The Year I lost when I had a Stroke. Gerda Nischan

I had to learn all over again just how to walk? It won’t take long, I said to myself, it won’t take long at all, I decided. I would show them how soon I could get back to the life that I previously had.

      My friend Evelyn visited often with flowers from her garden.The nurses upon seeing Evelyn come into the building, would tell me that my flower friend is on her way! The sill on my window was filled with all her flowers and the ones that so many friends send me!

      Friends send books, flower, chocolates, cookies, coffee – all kinds of things to make me feel better. I read every day but it is really bad that I cannot type with both hands! It takes too long to type with one hand. I wanted to write a book about my stroke and I thought about this all the time – I was determined to this. Maybe it will help somebody who suffered a stroke, too.

      Colleagues of my husband from ECU brought more than I would ever be able to read, piles and piles of books. The best part was that my friends came to see me! I was good at talk and some were surprised that I could talk at all, they thought I was my normal self.

      My door was always a little open so I could hear waht people ware saying and could see some of them. I will never forget one gentleman sitting on a bench, eating his sandwich, and he had a big smile on his face as he told another gentleman how proud he was of his daughter who had graduated from college – the first in their family. In the hallways I could hear the bustle of active lives passing by and I wanted to be part of this life! I did not want to be a bed, unable to move...I wanted to be alive!

      My friends wanted me to have my life back...I wanted to walk, run, travel, give parties for my friends, have them around me, and laugh with them! I felt I had been moved against my own will to another planet. Then I had a moment of real exitement in the middle of the summer: John O‘Brien called me and told me he planned a music program based on my book “Prisoner of War”. I couldn‘t believe it.

– Chapter Five –

The Reading

      Sunday, October 4, 2015 – 5 p.m.

      What a wonderful day for me!

      The Music House: Fall 2015 Series

      The Music House

      408 West 5th Street, Greenville NC 27834

      Saturday September 26, 2015 7:00p.m.

      Letters to a Prisoner of War

      An evening of reading, literature, history and music

      of World War II,

      based on Gerda Nischan’s new book

      “LETTERS to a Prisoner of War”

      Gerda Nischan, reader – Dr. Michael Gross, historian

      Jessie Martin, soprano – Mollye Otis, piano

      The letters in this book show what happened during World War II not only to the soldiers fighting on the front, but also to those waiting at home, the families. And, once, the was over, the struggle for the survival continued, in the prisoner camps, and at home for the starving families, who wait for the prisoners to come home.