When in 2023, I first picked up my published book, my family and friends didn’t just congratulate me – they celebrated the fact that for every word, for every punctuation, my right hand was used. It was the only hand that could still be moved after three strokes
The Day Everything Changed
March 31, 2016. I had gone to my rural hometown in northern China because of my mother’s death. That night my left arm got numb all of a sudden. By midnight, I was barely able to walk. My wife, seeing my condition, rushed me to the hospital.
It was a minor stroke, the doctors said. “Two weeks of IVs, a bit of rehab, and you’ll be fine,” they promised me.
I bought their spiel hook, line, and sinker—until I got worse.
Three Strokes, Three Near-Death Battles
After two weeks, my speech became unintelligible. My face was without sensation. The stroke had reached the other side of my brain.
Before getting worse, I changed the hospital. City specialists informed me that I must have a stent in my brain. The surgery was successful – until I woke up unable to hear or speak.
I was in the intensive care unit for those three days, surrounded by a sea of IV fluids, incapable of speech or hearing. I attempted to write a farewell letter, but my trembling hands made it impossible.
The doctors said that I was “clinically rare.” One medical expert, in fact, used my pictures to hold a lecture on it at the national level. “According to statistics, you probably shouldn’t be alive,” he added.
Yet, I was alive.
Rehab: The Most Difficult Battle I Faced
In the beginning, I went to the hospital gym half unwillingly every day. The nurses said I was their “perfect patient.”
After that, I left for home.
That’s how it goes with wars – the real one starts after.
I was behaving like a little kid in rehab. My left leg was stubborn that it refused to bend. I was always falling—once, a street cleaner who had assisted me after I had fallen twice that morning, recognized me. “Not you again?” she said, shaking her head.
My wife was never heard complaining, not even when I asked her to leave on my behalf. “You’re my problem,” she would respond, helping me sit correctly so I could type.
Why I Started Writing with One Hand
I was a journalist first, then a government director before the strokes. Now? I was a “useless” man nobody visited.
Once, a friend was making fun of me, “You used to write, so why don’t you try it again?”
So I did.
It was terrible to type with only one hand. My left side was in a lot of pain due to which it screamed. My eyes also hurt. But little by little, my right hand got used to the keyboard and it became quicker.
At the beginning, I wrote only to keep my sanity. But then, unexpectedly, readers appeared.
My university journal published my essays. A local newspaper reprinted my work. The money was very little—sometimes just $20—but the real prize was seeing the reaction of the people who used to know me, the old classmates who had read my writings.
The Unexpected Healing Power of Words
After a year of writing, the unimaginable happened: my left hand started to get control. I was able to keep my balance. The woman who cleans my area was the first to notice it. “You are progressing!” she used to say every time she came.
My wife said it in the best way: “It turned out that you were leaning on the words the whole time.”
At present, I am capable of walking without the fear of falling. I have a book out there. And, every time I type, I remember that it was not supposed to be the case that I survive.
Yet I am standing here—one hand, one dream, and a story that still goes on.
— The End —
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