Kathleen: Relearning at 62

Kathleen Draper had a stroke on May 20, 2018, losing all 62 years of her memory, including her education and life experiences. She only remembered her first name and how to swallow. She had to relearn everything, including how to walk.

That never seemed to slow Kathleen down; rather, she sees the small miracles in it all.

"Before the stroke, I walked with a walker, but they retaught me to walk without it so now I don't need it. Though I sometimes take it if I'm walking long distances since I have neuropathies and when my legs tire they can go right out from under me."

Overcoming Challenges One Step at a Time

Kathleen more than most people knows that learning is an ongoing process.

"I'm still learning. Every day is a learning process."

When she was discharged in August 2018, she felt fully unequipped, but that was all that Medicare covered. Her occupational therapist suggested Lumosity, a learning app, which she liked since she enjoyed Scrabble and Words with Friends before the stroke.

She took up Lumosity with gusto and was invited by the Lumosity App to participate in the 1st Virtual Memory Championship 2020 competition, where she placed 92nd after her third stroke.

Walking into Your Home but Remembering Nothing

Readjusting wasn't easy. Kathleen guessed for years to remember her laptop password. Even just coming home was a challenge.

"It was like walking into a house full of your stuff and you have no idea where anything is."

She spent the first six months of COVID-19 cleaning and rearranging things around her house. Even though it is her childhood home, she still struggles to organize and find things she had forgotten about since before the stroke.

"The hardest thing is I feel like when I used to move things around the house, I could picture how it would work before, and now I don't have that. Now I wing it and it's going to look good or I'll have to move it again. I don't have that ability to see it in my head anymore."

Kathleen has been disabled for 17 years since a back injury at work in February 2003 left her partially able to work. However, a second work injury in November 2003 left her permanently disabled.

Medicaid pays for only select items, so at times, Kathleen has had to sell almost everything but her handicapped bed for tools to make mobility easier. This is a struggle for someone unable to work and on a fixed income. However, with help from the community, she creatively reorganized the house through home remodeling projects.

“God blessed me with people, some I knew and others I did not, who helped me in many ways, from paying my bills to remodeling my home inside and out, while I waited five years for the disability courts to decide if I was in fact permanently disabled and unable to ever work again.”

According to Kathleen, that’s when she truly learned how to let go and trust in God since both her 401K and disability funds were denied through her employer, even though she had paid into them both for years.

From November 2003 to the summer of 2008, she had no income.

“I couldn't work, I couldn't do a lot of anything. I asked God: ‘How will I eat with no money to buy food or everyday necessities? How will I pay my property taxes? My utilities? My meds? I literally had to give my life in every need to God!”

During that time, she had to overcome her former independence and learn to ask for help. She owned her home, but it was built in 1949 and needed repairs, which she had no money for at the time. Through seeking help, she managed to get county housing grants to replace her furnace, hot water heater, and poor insulation.

“But the outside of my home was deteriorating- but God fixed that too.”

Learning Through Community Engagement and Volunteering

Sometimes her brain gets off track now, but when the doctors told her she couldn't do anything after her workers' comp injury, she disagreed.

"I had a discussion with God. You didn’t put me on the earth to be a vegetable…"

And somewhere there she found her answer.

“I started volunteering to give back to the community that helped me in my time of need. And to take on the challenges that the doctors said I could not do. I was not meant to be a vegetable.”

She went to the senior center and asked what she could do as a volunteer! She joined RSVP and sang at a nursing home. She wanted to sign up for the Foster Grandparent Program (now known as Americorps seniors) since she loves children, but at the time, there weren’t any openings. So instead, she participated in Senior Companion for the next four years, where she helped take care of other seniors and gave caregivers a break.

Her attention to detail and kind attitude was commented on once by another volunteer. Kathleen explained her desire to work with kids, and lo and behold, this particular person was a principal at a preschool. She called the director of the volunteer program and got Kathleen a volunteer position at her school. Kathleen worked at the preschool for seven years. While the children were a delight, the environment was stressful. She had three strokes at that school in seven years. She had never had a stroke prior to working there but thinks the level of stress and some distressing situations at the school may have been one of the reasons.

Namely, there was a terrible case of students being punished at a different school in the district by putting them in closets and other abuse. When the case blew up, she expected her colleagues to be horrified and disgusted, but more people than she wished seemed to shrug it off with a - you have to do something.

"I knew then I was at the wrong school. So I transferred to our regular Belleville School. The school has special needs classes where many students in the nearby area go."

She has continued to work there since after her stroke in 2018. Then the pandemic hit and in-person classes stopped. It was hard for both volunteers and students who were then cut off from each other.

“I couldn’t help with the kids and they were doing e-learning.”

One of the school personnel mentioned credits for training and opportunities to get paid to take some classes to assist with online learning.

“Every bit of income helps, but I thought I didn't know about that. I'm not into e-learning.”

However, AgeSmart, Kathleen’s local area agency on aging, recommended GetSetUp to the foster grandparent program that Kathleen was a part of, and Kathleen started to have another insight.

“All people have to say is if you're not up to the challenge. Then I say I am always up to the challenge! I'm going to do this. I don't know how, but I will.”

Armed with her drive and determination, she joined her first GetSetUp class around a passion of hers: Social Hour - Craft & Chat: Crafting and Wellness.

“We discussed and learned about the health and wellness benefits of crafting, how it makes positiveness & how it makes the cobwebs of negativity seem less pressing. I had never really thought that crafting had a scientific benefit in it.”

She has gone on to take 20+ classes since that first class in September, including How to Safely Sell Your Stuff Online from Home, Healthy Meals on a Budget, Stress Management Techniques, and Get Started With Zoom for Beginners. Plus, she attends social hours on topics like volunteering, movies, and staying positive in the pandemic.

Once she got started, Kathleen just loved classes. The idea she could learn at a comfortable pace, retake classes to get the most out of them, and join social hours for more connection helped her to feel a part of a virtual community.

Classes helped to spark ideas for her in-person volunteer work as well, like making cards for students from the Foster Grandparents Program to let them and their schools know they are present, thinking of them, and eager to rejoin them again when it is safe. Kathleen crafted 65 cards for the students she works with and is making cards of encouragement for the teachers as well. She knows the times have been hard on teachers, so she offered to help teachers if they need papers dropped off at her place to grade and can Facetime or Zoom with students if that helps.

Memories Come Back

Kathleen thinks reliving her past and re-remembering it is quite the experience, both positive and negative. She has memories of some pretty dramatic times, like an abusive husband who has since passed away and her life as a private investigator. She remembers being brave but thinks she's less brave now, though many people would disagree with that statement.

Trying to work through some of her memories led Kathleen to GetSetUp’s Social Hour - Mindful Journaling for Wellness. She hoped it would help her work through some of her memories and improve her writing. Memories sometimes flood her, from positive ones like becoming a foster mom at 50 to the work she did to help rescue kids in difficult situations when she went into drug houses, pulled babies out, and calmed them down while police raided the homes. She remembers a lot of paperwork, and one of her current frustrations is that she can’t always remember how to spell words correctly, and she used to be very particular about these details due to past roles.

“Some people say things and I don't know what that means. So I have learned to ask - I don’t know what that means. Can you say it in a different way?”

She has found that while people may ask about that generally, and especially in GetSetUp classes, people are eager to help her relearn.

She is slowly relearning everything from the multiplication tables to how to spell words correctly again. Plus, she is starting to remember things little by little. She knows she was born and raised Catholic and used to know some German that her grandparents taught her. If she heard “O Tannenbaum,” she could join in the classic Christmas carol, but alone, she can’t remember it.

Now she can remember that she went to college and thrived in trigonometry and statistics, even if she doesn't know how to do them now. She still remembers her love of numbers, balancing checkbooks, and paying bills.

Little by little, she is relearning the past, new skills, and starting to remember both the positive and the learning experiences of the past. One day at a time, Kathleen is proving that learning is a lifelong commitment that keeps a person engaged, happy, and healthy!