My journey spans a 12-and-a-half-year period marked with hope, tears and miracles. If I had known then what I know now maybe things would have been easier. Which is the reason I'm telling this story; so that hopefully I can help others.

I had been experiencing several months of headaches and a lot of Tylenol, difficulty with balance and vision. However, I dismissed these symptoms due to the fact that I was flying in planes too much and was stressed about my job. What I didn't realize, was that these were early warning signs that a bleed was leaking or hemorrhaging into my brain. I had just gotten back from a business trip to San Francisco and was sitting in my office at home and I blacked out. When I came to I was slightly paralytic on the left side of my body, so I attempted to get dressed until my wife returned. This was my first mistake. Should anyone experience this themselves, make sure you get to the hospital quickly. You have about three hours before you begin to lose brain cells.

TPAs are usually given to ischemic (blocked or plugged artery) stroke victims, which accounts for about 80 percent of strokes. The other 20 percent is a hemorrhagic stroke, which is a weak spot in an artery shaped like a bubble. When the walls become thin enough you get a bleed or burst.

After several exams, hospitals and doctors I ended up in Columbia Presbyterian Hospital where the miracles started. I became then what was to be the 60th patient to have a brain procedure with GDC coils. This is a procedure where the doctor takes thin platinum strips and coils it on the inside of an aneurysm which helps the weakened wall. I would have five more of these procedures as my aneurysm grew larger and larger and more dangerous. I also had a few mild strokes during this period. Finally, my aneurysm had grown large enough that coils were no longer an option. The only option I had was surgery that had been considered far too dangerous in the past. I would become the 16th patient for deep center brain surgery, clipping off part of the basilar tip artery in the center of my brain. Five others died and the rest had deficits as a result of the surgery. It was known that nerve endings would have to reroute around the clip on their own. And at that time they were not too sure that this would happen. On top of that during the brain surgery I had a massive stroke which killed more brain cells and they, too would have to reroute themselves and train other parts of my brain. After this surgery I lost the hearing in my right ear.

For the next six months I would lie in bed unable to move, eat, talk and had little or no way to communicate with others. The next six months I was transferred to a Glen Cove Nursing and Rehab Center and the only thing I could move at that time was my left hand and that was only marginal. I had to be lifted in and out of bed to a wheelchair by a machine. I then sat in a wheelchair and hoped that I did not fall over. There, for six days a week, I would receive speech, occupational and physical therapy.

When I got out my left hand was almost back to normal and I was starting to get a little back feeling in my right hand, very little. I had no idea that this was going to be such a long period of recuperation and I was ill prepared for the length of recuperation I would have to go through. Up to 60 percent of stroke patients suffer from depression. I decided to fight back. When I got home the first thing that I did was to teach my opposite hand to draw and paint. Painting had been a pastime that I enjoyed and I wasn't about to leave it behind. These are the first paintings that I completed with my opposite hand. It took two months of going over and over it, again and again. I had to retrain my left hand to do what the right hand used to do. It seemed to work so I continued on this theme that one could retrain other parts of their brain to do what used to be done by the old part. I continued trying until I was able to stand behind my wheelchair and push it. I then sported a cane and finally was able to walk. As a matter of fact I'm even currently running a little. It is unbelievable what the human spirit can do. The next thing I needed to improve upon was my memory. Every time I took a test at Columbia Presbyterian Hospital, they would ask me to remember three things, no matter how hard I tried, 10 minutes later I could only remember one thing. So to improve my memory I started writing a book. It wasn't till one night when I was telling my wife what I had written that she stopped and said to me, "do you realize what you just did? You told me about the entire chapter you just wrote." There are three kinds of people; verbal, tactile and visual. It dawned on me that I was a tactile person. When I typed, I seemed to remember everything that I wrote. It eventually seemed to improve my memory overall. So to this day, I write things down.

The task of doing this is mind over matter, you have to tell yourself that you are going to do this and PACE yourself (positive attitudes change everything) and HOPE (healing on positive energy.) If you really want to get better, you have to be consistent on a daily basis. The reason it is so easy to give up, is it's hard work and sometimes weeks go by and nothing measurable seems to have happened, so you give up, because you start to believe that it is fruitless. Your brain needs time to rewire itself and reconnect from the damaged part of the brain to live parts of the brain. It can be done.

Peter Cornelis is a Wantagh resident. He recently founded HOPE for Stroke Victims, a non-profit organization to raise stroke awareness. For more information call 804-8495 or visit www.Hope4Stroke.com. To make a donation, make checks payable to HOPE for Stroke Victims, 250 Duckpond Dr., Wantagh, NY 11793.