Imagine you are having the time of your life. You have a wife of ten years whom you adore, two grown and independent step- sons, and a teaching career that looks quite promising. Then you wake up one morning with a congested head and swollen tongue. A day later you see a doctor at urgent care. You find out you have had stroke and you are a walking dead man with blood pressure too high for the machines to read but they do show at least 224/118. A normal reading is 120/80. This is bad, very bad. The worse thing is that you can think clearly but you can't speak or at least not clearly enough for people to understand. You are unlikely to ever teach again if you can't speak. This is my story. If I survive, it will be my fourteenth short story I have written for Amazon. If I don't survive I will ask my wife to publish it for me. August 22, 2013.