Top 10 FAQ About My December, 2022 Stroke

(2026 Edition)

10.  Hope your knee gets better (when you saw the brace)! It will not. Damage to the right side of my body is permanent, and the brace helps me walk faster. 

 9. Why should I care? 1 of 33 Americans will have a stroke, & like environmentalism, most of us think strokes happen to other people, needs to be attended to by other people, or does not concern us. Keep reading.

 8. Why did you have a stroke/can this happen to me? The big four medical factors were all present: diabetes, hypertension, family history, & high cholesterol. Didn’t want to take a statin, because I was taking (I thought) too many meds for the diabetes & hypertension (of course I now take it). Was mostly compliant, but not fully compliant, about my very strict diet (which I’m strict on now), & by sticking to the diet described by The Diabetes Code, by Dr. Jason Fung, lost another 30 pounds, so am down to my high school weight. (Summary: carbs are the devil & do intermittent fasting, which for me means just eating at noon & 5 pm, with no snacking). If you are not diabetic, Fung’s The Obesity Code helps millions.

 7. WTF???!!! You had a stroke??? Imagine my surprise. I was on vacation in Los Angeles to visit friends & The Magic Castle, my famed magic club. I had the stroke on December 11, 2022. Medical folk call it an ischemic, unilateral paramedian pontine infarction.

 6. Does it hurt/can you feel everything/did you do all your exercises? No/yes/yes, but exercise does not restore the dead portions of my brain’s motor cortex, so recovery of ability has been partial.

 5. Where are you at physically? My right hand is about 60% of what it used to be, & my right leg about the same. Have gone from running 10 minute miles to walking 30 minute miles, but given that I couldn’t even get out of bed for a week at the beginning, I’ll take it. My balance will not permit me to resume riding a unicycle again, or even a bicycle, but my speech & cognitive functions are apparently fine. 

 4. What is this single greatest challenge to your recovery? Here we have two trophy winners: cruelty & incompetence. Like for most of us humans.

 3. Cool cane! Why is it often not touching the ground? I use the cane to change elevations when walking, & signal the oblivious not to run into me {I no longer have great balance}. No idea why many inquire if I have a sword in it, as that is a felony, & I am far more likely to trip & cut myself open than successfully defend myself.

 2. So doesn’t it piss you off Kevin that you don’t drink, are a vegetarian, don’t smoke cigarettes, don’t do drugs, did exercise, & yet you still had a stroke? Chances are that if I didn’t do all those things, I would be dead. But then you wouldn’t have to read this, so there’s that.

 1. Doesn’t this ever get you down - this terrible thing you are enduring? In the month before my stroke, a friend younger than me had a heart attack, & a magician friend my age died two months before that. The day I stroked-out, a composer, whose music you heard in lots of movies, died. The month I did not die, the old Pope & Pelé did. Since my stroke, about a dozen people I knew have died. I regularly meet people enduring illnesses more challenging than mine. Of course, I would like to have my body back entirely intact, but given the choices the above people did not have, I’ll take my fate as-is.

How to stay in touch:

• LinkedIn.com/in/kevinamadden

• JustMaddeningDotCom.SubStack.com

• JustMaddening.com (you're here - consider saving the page to bookmarks, or on Safari, use the share arrow square thingy and "Add to Home Screen" on your iPhone)

My Two Bits: The greatest gift you can give to me now or anytime is the gift of your time and energy. If we’re neither friends nor friendly acquaintances, think of somebody in your life who is not getting the attention they could use, nor the love that they need, and give them some. 

You’ll be glad you did. 

As my neurologist of twenty plus years ago Dr. Charlie Vella once told me, “All we have is today.” I am not more certain of anything else. Thanks for reading.

Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies —  

“Goddamn it, you’ve got to be kind.” - Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.

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