Heh .. you'll LOVE this one. I did it to myself. Hell, no one else can kill me, figured I'd give it a shot
I was in ICU on life support in a civilian hospital. Not their fault, but they were out of their league. Me, PTSD and anesthesia do NOT get along. Anesthesia makes you dream some weird shit. I was back in combat. I guess they went a little light on the anesthesia or something but I came out of it enough to think the enemy was shoving something down my throat and I yanked the tube out. My brain was without oxygen for about 2 minutes and I flatlined.
Anesthesia is some evil shit. When they brought me out of it, I was sure they were trying to kill me. I since learned that is not an uncommon thought for some to have coming out of anesthesia. My nurse was this hateful-ass African f*cker and they'd ask me questions and I thought they were trying to interrogate me so I didn't tell them shit until some of that crap cleared out of my head and I sorta got my bearings. Good thing for him because I was trying to figure out how could kill him with all those tubes in my arms if I had to. And nobody would tell me shit, Not from the time they brought me out of it until the day I checked out. Had they explained the situation to me instead of "you've had a bad shock to your system and still have a horrible infection" I may have not been so hostile to them.
Anyway, the 2 minutes without oxygen affected my memory. I literally couldn't remember shit. I thought Ronald Reagan was the President. I've got my long term menory back, Short term is iffy and I have to write most things down. There are threads I posted in today and if they roll off the Top Ten Latest Posts or howver many I won't remember the thread unless I run across it going through the subforums.
My memory recognition is what got hit the worst. Unless I knew you before the stroke, or see you every day, this is how I recognize my neighbors. Their cars and their houses. And that means I recognize their cars and their houses. If they were to come up to me in my driveway or the convenience store, I won't know who they are. It's hard to explain. I see them clearly vision-wise, but I don't "see" them. The face doesn't stick and I'll forget it in a minute. I've seen pics of people on this board over the years and probably the only people i would recognize if the walked up to me is Jim and Kathianne and that's because I i know their voices and accents. I've never seen Kathianne and only vaguely remember what Jim looks like.
That part hasn't really improved. The nerve damage in my feet, lower left leg and left forearm is permanent. My balance was f*cked for over a year but I've put som much effort into getting it back it's improved a lot. I went from 205 to 155. The significance of that is I was 205 lbs of mostly muscle. when I ran into crap it either moved, broke or I bounced off. At 155 (my HS weight) everything I ran into hit bone and it hurt. THAT took some getting used to. I've since gained about 30 lbs or so back but i still can't just go slamming into crap like I used to.
So, after all that, pulling the incabation tube out and the oxygen deprivation gave me the stroke.