To look at Wendy Station, cheery, able-bodied, intelligent and welcoming, you might think that her problems are all in her head.
As we talk in her Lynn Valley home this Friday morning, I find this assumption not far from the truth.
Station, 48, was hit by encephalitis —swelling of the brain — in 1999. She was sitting in the District of North Vancouver engineering department where she was a clerical worker when she was struck by a headache. An afternoon off with a headache turned into a four-week absence due to illness. She hasn’t been back to work since.
It was quite a traumatic experience for the easy-going Argyle secondary grad known as Wendy Calder back then. She had remained healthy both as a young woman working as a legal secretary for Mack Trucks and the Housing Corporation of B.C., and as a housewife who raised three kids with the help of a supportive husband, with never much more to complain about than a cold or the flu. So when Station returned home from District hall that day and started acting rather peculiar, actually “being a pill” are the words she uses to describe herself, her husband had an inkling there was something wrong. A couple of days later he convinced her that she had to go the Lions Gate Hospital emergency ward.
Station, like most people, had her good days and bad days, but her husband could recognize that her short-tempered, unreasonable and easily confused behaviour was indicative of a serious problem. Station was given tests that revealed she was experiencing encephalitis.
She says she can’t remember anything about the first three weeks after the headache hit. After four weeks in the hospital, she had to relearn the simplest of tasks.
On one occasion, she was making tea for her mother and couldn’t figure out where to find a spoon. “I looked on the ceiling, in the oven and I then I asked our dog. Finally, my mother said, ‘What are you looking for?’ I said, ‘A spoon.’ She said, ‘They’re in the silver drawer.’”
Station hasn’t forgotten where the spoons are since, but simple things are the most reflective of just how invasive the illness proved.
Station has made tremendous progress since those early days, but while she looks healthy, she is legally disabled and can not go back to work. “My disability includes a lack of cognitive functions, a lack of stamina, and dreadful, dreadful short term memory,” she shares. Station even has difficulty grocery shopping, and doesn’t do it without her husband Rick, known as Mr. Goodspouse on the website she started on Sept. 15, 2000 (www.encephalitisglobal.com).
“I get frustrated on my own. By the time I get to aisle two I’m exasperated. I don’t know what I want, I don’t know what to get, it’s just too big a job.”
The former Girl Guide leader, who had been charged with taking the girls away for camping trips on the weekend, had to now rely on her three children Michelle, Rob and Kimberly, to clean, cook and make the tough decisions around the house.
“I was like a friendly accessory who could not be relied upon to make decisions.”
As I repeat again to Station that there doesn’t appear to be anything wrong with her, she shares that there are three reasons for her recovery: Lions Gate Hospital, the unwavering support of her friends and family, and the touch of God.
Station says her family is not particularly religious, they don’t attend church regularly, but she admits she prayed for help during her illness.
Encephalitis is usually caused by a viral infection, and in Station’s case it is suspected that the herpes virus, which lies dormant in most of our systems, even after we’ve had an outbreak of Chicken Pox, is what broke through her brain barrier and began a path of inflammation and destruction.
More remarkable than the fact she contracted the rare illness, is the fact she survived: “There’s an 80 per cent fatality rate when untreated,” Station shares, noting that nearly three days had passed before she went to the hospital, was diagnosed and treatment began.
She notes that a neighbour living next to her father and mother told them that the congregation in his church was praying for her. “He told my dad that I would be fine because God had a mission for me.”
And whether the words were prophetic, or just a self-fulfilling suggestion, they have indeed come to fruition.
As I sit in Station’s computer room, where she spends countless hours daily, the phone rings and a man from Illinois is on the other end. He is a victim of the West Nile Virus and he is looking for information and support about how to cope with something that has impacted his mind.
A smile comes onto Station’s face after she hangs up. Encephalitisglobal.com was started with the goal of providing a resource.
It is a place for people like her who have been impacted by some sort of viral infection and have found, like Station, that the problems indeed are all in their head.
