On April 28, 2020, Kenneth Kerns was working from home in his role as the senior director of research safety and occupational health at the University of Arizona. A Zoom meeting was scheduled for that morning; prior to the online gathering he took a bathroom break.
When he failed to emerge at the meeting’s start, his wife Karri knocked on the bathroom door. Kerns didn’t respond but his wife heard sounds from inside the bathroom that sounded like snoring. She tried to open the door but was unable to push it in.
Kerns had suffered a hemorrhagic stroke and collapsed on the bathroom floor, with his body weight jammed against the door. What happened next is the subject of Kerns’s deeply moving memoir, “Anything but Frank: A Journey of Healing, Patience, and Rediscovery.”
Kerns acknowledges this section of his book is based on recollections by his wife, that is, the section recounting his collapse and how he was rescued by firefighters and paramedics who removed the bathroom door with a crowbar. He lost consciousness during the stroke and remained unconscious for the next 10 days when he was in a medical coma after undergoing brain surgery.
The book’s title is based on a curious incident that transpired after he emerged from the coma. The male nurse assigned to remove his breathing tube kept calling him “Frank.” He was unable to speak and still woozy from his return to consciousness. Kerns began to experience anxiety over being called Frank, first questioning if he was able to remember his name, and then wondering in horror if he had died and was immediately reincarnated as another person named Frank.
Haunted by Dreams
Throughout this experience, Kerns found himself haunted with complex and harrowing dreams that he felt lasted for days. Seven of the dreams that he recalled are laced through the book, each one more bizarre and troubling than the next.
Kerns doesn’t attempt to decipher the meaning of these dreams. But it’s easy to spot recurring themes involving confinement, incapacitation, restraints, the loss of identity, and the weight of bearing the brunt of physical and emotional assaults. He was also being viewed as someone who was guilty of unspecified offenses. It would seem he had little peace in his sleep during this time.
Throughout his book, Kerns details his small victories as he worked diligently to recover his health. A major success involved efforts to regain control of his right thumb after it briefly twitched without any effort on his part.
“Every morning, I’d lie in bed, focusing on my thumb,” he recalls. “First, I’d command it to move, then plead with it, and I’d even give it playful smacks of frustration. It twitched again. Carefully, I tried again. This time, I coaxed it into a small, perceptible movement.”
The Journey Home
Perhaps the most touching section of “Anything but Frank” involves the author’s post-hospital efforts to regain his pre-stroke life. He is especially poignant in mentioning the first night home from the hospital. He groggily awoke from a very deep sleep and instinctively reached for a call button before slowly and happily realizing he was back in his own bedroom.Even more heartwarming was Kerns’s determination to participate fully at his older daughter’s wedding. It was held three months following his stroke. His wife and physical therapist were initially hesitant about his goals. Kerns made a concentrated effort to regain the level of strength and coordination needed to walk his daughter down the aisle and later dance with both the new bride and with his wife at the ceremony.
“Anything but Frank” is an empowering book that celebrates the spirit of overcoming extraordinary obstacles without becoming self-imprisoned in anger or bitterness. Kerns is an inspirational figure who is quick to give credit to the small army of family members and health care workers who helped guide him on the road to recovery.
While the author states how he “learned the immense power of gratitude” from this experience, readers of this wonderful story will be grateful that Kerns took the time to share his amazing journey.
