Finding ‘yourself’!

’One minute I was okay’, but five minutes later I would be trying to stay alive!

A very sudden and unexpected brain haemorrhage very nearly ended my ‘relatively young’ life! After surviving, and completing 10 1/2 months in hospital, I required many therapies to try to restore ‘some normality’!

This was a challenge and I, instead of ‘looking at it’ negatively, decided to attempt a reasonable recovery with humour, instead of ‘doom and gloom’!

I was 24 years of age when I suffered this brain haemorrhage, caused by high blood pressure that ruptured a vein in the brain called a ‘Venus Malformation’, and the odds on surviving it, in ‘betting terms’, wouldn’t have given you a good return on your money!

I was rushed to one hospital and was soon flown by air ambulance to another, where I underwent a life-saving operation and went into a long coma.

”What rotten luck”!……….. ‘I had just been promoted at work and my Fiancée and I, had just moved into our first home together!

Before I regained consciousness, I had already been in two different hospitals, and I would be required to undergo further operations!

It would be two months later before I regained consciousness, and I lay in the bed like a machine that was undergoing maintenance checks with several wires adorning my body and one ‘major one’ in my throat, because I required a tracheotomy and I was on a ventilator to aid my breathing!

”Thankfully nobody mixed any of my tubes up, because one was going into my stomach(‘to feed me with highly calorific injections’) and another one was going into my bladder to aid with the release of urine, so I ‘thankfully’ never tasted my own wee, nor did my bladder get enlarged by these highly calorific injections!

So, I escaped any foolery there and thankfully nobody took any photos of me in my ‘very sexy’ girdle, and my stockings, that ‘apparently’ helped my legs to recover from the unnecessary swelling that I unfortunately got when I was subjected to a drug that I was allergic to!

My Fiancée must have thought she had ‘landed herself’ with a swollen orange Alien, and probably not one that she would want to ‘show off’!

After, firstly recalling my initial collapse in the bathroom on New Year’s Eve, I realised that I was still in hospital after my initial admission to the accident and emergency department and I remembered falling into a deep sleep there!

‘That sleep’ was for almost two months! “What a lazy slob”, you must be thinking? When I eventually came out of it, it was as though my own body had a microchip and it now needed to be updated or rebooted, because I couldn’t do anything! I had lost all of my abilities, which included my speech, the temporary loss of my full vision, the ability to hear properly, and the most frustrating loss of all, was my inability to walk!

I had suddenly suffered with the loss of good eyesight,(“I had temporarily lost the eyesight in my left eye before it was eventually regained, but my vision through that eye was confusingly on a different level to my right eye and that made ‘things’ very difficult”!) and I now had permanent and confusing ‘double vision’! My speech was ineligible and I could only communicate via a large alphabet and I would ‘grunt’ at the appropriate letters required, which made talking to me a very very ‘long winded ordeal’!

The biggest loss, however, and the most upsetting, was the sudden inability to drive! To me, that meant that a big part of my freedom had suddenly been cruelly taken away! ‘I hadn’t been driving for long either and I had worked hard to afford all of the lessons that I needed and for the frustrating driving tests needed(“x3”!); My eyesight was ‘no longer adequate’ to drive safely, but I would still try and the necessary use of hand controls suddenly transformed me into a racing driver, because I would regularly exceed the national speed limit and I couldn’t take my eyes off of the road to check the speedometer, but luckily my driving instructor would suddenly shriek and inform me that I was driving ‘like a maniac’!

’Try as I might’, the ability to drive had also gone now and my licence(‘that I had worked so hard to get’!) was regrettably taken away!

I was now unable to fulfill my job as a jeweller because I couldn’t hold anything properly or use my, ‘once skilled’, hands suitably to handle jewellery and returning to my previous training as a graphic designer would require retraining, because my training was with pencils, pens and paints on paper AND not by using ‘that machine’ that’s called a computer!

My Fiancée remained by my side, regardless of my inabilities, and I eventually returned home after being in 3 hospitals for almost a year, but I would require further physiotherapy and occupational therapy for a couple of years afterwards before I could live a reasonable life!

I was now ‘partially housebound’ but I could safely leave the house with my Fiancée’s or any other responsible adults assistance.

This very sudden and ‘life-threatening’ stroke really made you examine and test your own abilities, I would always see it as a challenge, or like you’ve just enjoyed a nice big ‘hearty meal’, with many different foods, and then you notice all of the washing-up that needs to be done now - “I had enjoyed life ‘so far’, with a reasonably good childhood, good friends and relatives, a new home with my Fiancée and a recent promotion at work AND now would come ‘the time’ to appreciate what I had and try to regain them(‘do the washing-up and the drying up AND the ‘putting the crockery away’!), because ‘this’ was going to be a long job- “a very very long and difficult job”!

I would, in a way, be starting life again with these new obstacles in my way and they were very testing and emotionally exhausting and difficult, BUT fortunately ‘for me’, I was a very stubborn and a determined young man who was blessed with the ability to try to do so, and in that environment I would see other patients, some younger than me, who were worse-off- ‘sadly, terminally worse-off’!

It would really make you think about your health compared to theirs and how very grateful I was, despite being informed that ‘you’re not in the clear “just yet”!

‘This experience’ was new, and it would recall many emotions and explore your capabilities with new ‘and unwanted’ challenges! It really was emotionally difficult, with several embarrassing moments and degrading occurrences(“I went into the hospital with dignity and that lasted about 10 seconds”!)

Upon my return and further years of therapy in other hospitals, my eyesight has been improved with the use of glasses, I have learnt how to read again and to write eligibly and the physiotherapy has regained a reasonably independent lifestyle for me(“indoors only though”!)

So, I went into hospital a very poorly 10 stone weakling, and then after digesting those highly calorific injections and eventually being given the ‘all clear’ to finally eat solid foods, I gained over 3 stone and then had to go on a diet! ‘I went from a size 32 to a size 36’, which was a bit inconvenient, because I had to invest in some new trousers! It was also advised to lose some weight because it would be easier for me to be ‘more mobile’, which I achieved in a reasonably quick time and got some marks/scars that are usually associated with previously pregnant women, and they were ‘stretch marks’!

This ‘life changing’ sudden illness would test, not only my resolve, but my fiancées to, because there would be a change to my personality and abilities, which could be very frustrating, for both of us, and now she would have to be my carer and nurse and she was only 21 years old and I was 24 years old!. The times that we’ve had together really tested our relationship, ‘as well as ourselves’, and we eventually got married 4 years later in 1997, and then a year later my wife would produce a baby boy, who was sadly slightly premature and had to go into an incubator moments after his birth! Our Son survived those early ‘scares’ and is now a healthy 25 year old!

Despite my personality change and my temporary disfigurement(‘collapsed left-side’!) my wife and I have remained a reasonably strong couple and her ill health forbade any more children, ‘and so’, we bought an adorable spaniel puppy, who is just as hard work as our son was when he was a baby.

I, had to explore my hidden capabilities, not only with my illness, but witnessing other patients ill health and regularly feeling very very grateful for my minor improvements!

I acknowledged quite regularly that I was extremely lucky to survive and to have that ability to restore some of my capabilities - ‘I didn’t dwell too long on the abilities that I had lost BUT I focused on the abilities that I had still got, AND compared with many in hospital, I was the King!

So, to me, the abilities that I once had were eventually regained, in some cases uniquely, as I’m sure other stroke victims can sympathise with, like trying to wash and dry up- “there were less plates by the time that I had finished”! My wife doesn’t ask me to do that anymore because she got a dishwasher instead!