THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Monday, October 31, 1994 TAG: 9410310072
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA MCNATT, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CARROLLTON LENGTH: Long : 135 lines
Most adults don't have to think that the ``d'' sounds like ``duh'' or the ``r'' like ``ruh'' in the word ``drag.''
But first-graders have to think.
And so does Jo Beth Wise.
``I've worked with three different children this morning,'' Wise said Thursday, at Carrollton Elementary School, where she's a parent volunteer. ``Each one needed a little different help. I would talk them through until they could say `duh-rag.' That seems so easy, but it's not.''
Wise knows it's not easy because she's been there. And, at 38, it wasn't so long ago.
Last spring, the mother of three had a stroke. A diabetic since age 8, she had entered the hospital to get her diabetes under control. While there, a heart catheterization was performed.
Wise was fine until she woke up early the next morning, March 2.
``I can remember hearing the telephone ring. I remember answering it. I knew things weren't right. I didn't know what. It was so strange.''
Her husband, David, an automotive service writer who also owns his own business, knew immediately that something was wrong. He hung up, called the nurses' station on his wife's floor and had the nurse check on her.
``It was a stroke,'' Wise said, tapping her head with one hand. ``It affected the left side of my brain.''
She couldn't express herself and couldn't understand the words she was hearing. She had lost the ability to do simple math or drive a car. She had no feeling in her right arm and hand. And Wise, who had been a soloist popular at weddings and in local churches, couldn't remember the words to a single song.
``It's all so fuzzy,'' she said about the first few days after the stroke. ``A speech therapist came into the room and asked me to count to five. In my mind, I was counting - 1, 2, 3. But I was saying to the people in my room, `I'm afraid. I'm scared. I'm afraid.' The therapist said the tone of my voice was as if I were counting.''
Wise set one goal at a time. She went home from the hospital, learned to understand language again and to communicate with her family by reading the lips of television characters. She still reads lips after seven months.
``It's not that I don't hear voices. I just can't process. At first, it was like my brain was working - it just wasn't connected to my mouth.''
Next, she decided she would attend her eldest daughter's high school graduation last June.
``I said, `I'm going to walk and talk and do the best I can.' And I was there, talking and understanding. But I wanted to read. Reading was important to me.''
It was Daniel, Wise's 8-year-old son, who began to teach his mother simple words. Because she was below his second-grade reading level, he asked his teacher for a reading book that his mom could comprehend and brought it home to work with her.
When Tiffany, Wise's 6-year-old daughter, brought her work home from school, mother and daughter would sound out the simple words together.
Still, it wasn't easy.
Wise began to pick up cooking skills again, but she was unable to tell hot from cold. Often, she'd see a blister on her hand and realize she'd burned herself.
She'd puzzle over pictures in magazines for hours, trying to make out a few simple words on her own. She'd write notes that made no sense. The words showed up on the paper, she said, but they were meaningless.
``My family, bless their hearts, never laughed at me,'' Wise said, smiling. ``They were all so supportive.''
And to learn to drive again, she practiced backing up and pulling forward in her driveway until she was brave enough to venture out.
``That first day on the highway, I wouldn't let anybody go with me. I made one loop and turned around. I remember thinking, `There, I've done that. I'll drive longer tomorrow.' ''
Throughout the long period of recovery, Wise said, she wondered why she was still alive.
``When my family wasn't around, I'd cry. I have asked myself several times: `Why didn't the Lord take me?' And I know better than that. I'm a Christian. He has helped me to get it back together again. Maybe it's helped teach me patience. Maybe I work well with the children because I've been there.
``And I mean recently.''
Wise was an active volunteer at her younger children's school before the stroke. When a note came home this year about volunteering at the schools, she had to think about it.
``I knew I could do this. I knew I could make copies and put up bulletin boards. I knew the children wouldn't look at me and think I was stupid.''
So Wise went to the school to meet Tiffany's teacher, and she liked Anna Porter immediately.
``When I met her, I thought, `Yeah, she'll be good to me. I can work with her,' '' Wise recalled.
Now, it's Porter who helps bring her back from self-pity.
``When I'm asking myself - `Am I good for anybody? Am I good for anything?' - Ms. Porter will say, `Jo Beth, where were you? Where are you now?' She and the children and the school have made me realize I am a person. I can accomplish things.''
Today, Wise is reading on about a third-grade level, just a little above her daughter's first-grade class. But the children, she said, never question the fact that she sometimes struggles with them.
``It's amazing,'' she said. ``When they struggle with a word, I just want to hug them and hold them and tell them I know what they're doing. I know it's there. It's there.
``The children don't know what has happened to me. They've never treated me like anything but an adult.''
Wise - who has short, curly brown hair and expressive eyes - was at the school last Monday helping Porter. On Tuesday, she went on a field trip with Daniel's class. She stayed home Wednesday to work on her math and to rest. On Thursday, she was back, helping the children with their reading.
Her health is better than it was when she had the stroke several months ago, she said, but she still has to rest frequently, and she takes multiple medications.
She's uncertain where she'd be, she said, if it were not for her faith, the support of her family and the small children who accept whatever she can do for them.
``When I started this, I did it with the attitude: `OK, yes. I can do this.' It's been so good for me. I hope it's been good for the children.''
Meanwhile, Wise is working on her math. She has begun to play the piano again. Although she still hasn't tackled her computer, she has learned to type. She has amazed her doctors. And a favorite expression has become: ``I need to know.''
Laughing, she said: ``My husband says, `You need to know everything.' That's how I'm working on getting it back together. It was like starting as a preschooler again.''
And she is still setting goals, jotting them down on an imaginary note pad.
``I've got two more high school graduations to go to,'' she said, smiling. ``I need to be here when Daniel and Tiffany graduate, too. And there's a church in Smithfield waiting for me to sing. I will be there.
``I will. I will.'' ILLUSTRATION: Photo by JOHN H. SHEALLY III, Staff
Jo Beth Wise participates in a reading program with her son, Daniel,
at Carrollton Elementary School. She suffered a stroke in March, but
helps out at her children's school while relearning many skills,
such as reading.
KEYWORDS: STROKE RECOVERY by CNB