Island People
Stroke patient fighting to overcome his misfortune
By Wade Shirkey
Advertiser Staff Writer
Dean Ida, 34, measures time a bit differently than most people. "Just after my first stroke," he'll say. "Before I lost my job" (and consequently his apartment), he'll say. "Before mom died." Or was it the week of open-heart surgery?
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
At the beginning of this time line was a young man who could speak clearly, walk unaided and take care of his own personal hygiene. Today, he's jobless, living in a hospital bed and paralyzed — "a prisoner in my own body," he says.
At 34, Dean Ida of Honolulu, now fighting his way back from paralysis, has experienced more misfortunes than most people face over a lifetime.
But Ida is also an upbeat character despite the continuum of misfortune that happened so quickly that he calls it "a whole lifetime (of misfortune) in two years."
The spittle on his shirt speaks of the distance he still has to go; the smile on his face tells you he's determined to make it, though doctors give him little hope of regaining full use of his limbs. Today, it's hard to tell which is stronger: his series of life's misfortunes or his resolve to overcome them.
First Federal's sale to Bank of Hawaii in 1998 was the "first rock of the landslide." He was laid off, jobless for the first time in his adult life.
Two months later, in October, he phone rang: "Your mother just passed way." His mom, Agnes Ida, was his "best friend."
The staccato of misfortune picked up: In March, he stopped at a video store and found his hand trembling so hard he was unable to write a check. He knew enough to drive himself immediately to the Queen's Medical Center.
He was 32, without a job or medical benefits, mourning the death of his mother and having the first of two strokes. "Cannot be," he thought, "I'm too young!"
This first stroke was minor. Ironically, a second, more devastating one began at the same video store.
Ida was told to cut back on everything: salt, liquor, cigarettes — "Even sex!" he jokes.
His rascally humor was the one personality trait to persevere throughout the two-year ordeal of misfortunes, says Lynne Abrisce, a close friend. He considered her sons his little brothers.
Now, with no job, mounting medical bills and stoically independent from his family, the young man was reduced to applying for welfare. Ingrained with his Japanese culture's sense of shame at having to accept help, Ida felt he'd been reduced to being a "beggar."
Eugene Tanner • The Honolulu Advertiser
But there was also one other traditional Japanese concept that became his trademark: gambatte, perseverance, that "Go for broke" drive. As fast as life knocked him down, Ida got up.
Dean Ida plays a video game as part of his physical therapy regimen at Leahi Hospital. The game helps restore his hand-eye coordination. The 34-year-old has suffered two strokes, one of which paralyzed him.
Showing only slight effects of the stroke, Ida soon found part-time employment at the same video store where he'd been stricken. Now, with some salary, but no medical benefits, Ida jumped back into life.
But soon, feeling ill and coughing up fluid, he was back at Queen's: This time, under the knife for triple heart bypass surgery.
Again, the young man would bounce back, his recovery — and attitude — excellent. In October of 2000, anticipating a full-time work schedule at the store, he arrived for work one Sunday in the beginning throes of his second stroke, a major one. An ambulance rushed him to Queen's as paralysis set in.
After recovering for a while, Ida was transferred to Leahi Hospital, either, he said, "to be warehoused" or to begin a long struggle to regain as much use of his limbs as is possible, and with it, his independence. Outside, the idyllic view of green Diamond Head slopes is in sharp contrast to a gruelling reality of intense physical of therapy he has undergone. He needed therapy at first merely to relearn how to swallow and eat, much less walk and talk. For days, he languished in bed, a young man become old — "like a baby," he said, with characteristic humor. His speech is slurred, difficult for any but those closest to him to understand. But he can swallow now.
This summer, Ida took his most heroic of steps in his journey back to life: He left hospital confinement — alone, wheelchair-bound, with the aid of the handicapped transit service — for a reunion of friends at Ala Moana Park. Through a mix-up in communications, the paralyzed young man was misdelivered — let off, unattended, at the wrong spot in the huge, hot beach park.
Unable to move, he waited, sweating in the heat and carsick. His friends, having organized a search party, found him an hour later.
"When we found him," said his friend Sue Shimabukuro, "he was crying. "We couldn't tell if it was tears of fear or of joy" at seeing his friends, she said.
After those first few steps away from the hospital, the young man now begins a much longer trip, to further improve his mobility and independence, and to reclaim his life. Those "first big steps," he hopes, will be followed one day by the one in which he will walk out of Leahi on his own.
He's the first to admit life has dealt him a particularly bad set of cards, but he says he is far from being ready to quit the game. Not just yet.
Letters can be addressed to Dean Ida c/o Leahi Hospital, 3675 Kilauea, Honolulu, HI 96816.
