I have not posted for a while as I have had computer problems that have yet to be resolved and I have been in holiday in America. I am trying to get a bit of a catch up during a quiet day on holiday.
Coming to terms with what happened is a slow process. You have a real sense of your own mortality. I had a feeling that I dodged a bullet that day as I had lots of what if questions:
• What if the clot had been bigger?
• What if the clot went furtyiher?
• What if the stroke had happened when I was driving home?
I know I was fortunate to have so little physical disability but the mental injuries were starting to bother me. I have always been a person who enjoys a mental challenge whether that be a quiz show on TV or a difficult problem at work. I now struggled to think through even basic ideas.
The days now were a mix of gentle exercise (going round the block) visits from the occupational therapist and nothing. I never thought that I would be able to cope with doing so little but I was not getting bored. My tanks were running on empty I went from hour to hour without doing anything and not caring.
About two weeks after my stroke I went to bed and started to feel unwell. I had a sharp pain in my back. It was incredibly painful. Your mind really races as you start to worry about whether this was another stroke. I called down to Stephanie but she didn't hear me as she was asleep. I messaged her hoping that the tone would wake her. I messaged Ben to text her as the different sound might wake her, but it didn't. In the end I had to go go downstairs even though I was in a lot of pain. Once I was down, Stephanie went into full panic mode as she could see I was in a lot of pain. She phone the out of hours doctor who advised us to go to the GP at the hospital.
Stephanie drove there and I was in sudden severe bouts of pain. I was seen quickly by the GP who suggested I had kidney stones. He gave me the choice of being admitted to the hospital, wait in A&E for six hours (the new computer system E-care had just been implemented) or go home with morphine and go and see the GP the next day. Without even thinking I wanted to go home. I didn't wanted to be admitted and the thought of waiting in A&E for that long was was almost too much to bear.
We walked to the car and every so often the pain came back so strongly I could hardly walk and my legs kept buckling with the severe pain. We went home, I took the morphine and had a very uncomfortable night’s sleep.
I went to the GP the next day and he arranged for an ultrasound and prescribed a muscle relaxant. I was taking the full dose of morphine and I did not like it at all. It made me feel so dopey and as if my head was full of sand, but the good news was that it helped with the pain. I had the ultrasound later that day - don't anyone think that the NHS takes ages to get anything done. My experience to date was that it was very efficient.
I had a further GP appointment and that showed that I had passed the kidney stone. He told me that it must have been quite a small stone. TBelieve me that I have never known such pain from something not much bigger than a grain of sand.
Life continued with the routine of walk, rest, TV, occupational health etc. I still wasn't doing much to exercise my brain. I was making a lot of mistakes in sequencing (doing daily tasks out of order). I made lots of cups of coffee without any coffee, making sandwiches in odd orders. I put bread into the fridge, used plates back into the clean cupboard to name a few. I was regularly bumping into people and things as a result of being careless with scanning in front of me. This was more apparent in the house as I was more relaxed and I thought I knew where things were located. If there was a door open I would bump into it, a chair out of place then that would be easy to trip over. I almost sent the kitchen table flying as I was being over confident and walked into it very quickly.
I did manage to do something that was quite dangerous. I wanted to see if a hot plate was on. Instead of looking at the oven knob I just put my hand on the hot late. It was on!! Fortunately it was on a low setting so it wasn't too bad. This accident showed how my brain was thinking. If you want to find out if something was hot you touch it. The correct thing was to look at the dial or the hot plate on light. But to me you need to touch something to find the temperature.
I will sign off for now.
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