The D.T.-stroke: rock bottom and the Surrender

pivotal · UNDATED (~7 years before YDAU)

• When: the A.M. of a near-fatal stroke during the D.T.s, almost seven years before YDAU
• What: Everything turned on a single medical catastrophe. Pat almost died of a paralyzing alcoholic stroke during the D.T.s early one morning — treated at the Brigham and Women's E.R. by the physician who will much later sit on the House's Board (event 12). It was only this near-death, not the rehabs or the divorce, that broke her down far enough to Surrender. She likes to say at weekly House Community Meetings that the stroke was the best thing that ever happened to her for exactly that reason.