Stroke recovery: First post-stroke drive

Amy, my occupational therapist, put me behind the "wheel" Wednesday for the first time since my April 22, 2011, stroke. Although the experience was scary, my driving posed no danger to myself or anyone else.

I was on a simulated drive. Once I was in the driver’s seat, there was a steering wheel I held with one hand. There was also a gear shift, a rudimentary dashboard, and three screens in front of me.

The YouTube video above was the one I found that was most similar to the version I used. My first attempt was a practice drive down a fictitious highway with two or three lanes all in the direction my vehicle was pointed. There were no other vehicles and mostly straight-aways with a few gentle curves and rolling hills.

I was definitely in the “little old lady” category as I crept along barely accelerating up to 10 mph. When I increased speed above 30, I nearly fell out of the seat. And the dizziness was even worse in my first “for real” sessions of simulated driving in the city on busy interstates and urban streets with heavy traffic. 

The dizziness was most severe on the extreme curves throughout the exercise. I continued to feel like I was going to tumble off the seat, especially on curves to the left.

With Amy’s advice I began conquering the dizziness by the second exercise by focusing on a far object. But working on that strategy left little attention for working on two other big problems I encountered: acceleration and braking.

That was never a problem pre-stroke; but during my two five-minute simulated drives, I invariably stopped too far from intersections and too far behind cars in front of me. I would start and stop several times before making it to the appropriate position.

I never did move beyond my antagonistic relationship with the gas pedal and brakes. There may have been some deficiency in depth perception in play, too.

When time was up, my score was 0%. I was exhausted and certain that driving is not in my immediate future. At least I didn’t run into stuff like super-brain Sheldon did in an episode of “The Big Bang Theory.”

And my big fat 0 was still better than the lowest score I ever received on a test. In my sophomore year of high school, I ignored warnings to avoid guessing on a national math test. I had no inkling about the problems on the test. I figured what could be worse than a score of 0. A minus 19, that’s what.

Happy driving!