), but they were already in office and not candidates at the time, and the Trump factor wasn’t in play either.

We don’t seem to have discomfort with people serving in office while having a hearing impairment or diabetes or heart disease or any number of serious health conditions. Even for those with drug and alcohol issues, there’s long been media stories about senators and congressmen attending group meetings in Georgetown, where anonymity is respected, dealing with a variety of addictions. This is as it should be.

I am just fearful that any impairment caused by damage to the brain will remain the last safe prejudice in voting.

I would like to note that Pennsylvania voters sent Arlen Specter back to the Senate for 18 more years after he underwent brain surgery and also while undergoing chemotherapy (he died of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in 2012, when he was out of office).

Hopefully the good citizens of Pennsylvania won’t hold Fetterman’s stroke against him. If they elect someone else, which is certainly their right to do, I earnestly hope it will be because of a disagreement with his policies or because they think that another person – in this case, Oz – will better represent them and their state.

For everyone who has overcome illness to work at whatever job we do or serve in public office – and especially right now, those of us who have come back from stroke – it would be just devastating that a man whose cognitive function is intact but whose hearing processing and speech are temporarily impacted due to stroke, would cause them such discomfort that they would not, could not vote for him.

And if frontrunner Fetterman indeed does not prevail, will it be because he got canceled for getting the wrong illness?

Voices correspondent Stefanie Pettit can be reached by email at upwindsailor@comcast.net