just an FYI ... I intentionally used that S word instead of being cutesy circumspect by saying "excrement" only because I want any readers to know my language can on occasion become, shall we say, colorful. Not extremely so in print, but routinely so in conversation, as my friends and my beautiful wife, Rhonda, can attest. It certainly isn't my intent to be a sharp object poking at anyone's sensibilities but be forewarned that it would not be beyond the realm of possibility that an S word might show up on occasion if the message calls for it. Rhonda will probably let me know how inappropriate it is that I used one in a post title, and, as usual, she will probably be right. She has always been much smarter than me, her willingness to marry a dolt like me notwithstanding.

OK, I digress. Back to 6/8/2016 ... it was a Wednesday, so I got up to go to work in my job as outdoors editor and sportswriter at the Yakima Herald-Republic newspaper in Yakima, WA.

Weirdly enough, I didn't do my usual routine, which would be to go directly to the kitchen, pour myself a cup of coffee and spend some quality morning time with Rhonda.

Instead, for some reason I can't remember or explain, I went directly into the little bedroom we had years earlier turned into our home gym. it had a Bowflex, a pretty substantial treadmill, and enough floor space to do some stretching or, as was the case that morning, some yoga.

I was not a regular practitioner of yoga in any way. But several days before this, I had accompanied Rhonda to a hot yoga class in town, at which I learned a couple of excellent stretching exercises I wanted to try out. So I did that for a few minutes and then got up and sat on the Bowflex bench, intending to set up the leg-press attachment. I began to try to put on my running shoes and found that I could not tie the laces. my left arm and hand weren't working. Still, after a minute or two of this strange manual inability, It didn't occur to me that something traumatic had occurred. Again, not the brightest bulb in the box. So I was sitting there on the bench with this moronic expression when Rhonda opened the door. She had been in the kitchen/dining room area, had heard me bumbling around in the workout room and came to investigate. She asked what I was doing and my answer that I was trying to tie my shoelaces but couldn't use my left hand. Rhonda being Rhonda, in an instant she understood that I had or was having a stroke or a cardiac event. She came in to check me out, and the instant I stood up I projectile-vomited all over her. Nice, huh? Seems to be something that goes with a major stroke. Rhonda immediately called 911 -- over my objections, naturally, me being a typical guy and therefore stubborn as a post and full of my own autonomy -- or simply full of something else, but we won't go there right now.

when the EMTs got there, they took me to a local hospital,after which I was ultimately airlifted by helicopter to Seattle's Harborview Hospital, Washington state's go-to medical facility for stroke response. I have only a very vague memory of that flight, but what little memory there is seems to include enough additional projectile vomiting that I wonder whether that helicopter ever flew again.

At Harborview, my very capable neurologist, Claire Creutzfeldt, told me, "I cannot impress upon you enough just how large this stroke was. Looking at your brain scan is like looking at a blackboard that has been halfway erased." the erased half, as it turned out, was the right side of the brain, whch as I later learned is the operating system for the left side of my body. Hence the non-functioning left arm and hand. the left leg was pretty much the same, though thankfully with physical therapy under the guidance of some remarkably dedicated therapists, the leg has come back to some semblance of usage. Still can't dance with Rhonda, which is a major bummer, but I can get around gracelessly with a cane. It's a standing joke at our house. I'll begin to walk from the living room on one of my ridiculously frequent pilgrimages down the hall to the bathroom (as demanded by what I call strokey bladder) and Rhonda will say, in loving humor, "You walk funny", to which I respond, "I do walk funny."

Dr. Kreutzfeld told me pretty early on that the use of my left arm and hand was probably never going to come back. Almost nine years later, it's clear that she knows her stuff because not only is it still useless, the spasticity (or "tone", as brain-injury folks often refer to the warping of muscle and cartilage following a brain injury that renders a limb useless), has left my left arm permanently bent at the elbow to the right, basically hugging my ribcage and stomach, and that's now the only direction the arm will bend. I can't straighten it out nor bend it any other normal way, such as a bicep curl. it's a weird deal. makes getting dressed and undressed a bit of an ordeal, though I have (with the help of Rhonda and therapists) developed strategies to do both without assistance.