Just Try Stuff: A Conversation with Jake Wilson

Jake does not remember the stroke itself. He remembers being at home, and then he remembers waking up in the hospital. Everything in between is blank.

At first, he did not even realize he had lost the use of his left arm and leg. He was lying in bed, so there was no reason to try moving them. What he did understand was that something was very wrong.

He told me that seeing his parents helped him stay calm. He did not know what had happened, so for a while he simply had to trust the people around him and let them explain it.

Jake's stroke happened in February 2020, just as COVID-19 was beginning to change everything. Only his mother and father were allowed to visit him. His brother could not come into the hospital and was at home expecting the worst.

Even therapy changed from day to day as the hospital adjusted to the pandemic. Later, when Jake started outpatient therapy, he was relearning how to walk while wearing a heavy mask.

When I asked what he wished he had known then, one of the things he mentioned was that he was going to lose friends along the way. That part of recovery was not something anyone had prepared him for.

When Jake came home, he went upstairs to his room and started figuring things out for himself.

He wanted to play video games again. He wanted to work on old computers again. So he started testing what he could still do with one hand and what he had to do differently.

I liked this part of our conversation because it was very ordinary. There was no formal therapy plan for getting back to the things he enjoyed. He just had to try things, adjust them, and keep going.

For Jake, the bigger gap came when he aged out of the pediatric system at CHOP and moved into adult care. That was when he felt the continuity really drop off.

He had also been told early on not to expect much more recovery and that he might not walk again. He did walk again, and he has continued to improve years later.

What I took from Jake was not that every young survivor will follow the same course. It was that he did not feel the timelines he was given matched what actually happened to him.

Jake kept coming back to the things other people cannot see.

He has visual field loss, but someone meeting him would not know it. He also talked about isolation, anxiety, depression, and grieving the life he had before the stroke.

He said one of the hardest parts is that people can look at you and assume you are fine. When the problem is invisible, survivors can end up explaining themselves over and over again.

What helped him most was meeting other survivors who did not need that explanation.

After the pandemic restrictions eased, Jake was still spending a lot of time at home. He started meeting people online, joining Discord groups, and making friends around things he already liked.

Over time, that made it easier to start going out again and meeting people in person.

His advice to other survivors is very simple: "just try stuff." Try something. If it does not work, try something else. Do not assume one bad experience means you should stop.

Early in recovery, Jake thought mostly about walking, eating solid food, and speaking clearly. Now he talks about recovery more as living his life and figuring out new challenges as they come.

Jake and his mother started Got ABI because they could not find the kind of young-adult community they were looking for.

The group is intentionally simple. They do Discord chats, bingo nights, bowling, nature walks, and other things where people can spend time together without every interaction feeling like an appointment.

Jake told me that helping other survivors can also bring him back to difficult parts of his own recovery. He still chooses to do it because he remembers what it was like not to have someone his age who understood.

When I asked Jake what he wants future clinicians to understand, he said to see the person before the diagnosis.

He wants clinicians to listen to what someone is actually trying to get back to, because that may not be captured by the usual physical milestones.

He also talked about the value of follow-up over time. Around the anniversary of his stroke, he still sometimes feels anxious or low. It passes, but it is part of his recovery too.

Before this conversation, I was thinking about Jake's recovery mostly in terms of what he had regained: walking, movement, independence.

But the things he spent the most time talking about were playing video games again, losing and rebuilding friendships, getting out of the house, and finding people who understood what he was dealing with.

That is why "just try stuff" works as the title for me. It is not a medical idea. It is just how Jake describes what helped him move forward.