Dunham Family and My Stroke Story!

I've always liked PBS. Some of my favorite shows are on PBS such as “Keeping Up Appearances” and “Idaho Reports.” I was watching a PBS show on Barbra Streisand recently. Though I abhor her politics, I love her voice. I recorded that PBS Barbra Streisand performance. Often I record PBS shows so I can enjoy them later. Some of my favorite performances on PBS are when Ella Fitzgerald, Judy Garland, Frank Sinatra, the Beatles, and Barbara Streisand perform. Part of the reasons that I would record those shows was to talk to my stepfather Karl Brown, my mom Faye Dunham Brown, and Carolyn Helland Root, a wonderful friend of mine. I would call them and say “Hey! You should watch PBS tonight because one of our favorite artists will perform.  After that, I will call you to discuss the show. However, the problem is they are gone now. Sometimes, I get excited about a PBS show, and then I realize they are gone.   But I still record those shows out of memories of them. Old habit

Stanford Dunham about 1988 When I was a child, our parents smoked. Some of my first memories were of my parents smoking and my efforts to get away from the smoke. I would rush through my dinner because Mom and Dad would “enjoy” a smoke after dinner.  Driving to  Kalispell, Montana for vacations (where our parents were from) was torture for me because of the cigarette smoke. My dad was the worst, and he started smoking when he was about 12. He smoked for years until his health deteriorated. He smoked about 50 years. Mom stopped smoking years earlier than that. She stopped smoking in her late 30’s and she remarried. After that she was so health conscious.  Mom and my stepfather Karl exuded health. However, Mom smoked when she was pregnant with me. She didn't smoke when she was pregnant with my three older brothers. I was born in 1961 before the landmark report published on January 11, 1964 by the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health.

This month, our son is the “Student of the Month” for his third grade class at Sacred Heart. We are very proud of him. He gets mainly “A’s” and a couple of “B’s.” We are grateful that he is doing so well in school. He is a tough kid. When he was 5, we were robbed, and that was an emotional thing for the whole family. Even now, we have an alarm to make our son feel secure. Then, I had my strokes which was a ordeal for everyone. For my son, seeing his dad scared, not talking right, and other assorted issues, it was tough for a 6 year old boy. Years ago, I was on a business trip with a coworker, and she said that “Mark, you have an old soul.” I took that as a compliment. I always thought I was old for my age. As my mom would often say quoting “The Raiders of the Lost Ark, “ It's not the years , honey, it's the mileage.”  I have a lot of miles in me. For our son, I hoped that he would not get too many miles before his childhood ends. But, his life so far is more event

When you have a stroke, relationships change. It is inevitable that friends sometimes cannot deal with the change. Depending what kind of stroke you have, I assume friendship after stroke "depends." When my first stroke happened, we were all in shock: me, my wife, son, brothers, extended family, parents, friends, and, admittedly, the public because I was well-known and an elected official. The first day or two, I was getting better quickly, and my biggest concern - other than worrying about the stroke and my recovery - was keeping my mother and the public out of the loop. And also trying to reassure our six-year-old son that dad would be okay. I simply wanted to keep this low-key and to not make a big deal of it.  Several of my closest friends visited me at that point. Three days later, when I had a massive stroke, it all changed. When I was struggling to understand what was happening to me and I could not communicate. I know the waiting room was filled with