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Sleep was my constant companion when it came to healing, and passing the day.  This was me doing my best to bury my head in the sand, and hoping optimistically I would be home within a week, or two.  Tipping cold water over my head when I was trying to drink though, was a hint this was not likely.  My right hand and arm had other ideas…. and that was just for for starters.

News of my stroke began to filter through to friends who came to see me.  While failing dismally, I did my best to appear normal, not that I could do anything about it, or really cared.  Friends were in shock to see me and having a stroke was more than anybody, except medical staff, could believe.  Doctors as usual continued to ask me to follow their index finger with my eyes, squeeze their fingers and ask me where I was.  It was stimulating repartee.

When the specialist came to see my swallowing technique didn’t send lunch to my lungs, food I would only eat if I was starving, joined the beverage on my head or pyjamas.  This was the lowest point I hoped.  My days were so so different now they didn’t seem true or real.  It was a good ting that I didn’t really care.

Night-time I would wake and wander at an odd gate and lean, until someone stopped me and I was put in another room, usually by myself.  Nearly a week passed with me making a complete idiot of myself before I was transported to another ward, where a day or so later I was moved into a private room.  I still tipped my drink and dinner over myself but ceased going for a nocturnal wander, and was pleased to report that medical staff had taken on a third dimension even if I still didn’t see very well.  All in all I was to see that a lot has to be in place for a person to work.

While greeting doctors and nurses with the standard squeezed fingers, I was also asked what day it was, where I was, and what month it was?  It is questionable whether I would know this under usual circumstances but now it was clearly important that I remember.  Here came another lucky break.  A few days after my admission was the Aussie Rules football grand final.  It gave me a marker to recite to myself and anybody who asked.  Recite I did in the hope I would be home within days.  This was common knowledge to anybody who would listen.   But the doctors had no intention of letting me loose on those closest to me and myself.

I was moved to a head injury  ward, and subsequently slept most of the time.  My son bought me an eye-mask and ear plugs which helped me pretend I was in the Bahamas.

I think it was a ward for six, but again I can’t be sure.  On the first morning I made the comment ‘well ladies that was a pyjama party’, and went to sleep again, but was awake every time a drip was changed or I had blood taken.  My arms were so dotted with bruises I looked dirty, but the tests served their purpose whatever they were.  But the tracks that were left on my arms were not nearly as challenging as keeping my arm straight and the beep beep beep of the alarm from going off and waking everyone.

Because of my stroke and the weekend, I was fasting until the specialist could determine if I had the ability to swallow without filling my lungs without flotsam.  This was easy under the circumstances but there was a time I would have done something unbecoming for a shower, toothbrush, comb, a change of clothing and a sandwich.  Especially the toothbrush.

And obviously I was not the ideal patient.  I wandered.  I would wake at a small hour during the night and wander when I should have been sleeping.  Where I was going didn’t matter, I shouldn’t have been on the move in my lop-sided manner which looked as if I’d topple over at the hint of a breeze tracking down the corridor.  It didn’t help that I was opposite a woman who had a halo fastened in place to restrict movement but it was a sure way to be moved to a single room.

Doctors and nurses doing their rounds asked me to squeeze their fingers to establish the effect of the stroke.  The amount of times I squeezed fingers became tedious.  It became a new greeting, but I understood they were only doing their job.   I wondered if any of them farted as I squeezed with all the might I could manage.

To start with my right hand was slightly weaker than my left, to complement the slight droop I had in the left side of my face, and the eye that was not lined up properly with the other eye.  My hands weren’t numb though.  Go figure.  The stroke had been an embolism stroke, a clot that travels to the brain, as opposed to a bleed in the brain.  I suppose I should be thankful.  I was very emotional, but more because of external activity, like the daughter of another partient who was not impressed with her mother’s progress.  I had to keep in check the tears that were going to run as I wanted to cry with her while chuckling at something trivial.  This was not normal… not that I’d ever been accused of being normal.

At a time when he was awake and his mobile phone was turned on, a nurse at the hospital rang my son and told that I’d had a stroke.  An hour or so later he stood alongside the gurney with the sides up, in case I rolled off maybe.  I felt him arrive rather than saw him walk in.

Our relationship had always been close, surely he would understand my need to feel normal.  He cried softly.  ‘It could have happened at any time’, was my attempt at preventing him from blame at not being at home when it happened.  It didn’t help.  For the first time he saw his mother as dependent on others.

The Emergency Admission was busy I suppose.  I didn’t know for sure.  Shortly after arriving I was taken for a brain scan. I could hear the technician talking to me in a voice full of kindness but couldn’t see her.  It was easier to keep my eyes closed, everyone was blurr.  I had no idea of depth of my vision, I only heard the sound of people moving around me.  The daylight swelled, I was thankful the room was dim.  Light was painful.  I hoped I had reached the lowest point of the stroke.

I couldn’t move to save myself, but only because I was so weak.  I was  grateful for small mercies, one of them that I didn’t have to pee at that stage.  I was put back on a gurney after images of my brain were taken again when the scans showed no reason why I was so ill.  A drip was put in and I was to have the first of many blood tests.  In between I let myself rest in between the activity.  I needed lots of rest. 

As far as I can recollect this is what happened as my memory was affected too.  I searched a vacating brain for anything funny about stroke.  I was so far removed from where I was, I almost wanted to laugh.  And at times I did.

The unknown, and complete weakness of my body was a constant companion, and it was to stay that way for some time yet.  I have never been so helpless.  My forearm was itchy, perhaps from the clamminess, but I too weak to scratch it.  Life as I had known it was out of reach.  I could only hope it was temporary. 

I learned very promptly how haste is a part of our life without us necessarily knowing it.  We do so much that is done without thought as to the rate we are going and the impatience that is part of it.  We have replaced all our time-saving devices and services such as the microwave, fast food and home-help with a greater load to carry rather than the scent of flowers and time with our family.  I’m sorry to say it is a lesson I could only learn the hard way.

Right from the start I wanted to be part of what I saw as normal.  It is close to four months after my stroke now and I’m still not part of the mainstream.  The difference is that, apart from an inability to drive which comes with its own dependence, I’m much happier with the ‘difficient’ me because I think I now have ‘permission’ to get to know the scent of flowers.

The ambulence team delivered me to the Emergency Department of the same hospital I had been to that day.  The paramedic put carefully placed stickers on my chest and ankle and connected them to a monitor to record my heart beat.  I was very grateful that I wasn’t alone.  I was still on the decline as the anwsers to the questions which were asked of me remained like a concrete block in a brain that could no longer find a way to express itself.  Try as I might I couldn’t say the answer for as long as I remembered that I’d been asked a question.   

It was the first time I remember being in the skin of a body that didn’t work as I would have wanted.  I soon realised that a lot has to be in good working order for a body to function properly.  I wanted to be a child, and do child-like things like tell my mother and father, but the same time I was glad they had passed away and would never know.

 

 

I enlisted my son’s help to find this blog. I hope I’m better by tomorrow, as I don’t know if I forget or I’m a babyboomer lost in cyberspace.

I’d been in Adelaide for close to two weeks when I drove home to Melbourne, and, after spending a few hours in the Emergency Department, subsequently was taken back to hospital that night.

By the time the ambulence arrived I’d turned on the front light so the paramedics could find me, and opened the security gate, but not before I’d speared into the wall of the ensuite, and for good measure into the wall in the family-room, hitting my head on both occasions. Whatever was happening in my head was going to get worse before it got better because by the time the team arrived I was on the floor unable to get up or stand up the stool I’d knocked over. I ha been lurching to left although couldn’t identify it at that stage, and my eye-sight now seemed to be swimming.

I was dishevelled in my pyjamas, sitting clammy and confused, wanting through habit to look respectable, but not able to offer more than they found. Using the wall for balance I had found the way along a long hallway to the familyroom but I was swiftly on the way to being totally dependent.

I was muttering non-sensical gibberish by the time they arrived moments later and as unfamiliar as it was, was glad I could put myself in someone elses’ hands. I wished my son was at home. The all-clear from the hospital emergency Department a few hours before had persuaded him to go to his friend’s house that night, and it was a decision I would both regret and be thankful for. He was good enough to ask if I was okay for the night, and there was a part of me that was still vain enough to be seen as I’d always been.

Springing into action, the ambulence crew had probably seen stroke many times, like those struck by illness were part of an exclusive club. There was nothing about it at the time that was exclusive, but I was to see stroke had a good lesson I needed to learn.

Today is bright, sunny and cool, just about perfect. It is swept by a breeze blowing with attitude off Port Phillip bay. It’s the summer’s day we look forward to after days that scorch and the hottest night for a 100 years.

It is 14th Janaury 2010 and I want to write about my recovery and life so far after a series strokes brought on, as I was to find out recently, by heart failure. As near as possible I will write in this blog every day although I have just found the temerity to sit for hours at my computer as some mongrel has shot holes in my vision. So forgive me if the time it takes to send something into the cosmos lays me low and I don’t make it into the hot seat. I hope someone reads this.

During the dark hours of Thursday morning on September 24th, 2009 I woke to find I couldn’t use my right hand properly. This is where I had my first lucky break…. to wake. I had no idea what had happened. For a moment I wasn’t sure anything had happened, other than feeling mildly bothered by waking suddenly.  I pulled off the socks on my feet which were now too hot and noticed the tiny lights on the television had an evil curve. Why I would think they were evil was beyond me, but after only a few minutes it was this thought that was to galvanise the emergency call. My right hand looked and felt the same, but its movements were swinging wildly like it needed a face to slap every time I wanted to use it. I tried harder. It was no use. It was the first of many times I was to think this hand in particular had turned on me. Despite holding the strange, but familiar telephone in a hand that didn’t want to grip properly, I knew instinctively the wherewithal to use the phone was somewhere in a brain that was now a reluctant friend. I did an inventory on myself. Throwing back the bedcovers, I eased my legs over the side and placed my feet onto the beige carpet.  Immediately I knew I couldn’t take my weight in a reasonable manner, and understood in an instant why people use a walking frame.  A form of panic and out of body experience crept in when I heard myself speak.   If only I’d had too many gin and tonics as I heard the slurred words come one after another. 

An incredulous confusion filled my end of a conversation where I wanted the emergency operator to tell me to take two Panadol and go back to sleep, everything would be okay in the morning. Instead it was the first time the word ’stroke’ was attached like a monkey on my back.  The ambulence was on its way.

I was 54 year old. I did all of the things a woman and divorced mother does. The pile of washing that never ends, running to the supermarket, keeping the house clean, the paths swept, the garden weeded, having a latte with friends, or just for fun, chasing my tail when I had nothing to do which seemed like all the time and not at all, if you know what I mean. I’m a slim, somewhat fit woman who still has dreams to pursue, and little reason to suspect anything.

It was music to my ears Wednesday afternoon when the emergency doctors at the hospital my doctor had sent me to had said I could go home. ‘I’m a mum, get out of my way, I have mundane things to do.’ I was half-walking, half-lunging at the opportunity to leave and reduce the pile of household jobs that had grown in my absence.  I’d been gone about two weeks.  I’d driven back from Adelaide, arriving close to midnight, using the headlights of a truck to shield my midly aching head from the headlights of approaching traffic.

Illi will be out of hospital on Monday so, please leave some get well soon messages, funny thoughts or fart jokes…(as we all know how much she likes them!)

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