Hospital - Admission

So my partner believed that I had had a Stroke.

I was in a state of shock. I heard the words but struggled to understand, to accept, what they meant.

My partner told me to get dressed and that we were heading for the hospital. I remember taking time to choose what to wear. Silly really but it seemed important at the time. The combination I finally settled on was: a pair of sandy coloured, heavy weight cords; a grey shirt; a brown jumper and green tweed hacking jacket. Warm and comfortable. 

I knew that going to hospital was the right, the only thing to do but a large part of me dreaded it and I certainly didn’t race toward it. Eventually I found myself in the car, and after a short discussion as to which hospital we should go (it being a choice between one in the two cities we are almost equally distant from) being driven out of the village. I don’t remember that much about the journey, except that there was very little traffic, it being around 8 o’clock on a Thursday evening.

Arriving at the hospital at around 20:30 hours we found a place in the car park and made our way to Accident and Emergency. Being located in a teaching hospital that is the only acute medical facility for a city of around a quarter of a million the Accident and Emergency Department was what you would expect: busy and a little tired. In fact much of the general waiting area was sectioned off due to renovations.

As I was not taken in by ambulance I had to book in at a cramped reception desk. Having given the receptionist my details including name, address, age, sex (yes, I know) I was given a form to fill in. This asked for such things as my doctor’s details before asking for details of my symptoms. After giving the details of what I was feeling, including that they had been apparent since Sunday, I was asked to take a seat and wait to be called.

Taking a brace of seats we settled in for the wait. It was one of the hardest waits of my life. Trying to stay calm I did what, as a writer, I like to do most: people watching. The range of visitors was as wide as you would expect. From those who were looking to use the waiting room as overnight accommodation through to students who had had a rough end to an evening out onto those who were obviously in line for multi-use rewards. Of course there those who, came in after me, were seen before me, which only added to one’s frustration. The wait was not helped by it being almost impossible to get anything to eat or, more importantly, drink.

The government has a target for Accident and Emergency Departments: 95% of those attending A&E must be seen, treated, admitted or discharged in under four hours. Which meant that I was likely to be out of there by half past midnight.

At just after a quarter to one I was called forward to be seen. Entering the treatment area I was meet by a senior nurse who took my temperature, blood pressure (224 Systolic over 140 Diastolic) and tested my ability to move and control my arms and legs. The nurse left me and my partner alone for a while in the cubicle. The next person through the door was a doctor.

As it turned out this doctor, a Registrar, was on his last shift at the hospital. He was from the Indian Sub-Continent and was returning the following week: the pressure of working in A&E being one of the reasons.

Putting me through the same range of physical tests as the nurse the doctor told me that, he too, thought that I had had a STROKE.

There was the conformation I had been dreading.

The doctor told me that I needed to have a CT (Computerised Tomography) scan and left. The nurse returned to tell me that I would have to change into one of those backless gowns. Dressed in the recommended fashion: gown; underwear; socks and shoes, I toddled off to the CT scanner. Lying on the movable bed I was whisked through the metal hoop that was the CT scanner.

Returning to Kate in the cubicle I changed back into my day clothes.

At about 01:30 in the morning another nurse came into the cubicle. She introduced herself as the on call Stroke Nurse. She was warm and friendly but very professional. Taking my blood pressure (238 over 136) again and putting me through a similar range of functional tests as the previous nurse and the doctor she told me that I would be admitted, no matter how hard I argued against it.

After being left alone again for half an hour the Stroke Nurse reappeared to escort me up to the Stroke Ward. It appeared that another Stroke Survivor had been roused out of their bed so that I could be admitted.

I was furious!

Why should anyone be woken in order to give me a bed?

Especially there was no chance that I would be getting any sleep that night!

On the ward, which was located on the fifth floor, we were met by a nurse who directed us to a side room and after accepting responsibility for me she took my pulse, my temperature and my blood pressure (250 over 140).

By 03:00 on the Friday morning I was alone in my room on an upper storey of a hospital in a medium sized city having to come to terms with the fact that I had had a STROKE.

Attack

In the early hours of the 25 of January 2015 some wee beastie, as Scots friends would say, stole into the bedroom and after removing the top of my skull used a baseball bat to give my brain a bit of a thump. Then this wee little monster seamlessly rejoined the two parts of my skull and silently bidding me goodnight disappeared into the darkness from whence it came.

In other words: I had a STROKE.

As the medics would say I had an acute medial inferior pontine perforator infarct on the left with signs of chronic microangiopathic changes and lacunar infarcts.

In plain English, I had a clot in a blood vessel which starved an area of my brain of oxygenated blood.

It all happened, as I said at the beginning, over the night of 24/25 January.

We had been to a Burns’ Night Supper in the Village Hall on the 24th.

Kate and I had been following a “dry January” (probably will not be doing that again) as we had done many times before. We did, however, generally give ourselves a dispensation for the Burns’ Night Supper, you have to really. The supper was the usual affair with Haggis, Neeps and Tatties, music and dancing. For the last few years it has been organised by a couple in the village, who do a great job.

The evening commenced with a few words of welcome from the chairman followed by the Selkirk Grace.

The Haggis, carried by the chairman’s partner, was Pipped in to an accompaniment of slow hand clapping.

Once the Haggis was in place at the top table a rendition of  Burns’ “Address to a Haggis” followed, though thankfully not all eight verses, at the end of which the Haggis was cut open and taken away to be served.

The meal consisted of 

Cock-a-leekie Soup

Haggis with Neeps and Tatties

Sherry Trifle

Coffee

And Whiskey

The speeches were interesting.

The chairman gave the speech to the Immortal Memory of Rabbie Burns including extracts of his poetry which, if a little long, was very entertaining. 

The Toast To The Lasses, given by a local farmer was, to put it mildly, intriguing. It was dripping with sexist comments and was welcomed with a ripple of stunned applause and I probably wouldn’t have wanted to be in his house of all girls over the next day or so.

The Response, given by Kate although written by myself, went down well by comparison and received the plaudits it deserved.

The evening was rounded off by traditional Scots Dancing.

Being a village and Burns’ Night Supper being almost the sole preserve of the older section of its population the evening drew to a close at around midnight.

I had not had very much to drink, a couple of glasses of wine and a tot or two of Whiskey at the supper and a further tot or two when we got home but probably a lot after nearly a month off. We went to bed at around half past midnight. I simply could not settle and tossed and turned. Worrying that I would wake Kate I decided to move to the step-daughter’s room, she being away in the Alps doing a Ski Season. Things were no better in the new room but I think I did eventually drift off to sleep. When I woke on the Sunday morning I certainly felt under the weather but put it down to the minor excesses of the evening before. The Sunday was quiet, with a little writing but not much else.

During Sunday I did become aware of a number of what I now know as deficiencies. My right hand felt a little numb and vaguely leaden. My right arm felt heavier than usual, almost as if it was carrying a couple of extra pounds. My right foot was a slightly stiff and at times the ankle dragged a little, with the leg feeling as if there was a weight strapped to it. When I was tired my speech had a touch of slur to it. And then there were the headaches.

On the Monday my Kate headed off for what was a long week away, to return on the Thursday, while I continued to deliver a large number of parcels. For the past two and a half years I had been working six days a week delivering up to ninety packages and travelling between thirty and one hundred miles a day and that was to continue during that week with me finishing well after seven most days and sometimes as late as nine.

The deficiencies got no better as the week went on. I also found that I was getting more and more tired, not helped by the fact that I was on the receiving end of an almost total lack of sleep.

On Thursday evening I was making my way home at around seven o’clock and as I came through the village next to ours I was caught by a speed camera van. I had slowed down and really was convinced that I was travelling at 30 miles an hour but apparently not.

Arriving home a little flustered and somewhat annoyed I was met by Kate who had been home for about half an hour. After listening to me rant on about speed cameras for a few minuets she asked if I was OK. When my answer was slightly slurred she said that she thought so. After telling me that I was obviously no better she suggesting that I go and have a shower. 

Kate was waiting for me when I finished my shower with the news that she thought that I had had a STROKE.