WARNING: This is pretty depressing and a tad graphic about head injury stuff.

So Stu had a stroke in June of 2012 and we kept a journal at Caringbridge.org which we just restarted. I spend days and nights on Facebook. I couldn't blog, just couldn't be coherent.

Stu and I got married at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture on the Unversity of Washington campus in June, just about two years to the day that he had his stroke and our lives changed.

On October 20, one month ago, Stu fell while sitting solidly, braced and secure on the edge of his bed. He had been doing this for weeks and weeks. Enough so that he had just started using a power wheelchair (and overcompensating like anyone does the first time) which requires you to sit solidly, braced and secure. He did great, by the way. His progress was stunning, even though conventional wisdom about stroke recovery gives periods like "a year" "the first three months", all that. Stu was still finding strength and new ways to do things.

That changed when he fell. It was the matter of an instant and many of us wonder if something happened in that second to make him dizzy or lose his focus because I know how well he was doing and how careful everyone was with him in therapy.

He was rushed to the hospital and checked. Came back several hours later, having been scanned and seen as ok, with a big honking bruise on his head (you know when they talk about "goose eggs"? That really happens!) I was not there that day, but spoke with several nurses throughout the day.

I saw Stu on Tuesday. He was drowsy but okay and the drowsiness was put down to the fall and the, what was it, six hours in the Emergency Department? Exhausting. Several administrators came to the room and we discussed what happened, but Stu was not able to talk that day, couldn't handle the speaking valve. They were going to come back the next day. I left after several hours and I think I remember saying I'd be back on Wednesday.

At 1 am, Wednesday, David called. He's the night nurse on the unit where Stu is and has taken care of Stu since he got there. He had called for transport back to the hospital, saying that Stu was confused and had lost focus and was vomiting. Bad stuff. Three hours later, and after I had two conversations with the Emergency Department nurse and the neurosurgeon, Stu went back in for surgery. He had a subdural hematoma and more. His brain was swelling. There was bleeding.

I got to the hospital that morning just as Stu was being moved from the OR to his room in the Neuro ICU. He was responsive, squeezed my hand, knew what was going on. He was pretty wrapped in gauze and had a major black eye - facial bleeding does that.

Stu spent just about three weeks in the ICU. This time. He is back at the nursing facility after a horrific three weeks. He is alive. He is not well but he is alive. He is "unresponsive".

Since that day that Stu had the stroke, I have said to Stu "I'm not scared." I mean it I stopped being scared that day. Nothing, I thought, could scare me. Wrong. I am scared. I am scared and worried and I do not know what our future, Stu's future holds. There IS no question that he can recover and come back. There are "deficits" from this new bleed and we won't know how bad things are for quite a while. But he's there. And he recovered amazingly well from the first stroke (I saw the imaging recently and was stunned at the amount of damage that first stroke caused him.)

Up until this fall, we were talking and planning and thinking about getting Stu home - to an apartment he's never seen - by year's end. That is no longer the case. I think I need to to think that I'll be here by myself at least another six months, maybe longer. (I'd go into details but that's over on caringbridge and I'm already going on too long here.) I have to adjust big time from "is there room for Stu and where are his clothes?" to "pack Stu's stuff back away for now and put your stuff there where you can reach it." It will be a while before he gets dressed again (he IS sitting up and getting showered and shaved and all that, just like he was).

I am scared. I am lonely. I love this man so much and I feel lucky that we found each other. This next four months will be harder than anything so far. Because we saw how far he'd gotten. I can't handle it when people talk about that now. I just want a hand squeeze. That one after his surgery was the last time I was sure he knew I was there.

I have no idea how I sound. Doleful, depressed, tough, sad, pathetic, lost. Probably all of the above. Stu and I have three anniversaries - one is the first weekend in December when, in 1988, he left New York and moved in with me in Arlington, Massachusetts. Twenty-seven years. We've been married five months. I want another twenty years.

I wish I could believe in a god because then I could pray, but I have never been able to conjure up what I don't believe in, just to feel comfortable. I know people are out there hoping, praying and holding us up. I've got to adjust to living alone for a longer time, during the dark months. I think this is going to mostly suck moist green poison tree frogs (Hi Shaz!).