part II - the middle

starting over
(life: v2.0.0)

A lot of stuff happened on day 2 post-ABI. On the morning, two nurses appeared wheeling a standing hoist contraption. The idea was to lift me from bed and into a chair. Although it worked, albeit for a short time, it made me feel pathetic. (It was during this process that I became aware how badly damaged my right arm was as it dropped dead against my body, clubbing the side of my torso. It was lifeless.) The nurses got me in the chair and placed the TV remote on my lap. I adjusted myself as best I could, to get a tad more comfortable. Just as they were beginning to exit the ward, I watched the remote slip to the floor. Bollocks! I was unable to grab the nurses attention to tell them it had fallen as I had lost the ability to speak, and the call button was slightly out of my reach. Double bollocks! Reaching down to reclaim the remote (it was so close), I found myself slowly slipping from the chair and I had no way to stop myself. As I was reaching out with my functioning hand, I instantly became aware that I was unable to do anything with my non-functioning, paralysed right limb. I inched closer to the remote, I accepted that I’d also be introduced to the speckled floor. Thud. “Nurse!” I heard someone call. “He’s on the floor!”

Half an hour later, Abi arrived. On hearing what had happened she was not best pleased to say the least. She was also told about the visiting hours and that she couldn't visit outside them as it'd be lunch or dinner time. Again, she was not best pleased. 'If you think I'm going to allow him to fall from a seat, think again. Don't try and stop me, I will be here.' They didn't, and she was. Every day. God, I love her! However, I wasn’t allowed back in the chair after my, ahem, mishap.

Being paralysed on my right side (my dominant side, the side I write wrote with) did not bother me as much as not being able to communicate. On the afternoon of day 2, I was assessed by the hospital’s speech therapist. Even though I’m not the most talkative of persons (I'm not overly keen on engaging in small talk and feel perfectly at ease in quiet moments), the idea of not being able to formulate a committee of words was rather troublesome.
She introduced herself before asking, "What's your name?"
Oh, that's easy. I began making shapes with my mouth like I was about to speak, but the only sound I made was a grunt. I shook my head.
"Take your time," she instructed.
Again I made lip shapes like I was miming a song. Nothing.
"What's your wife's name?"
More lip shapes. I shook my head and covered my eyes with the palm of my left hand, feeling I was about to lose it.
"Do you have children?"
I nodded, creasing my face.
"What are their names?"
I lost it, and wept.
I was aware that I knew stuff, that my brain held a wealth of information, and somehow I knew that the information was still there, it was just that I could no longer find the words retrieve it all. What hurt the most was not being able to retrieve my family’s names. I knew their names were somewhere in my memory but they were concealed from my consideration. I felt devastated.

Also on day 2, I was assessed for simple problems: adding and subtraction, for example. I was shown a picture of various coins. The nurse asked, “How can I get £3.88 from these coins?” I recognised the shapes of the coins (both 50 pence and 20 pence are quite distinctive) and had an idea of their values, but I struggled to add their values together. A little later she asked, “If I bought something for £2.67 and handed over £5, show me how much change I’d have using the coins.” I struggled to do it. To make matters just that little bit harder for everyone around me, I’d also occasionally confuse yes and no. I nodded my head when I wanted to shake it, and I shook my head when I wanted to nod. So when the nurse asked if I could've done these problems before my stroke, I shook my head even though I wanted to nod.

Throughout these assessments it felt as if someone was squeezing my cranium and simultaneously covering my ears. It wasn't a headache, nor was it pleasant, it kind of felt like I was flying high in an aeroplane and my ears hadn't popped. Everything and everyone sounded muffled. It got gradually better over time, but it took several months for it to disappear altogether.

hospital II
(life: v2.0.1)

Subsequent days on the HASU ward were largely the same as day 2, except Abi brought in my laptop, after I'd nodded in the right places to a list of items she'd reeled off. I wanted the laptop to sneak in a few things I needed to do for work and to make some notes about what was happening, and to try and communicate more efficiently. Unfortunately, I couldn't recall my password and was unable to fulfil those tasks.

Day 5, I was moved to another ward further along corridor. There were 2 other people on the ward: a plasterer in his early 50s and a cafe owner around my age, again stroke survivors. The cafe owner regularly limped out for a smoke, while the plasterer quized me about what happaned. I couldn't say because I simply couldn't speak, and when I was nodding and shaking my head as he peppered me with questions, I was getting it all backwards. He was becoming so confused that he had to ask on of the nurses about my condition. Aside from this, we were mostly left to out own devices, with little or no interaction from nurses or speech therapists. However, I learnt that I was to be moved to Ysbyty Cwm Rhondda, as it has a greater focus on rehabilitation and physiotherapy. I was taken there Friday afternoon and was in a shared room for the first 3 nights, before moving to a room of my own opposite the nurses bay.

My time in Ysbyty, during which I had remembered my laptop password, was more productive in some areas than others. I completed a couple of memory tests where I’d read small passages and then select the correct multiple choice answers about what I had just read. I managed to do these but, at the time, I had to make an almighty effort such was my short-term cognitive ability (then again it might have been my habitual skim reading being not up to scratch). In terms of speech therapy, high frequency words were the order of the day. And yet my speech improved slower in hospital than it did on leaving it. I think this was mostly due to scheduling as my speech therapist was seemingly booking her time to spend with me at the same time that I was with my physiotherapists. Second, the speech therapist department, like most hospital departments, was very short staffed.

I also found the effort of trying to speak extremely exhausting, which, again, didn’t help the situation. When I didn't feel tired, I'd work with Abi on high frequency words. I was learning language all over again, from scratch. And it was bloody hard. But at least I had a starting point, in that I knew that I once could, erm, speak.

Physiotherapy to get me walking and mobile was pretty tough. I had nine 1 hour sessions to ease the spasticity in my foot and gain enough strength to be able to stand on it and get me moving. I also had a few sessions on the parallel bars, not for gymnastics, but for holding onto one of the bars so I could place a little bit of weight on my affected leg each time I walked the bar’s length. As the days passed, I was able to place more weight onto it. I was walking with the aid of a walking stick in just under two weeks post-stroke, wandering the wards like any decent psychopathic killer would do. Within another two weeks, I had ditched the stick altogether.

It took ages for my arm to work. If someone lifted my arm it would drop lifelessly against my body. And the nerve damage was acute. When my occupational therapists were trying to revive my sensory perception by dipping my arm into warm water and cold water I couldn't distinguish one from the other. Eventually, when I did manage to lift it, by which time I had been out of hospital for 3 months, I could move it only below shoulder height. And it was so heavy. It was the kind of heaviness that felt like I was carrying 10 kilos, and given the size that I am that’s a lot of weight to have on my arm. Thoughts about whether I'd be able to pull open a packet of crisps again never crossed my mind.

Although I was moved to Ysbyty Cwm Rhondda on the Friday after my ABI, I didn't allow my children, who were 9 and 7 at the time, to visit until the Sunday - a full 8 days after I had had my stroke. I was scared to see them. I didn’t want them to see how badly I had been cut down, downgraded. It wasn't until I saw them that I realised how pathetically vain I had been. They didn’t care - they just missed their dad. I wept on seeing them.

Interestingly, while in Ysbyty, the stroke consultant told me a story about a friend of his with whom he played golf. While his friend was lining up a shot he suddenly dropped to the ground. Apparently, he had had a stroke. It was suspected that his head movements while lining up his shots somehow caused a tear in his carotid artery. He was in his mid-40s, too.

I had no response to the story - I still couldn’t speak! But at least his friend had Dr Stroke to look after him at the time.