Three Strokes and You’re NOT Out
The original doctors, of the hospital he was taken to told Richard that everything on the left is going to be weak, in other words, paralyzed.
That’s because of the damage. The neurons in the body are not going to be functional. That was a hard pill to swallow.
But Richard, who participated in the West Los Angeles VA Art Festival back in September, is not a give-up kind of guy. Richard came to the festival not only to read his poems, but to do pushups.
Pushups? Why? Because he wanted to prove to others that even with three strokes, you’re not out.
The Three Strokes
“It was February 2016. I knew something was really wrong, but I was going to a person's birthday party, and I wanted to go,” Richard Cooks recalled.
“I was driving, and I felt that I couldn’t go any further, so I pulled into a parking lot by a shopping center. I waited a while, and I did all the wrong things. I tried to go back to my house, but everything was still blurry. I had to wait for a couple of hours and drove back home slowly.”
The next day Richard came to the VA to be checked and the doctors determined that he had a major stroke.
“A few months later, I went to pay a bill. I came up to the store where the door could open both ways. But I couldn’t open it. There was this weakness that was going through me. I tried speaking to people and my speech was slurred.
They looked at me and told me ‘You’re drunk.”
“I said no. I haven’t had a drink in years. And they called the police. When the police arrived, I asked them to call an ambulance and they did. That was stroke number two that did the most damage,” Richard said.
Richard was rushed to the hospital where he was diagnosed with a tumor in the heart which was blocking the blood flow.
A surgery was scheduled for the following day, and as the doctors were cutting into him, and about to remove the tumor, they had to stop. Richard was having another massive stroke. That stroke took his vision.
They still had to schedule the surgery again for another day.
The second and third strokes caused the most damage. His left side was paralyzed. He vision in his left eye was gone and the right eye was blurry.
Fighting Back
“I wasn’t going to give up and decided to rebuild myself. I used little exercise balls to compress and build up strength in my hands – and got my fingers working.
“The VA doctors were right on track with me. They weren’t going to give up.
The neurologist told me that the neurons in my brain died. So, I had to find new pathways to do things repetitiously. I had to do a lot of walking, which would build the pathways,” Richard said. “I thought I was speaking well, but the speech therapist said, ‘No. You need to work on it.’ They weren’t going to give up.”
He went to physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech therapy, recreational therapy, he gym to do leg presses, dumb bells, and pull downs to build the mobility and strength.
Although Richard cannot see out of his left eye, it does not deter him from doing activities he’s done before. You see Richard was preparing soldiers for any level of combat in the military including night missions.
“In the night, I had to teach soldiers how to do things with the darkness. Sometimes we had night goggles which allowed us to see in darkness.
But sometimes, we just had to do what we needed to do in complete darkness,” Richard explained. “So, even though the stokes caused me vision loss I said, ‘no problem. I’ve trained to function in complete night darkness.”
Richard didn’t let the strokes stop him from doing anything. Even archery. Just because his left side is weaker doesn’t mean that he can’t pull with his right arm and hit a few bullseyes.
Today, Richard walks 15 miles on any given day. He surfs and competes in the National Veterans Golden Age games.
“In the past, I came in seventh. Last year, I finished fourth place in the 1500-meter power walk, and I hope that next year, I’ll do even better.”
Now we know why he came to the Art Festival to do pushups. “I've been doing it to encourage other stroke survivors and even wrote a book about it. I try to point out that it's not a race, it's a journey. So that way it will motivate them in a positive way to be able to do what they can do despite disability.”