The Knife’s Edge: An Unsanitized Journal of Recovery, Identity, and Resilience.
Experience Jake’s first-hand account of a Carotid Artery Dissection and subsequent TIA. Raw, unfiltered journey, illuminating the depth stroke’s power
“At the end of the day, I’ve been really scared. This experience frightened me. Much more than the first.”
This is a raw and honest record of a non-linear stroke recovery: the medical reality, the emotional demolition, and the spiritual rebuilding. It is a quest for self on the sheer cliff-face of fragility. His journey marked by anxiety, love, the absurdity stroke presents, and a radical exploration of consciousness.
We share this not as a clinical protocol, but as a lifeline of recognition. If you feel like your healing is a fools' errand, or that you're building sandcastles while the tide is in, read this. This is a truth of the journey.
Disclaimer: This content is a personal, qualitative journal of one individual’s stroke recovery and experience with microdosing. It is not medical advice, a formal treatment protocol, or an endorsement of any substance. Please consult your physician before making any changes to your health or treatment plan.
The First Weeks
At the end of the day, I’ve been really scared. This experience frightened me. Much more than the first. And I suppose because life up until this point was defined by struggle – so perhaps I was more (not completely) just more indifferent toward life. This time, however, I’m really proud of, and love, the life I have with Patrick, and I understand what I have to lose – and have been clinging desperately to that. So that’s where my fear has been coming from. From my attachment.
The way I treat people is something and my soul knows it got right.
Part of the scary experience was seeing my mom while having a TIA – her resolve and steadfastness, but to witness her son having a stroke and seeing things go offline – like his ability to speak – a gift of his, was excruciating.
It’s the severity and proximity of stroke – the blow it deals – that makes it a little punchy existentially. Its contour is particularly edge/cliffy – like I was in a position where the prospect of death or maiming was acutely real and could happen at any minute.
This feels different relative to other illnesses where the off-ramp is gentler, shallower, more prolonged.
I have been so worried the last few weeks, this time of recovery has been a “waste,” that I somehow have not been productive enough – like productive in a healing way. It’s just this judgmental Western mindset that seems to muddy the water. Part of that is around, “will I be worse off than I was before? What if I’m not as strong, smart, quick, resilient as before? Like if I’m taking all this time to get better what is the payoff of the investment?”
And so it’s really hard not to give into this short-sighted, impulsive piece of me. Just doing what’s easy and interesting, like scrolling. My excuse is that I’m learning all kinds of stuff (which I am), but I know it's probably not the best — that said, it’s better than my first recovery – where I really didn’t know what I was doing and didn’t pay much attention at all.
I suppose I just needed to be told that my job right now is to heal – that’s it. That is the prioritization surfacing. Because, this is for the Long Run. The other piece of this that’s hard is I don’t know like how long the healing is going to take? My intuition reckoned that I’ll be out of the game until the New Year. Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec… So like do I just plan on that? It’s hard tho – I don’t think I’ll have a follow up w/ Dr. Jones until beginning of January… and I just have put a lot of weight into that time – like then I’ll have answers and know i’m safe
So perhaps this is an exercise in Uncertainty Tolerance? I’ve been asking myself: what is it you’re learning from this experience you couldn’t have learned any other way?
Interfacing with such an uncertain future an uncertain capacity of capability –like it just feels like all is… lost. When has anything been certain? Perhaps has this simply been a realization? A remembering?
Is all of this simply the process of coming home? We were tossed out — remembering nothing and remembering our way back home? These insights are they just what was
lost coming back now?
And so another concern essentially comes down to: Am I making the right choices? It just feels like during this time of healing, I have such an outsized impact on my future. Am I choosing the right path? Am I fooling myself with significance?
So here we are again — two good days in a row — and now I’m back to feeling “hungover,” headache, just zero energy. It’s going to be a few days. But this is recovery, right? I wish I had something novel, profound, or scintillating but I don’t. I suppose one thing is my day yesterday…
I’ve been microdosing psilocybin at night to help my sleep (presumably when a lot of repair is taking place). But then yesterday morning I followed that with a microdose of LSD – thinking it may just help w/ overall clarity of mind + support what I can confidently say it did!
I’m feeling incredibly grateful for these medicines. It feels like they may not do all the “fixing + repair” like we may hope, but what they seem to be doing this time around is just make sure that I can get through the day. Actually I don’t mean to phrase it like that, it’s rather before it started it was just this impossible “stuck” feeling. Gray. Mud. Recovering in a body that was Frozen. Immobilized.
My intention was to come back to myself. To ground into the soul-part of me that was whole, complete, healed. Find a way to draw from, connect with, my Future-self. In a way that I was more spiritually based? Where I began to care less about my mind/body & more emphasis on the spirit-side of things.
It feels this proved to be an effective approach — after about 2.5 weeks, I feel a bit more embodied, clear, & less frozen — that “progress” is actually achievable — or at least that things are just ok. That I can live in myself/in this existence again.
I think this is a really important experience, because I think it can help bring back, dial down, the claims that microdosing would “heal,” instead double down that it supports a foundation of healing. It also allows for the microdose to be really small, light, gentle.
50mg once every 3 days. Your body & mind are so so so so sensitive — so be kind and considerate — later you can do more.
Primal Nature
What happens when your caregiver gets sick? What happens when your support person gets trampled too? They are your crutch and somebody or something kicks them out from under you.
I suppose it’s an opportunity for both of you to be flattened together, to unify in the steamroll — but that’s topical — because there’s a lot of valid emotions, like anger, toward whatever has compromised your healing. At least that’s how I feel today. Standing at the ready to go completely scorched earth. Nuclear. Deal irreparable blows upon anything that touches Patrick, hurts him, reopens old wounds, makes him sick, or compromises him in any way
Because at the end of the day I need him so desperately. My liferaft. My survival — so my primal nature protective.
Into the crucible
Yesterday was hard. It was a day after a good day. One where I
stretched myself socially with a 1.5–2 hr “walk + talk.” So all day I had a headache + felt lousy — I describe it as a hangover. Today I feel more neutral — a residual hangover-ness. That’s good though — my edges — perhaps are becoming a little clearer? More defined.
At beginning of recovery you just can’t figure out where you are “in space.” Like where your bearings are, and it takes what seems to be an indeterminant amount of time for crystallization + formation to take place.
For many weeks I’ve been diminishing what I experienced: that because I didn’t have permanent brain damage that my recovery was less, would be easier, would be shorter. Only now am I beginning to realize this is its own journey entirely — and will take just as much, be just as long, & be just as hard.
Had my first pretty solid emotional release since the mini-stroke — so far no stroke — so I think I’m in the clear. Progress! Perhaps it was rather a path than a tightrope, or knife’s edge. Calibrating.
Why this is a big deal is that the emotional release is precisely what put me over the edge in entering stroke land…
I was just a few days out from the hospital. Still adorned with the black remnants of EEG leads on my chest, several prominent marks from the IV’s visible. I awoke With a pretty severe headache — enough warranting concern. Mom & I agreed we’d see how it progressed over the next hour or two + then make our way in for the ER. She suggested that crying in the shower “may be helpful” — “it’s the perfect place for it.”
As I felt the hot water stinging my cold skin, it felt good — isn’t something that’d take my mind off the pain for even Just a second. I began to think about the previous intensity from the days/weeks past, and the very real threat to life — holding a tremendous amount of uncertainty — seeing the toll it was taking on Patrick, just simply…allowing the sadness of my fear uncork, release, and flow.
Gazing down at my feet, getting lost in the emerald herringbone, water drops accumulating in number and size, merging, and falling I broke. Unravelling The ugly cry. Wailing. Honestly should have just crumbled to the ground!
Between gasps for air, I felt the Stroke. My left thumb — that tingling numbness you feel when your foot falls asleep– emanate from the palm of my thumb. Recognized it instantaneously. The tremor. Oscillating my wrist on its axis, just barely an inch, back and forth (50x/sec).
Fuck. “What is it with me, showers, and stroke?”
Question rolled through my head recalling the shower experience in the Hong Kong hotel before Patrick received the email from Doc saying I had a stroke & needed to come back immediately
Drying off. The precariousness of the situation revealed itself, the knife’s edge my vulnerability so high, that I must care physically, but my emotions too were enough to cause stroke. “Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck.”
Pacing in the bedroom, putting on the clothes I wished to wear in the ER. Walking out of the room, my mom waiting “We need to go to the ER, it’s not worth waiting.”
Well yes I agree, because my my thumb went numb and started to tremor. Appreciative of how little my mom reacted — as though the information I shared really didn’t change the fact we were going.
Arriving at the ER, I hopped out of the truck — clumsily made it through security — irked by absurdity. Walking straight to counter, I started sharing my “significant increase in headache, numbness + tremor on left side, history of stroke & recent hospitalization for carotid dissection.”
This punctuated by my protracted pauses in speech. Midway through a word/sentence, a thought. A concerned nurse stood behind the receptionist’s right shoulder — seeing a situation begin to unfold. She took over questioning: “Can you not find the words, or do they not want to come out?” It took me 30 seconds to say “no,” during which time the receptionist asked me to sign some documents — in the background I heard the nurse turn, yelling, “Stroke Alert!”
(or something to that effect).
The oddity grabbing the pen with my right hand (I’m left-handed) because instinctively my left arm wasn’t working how the manufacturer intended… It was as if my body recognized it no longer with the same serial number. It felt like my arm was after-market part, not an OEM.
A wheelchair rolled quickly around the desk, the nurse from moments ago pushing it, gesturing for me to go down into it. She wheeled me then through what appeared to be the “Board of
Directors” — a group of suited people awkwardly talking, noticing a slight scene unfolding beside them infinitely more interesting than whatever drab topic they were supposed to be addressing.
Thru the main doors — my head racing, “this is how it starts…”