Deficiencies

“You are lucky to be walking and talking …”

With these never to be forgotten words my Consultant broke the news to me that I had suffered a large Stroke but had got away with it.

OK! I was lucky!

At the time that was not the feeling that came to mind, but more of that in a later post.

While I did not have the range of deficiencies that I could have ended up with, I certainly did not escape scot free. 

As I described in my first post “Attack” my stroke happened after a Burn’s Night Supper. My partner and I walked home with the couple who live over the road from us. I was later to find out that the man told his wive that he thought that there was something “a bit odd” about me that night. Apparently I shook his hand a number of times on the less than a quarter of a mile which was not something we were in the habit of doing. And certainly strange enough for him to comment on it when they got home.

The overwhelming feeling I had was of being “unwell” “under the weather” “not quite right”. I don’t have any other way of describing it. There was nothing I could really put a finger on but I did not feel great. To begin with I put this down to the after affects of having a tot or two at the village Burns Night Super.

I assume it started during the night but judging by my behaviour on the walk home it may not have. Regardless, I had gone to bed at around one thirty, after having a dram or two more but just could not settle. In the end I felt that I had to move into the step-daughter’s bedroom, she being away doing a ski season, so as not to disturb my partner. All day Sunday I felt tired and not quite right. But as I really didn’t do anything I missed most of the deficiencies. I felt some numbness in my right hand but as I had been feeling what I put down to the beginnings of arthritis in my hands for months I thought nothing more of it.

On the Monday I got up at seven to walk the dog. My right leg felt heavy, as if I’d had a couple of pounds added to it and I seemed to be “dragging” it, well maybe not dragging, more not being able to bring my ankle all the way through to complete to stride. I also felt cold: more so than the conditions warranted. I worked as normal but when I got back, at around eight, I was utterly exhausted. So much so I went virtually straight to bed, not that it did me much good as I barely got a wink of sleep.

Tuesday seemed just another day until I got home. The partner was working away. So as had been normal prior to the stroke I settled down into the evening to write. My right hand felt enlarged to such a degree that my fingers felt too small for the keyboard.

I was getting almost no sleep: regardless of the time I retired. I found myself awake during the early hours, sometimes as early as 3 or 4 am. Not only was I awake I could not get comfortable in bed.

Wednesday was very similar to Tuesday. I walked the dog, worked and got home around seven and after getting something to eat I went to bed, with the same results as every other evening so far. The thing that was different about Wednesday was that it was the first day that I remember having a headache since Saturday. For reasons that I will go into in a future post I am no stranger to headaches but this was different in many ways to the ones that I was used to. This headache was in a different place in the head.

Thursday followed exactly the same pattern as the other days of the week so far. I felt cold and my right side did not feel right. I have covered the rest of Thursday in earlier posts so wont go into it any further here.

So having had a stroke what deficiencies was I left with?

My right side felt odd.
Generally it was difficult to pin down to anything specific.

My right had felt enlarged or puffed up.
This was not a consistent thing but when it happened it made using my right hand strange.

My right leg felt heavy and felt as if its movement was restricted.
This meant that when I walked I “dragged” my foot every so often.

I felt tired.
So tired that I could sleep at the drop of a hat.

I was not sleeping.
I was tired but when I did go to bed I was finding sleep difficult to come by and when I did find it, it was so often short lived and fitful.

I was getting headaches.
These could last from half an hour to most of the day. The other thing about these headaches was that no regular painkiller would touch them.

My right side felt cold.
There were times when if I was not fully wrapped up, including gloves, I could not even cover the two or three yards to the car without a feeling a real pain in my hand.

I was left with a two sided body.
I know every body is two sided but I am left with a right side that reacts totally differently to my left. If my left was warm my rift was cold. My right had tingles, my left didn’t.

I was slurring some of my words.
My slurring happened more often when I was tired but not exclusively.

I was having trouble finding the correct word.
I knew what word I was looking for but often struggled to both find and then express the word. It is true that the words I had the most trouble with were the longer or less used one but again not exclusively.

The right side of my mouth had dropped a bit.
This was not obvious but did begin to show when I was tired. It often only became apparent when I felt a thin line of dribble trickle out of the corner

My stroke has left me with a number of deficiencies that, whilst not as bad as they might have been, and while not affecting me every day they were still capable of having a significant influence on my life. My job now is to get used to the new me.

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.