I first noticed that something was amiss when I got out of the shower and looked in the mirror -- my face was beet red and my eyes were as big and round as silver dollars. The least disruptive part of the experience is that there has never been so much as a hint of physical pain. I did not know it was a stroke for two days as I inexplicably kept bumping into immovable objects. While driving, I found my car rolling on the left side of the road.

I thought it was vertigo and two days into the event, I tried to book an appointment with a doctor, but the lady on the phone told me to hang up and dial 911. The Fire department showed up and my blood pressure was something like 220 over 120. They took me to Cedars Sinai Hospital where I resided for one week before being transferred to The California Rehabilitaion Institute. I existed there for three weeks.

I related some of this story a few weeks later with Inside the Belly of the Beast and 30 Months in, The Tally.The most significant fact that I did not relate in either of those diaries last September, because I did not know it yet, was that I had lost at least 50 pounds while in the care of Modern Medicine. I had been overweight for most of my adult life -- never morbidly obese, but always at least ten pounds over the "recommended" weight for my height and body type, and usually 20 or 30 pounds too fat. I had not weighed myself in years, but I figured that I had lost some weight during the pandemic and my estimated poundage as of last July 26 was 220 pounds, down from my highest ever scale reading 20 years or so ago -- 240 pounds.

Now ancient history! As of mid November, I weighed in for a doctor's appointment at 167 pounds. My wife now tells me that I looked like a concentration camp inmate when I first got out of the hospital. The skin around my elbows and knees were shriveled up and hung loosely off my bones.

By May, my weight was up to 175 pounds. Going by how my new pants fit -- I had to buy them after losing six inches off my waistline. I don' think I have gained much weight since then.

How could I lose so much weight so fast?

They brought me something that they called food three times a day. I suspect that the stroke impaired my ability to swallow, and almost every meal came with a pile of pills and capsules that were a serious challenge to get down my throat and ruined what little appetite I had. I tried to ingest at least some protein during each "meal."

I have a hard time believing that my de facto fasting was taking 12 pounds a week off my bones. I also got hit with diarrhea for the last two weeks of my stay. Whatever hospital bug that gave me the shits is possibly responsible for knocking a dozen or more of those pudgy pounds off my frame.

One year into this re-creation of a human being, I now walk at least ten miles every week, and at least a mile every single day. My left-hand fingers have sorta remembered where the typing keys are. I still have way to go before I can think of myself as "normal."

Who is?

Over all, the experience has driven me much further into my skepticism about the Health Care Industry. The bureaucracy cared more about isolating my positive test result than about treating me for the supposed infection -- or about the stroke that put me under their care.