May Is a Good Time to Pay Attention

By Tom Watson

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. It’s also National Stroke Awareness Month.  

I didn’t plan to be connected to either one. 

A few years ago, I thought I had vertigo. I’d been dealing with it off and on for years—dizziness, spinning, the occasional drop to the floor.  

I was wrong. 

What I thought was vertigo were small strokes. What I brushed off as inconvenience was something more serious. What I didn’t understand at the time was how closely tied our physical health and mental health are—until both slammed me at the same time.  

The stroke that nearly killed me came the week after Christmas in 2021. 

I remember sitting on the sofa and being walloped. I raised my finger, looked at my wife Judy and said, “I’m done.”  

Then I passed out.  

No pulse. No breath. Eyes rolled to the back of my head, Judy later told me. The medical professionals will tell you I didn’t die that day. I disagree. 

The EMTs, responding to Judy’s call, got me to the hospital where the brilliant surgeon and his team performed emergency vascular brain surgery.  

I was in the hospital for four days. Mostly asleep. At one point they woke me to see if my fingers and toes worked. They did.  

The road back to physical and mental health was next.  

The physical part gets a lot of attention. And it should. Strokes are serious, fast-moving, and unforgiving. I prefer to call them brain injuries, because that’s what they actually are. There is nothing soft or gentle about a stroke.  

Awareness matters. Timing matters. Listening to your body matters. Understanding your emotions and your mindset matter. 

But what doesn’t get talked about enough is what happens after.  

For some of us, it’s a funeral. For others, it’s recovery, or a degree of recovery.  

For me, it meant memory loss. Fatigue. Bouts of crying. The inability to do simple things I’d done my whole life—tie my shoes, walk straight, hold a conversation for more than a few minutes, read for more than ten minutes. Invisible stuff. The kinds of things most people don’t see. 

This was humbling.  

And it brought on a lot of fear. 

Fear of it happening again. Fear of not getting back to who I was. 

If you’ve ever dealt with anxiety, depression, or trauma—you know how quickly fear can take over. 

I’ve learned a lot from this experience and continue to learn. 

I’ve found you don’t always get a warning shot, at least a very obvious one. Sometimes it feels like “just another bad day.”  

In these cases, it might be best to slow down the day a bit. Pay attention—to yourself, your body, your emotions, your behaviors—they’re telling you something.  

There is a wonderful book by Dr. Van Der Kolk about trauma, the title of which is The Body Keeps the Score, and it does, emphasizing how important it is for us to listen to our body. 

I’ve also learned that recovery, like life, isn’t always a straight line. It’s messy, slow, and humbling. Some days you feel like you’re making progress, other days, none, or very little, or maybe even like you’ve regressed.

Probably the most important lesson for me was that we need help.  

Don’t go it alone, if at all possible. 

Some of us are blessed to have at least one person in our life, someone who will be there when we fall, and believe in us when we try to get up again.  

In my case, my wife Judy was my savior, my physical therapist, and my coach. She walked me to the bathroom when I had to hold onto the walls to walk. At medical appointments, she remembered what the doctors said when I couldn’t. She believed I’d get better even when I had rough days and seemed to be regressing.  

Everyone needs at least one person like this in their life. Ray Mangurian, who lost the use of his legs and has written about his life in terms of post-traumatic growth, calls people like Judy, “true believers.”  

These are people who believe in you even with you’re at at your lowest point. Perhaps they are family. Perhaps a friend. Perhaps someone of faith. 

May is a good time to talk about these things.  

Not in a heavy, abstract way. In a real way. 

Check in on your health. Pay attention to what your body is telling you. Don’t ignore what your mind is going through. 

Notice your behaviors—are they augmenting your physical and mental health, or are you harming yourself? 

Everyone would do well this May to visit www.stroke.org and learn the symptoms of strokes and how to B.E. F.A.S.T. 

And for all of us tending to our mental health: 

If you’re struggling—physically or mentally—you’re not alone. If you’re recovering, take your time. If you’re supporting someone else, keep showing up. 

And if everything feels fine right now? Good. Life is a gift. Enjoy it. And if it doesn’t feel that way, that’s understandable; we all go through tough times, mentally and sometimes physically.  

If I had any advice to give, I’d suggest that maybe it’s a good time to reach out to others, professionals and people in your life. The former are paid to do what they do, and they are good at it; the latter care a lot about you.