I don't know if anyone has noticed but I've been rather quiet so far this year. The Happy New Year greetings had barely faded into the void when I was struck down by nasty flu virus. Emuna was determined not to catch it so I was banished to the spare bedroom. She gingerly pushed food and drink through the door and carefully disinfected anything that I'd touched.
By 7th January I was beginning to feel better. I was declared no longer a biohazard on the 8th and allowed to get up and do the washing up. I thought I'd return to work on the boats on the following day.
At about 1pm I suddenly decided to leave the washing up and go through into the living room. I forget why. As I walked through the dining room my right leg suddenly gave way. I grabbed a dining chair with my left arm to avoid falling on the floor. I soon realised that my right arm was limp and useless. It began to dawn on me that I was having a stroke.
Emuna was upstairs so I called her. The sound that came out of my mouth was unfamiliar to me. She came downstairs and I explained in my distorted voice that my arm and leg weren't working. I realised, to my horror, that I was dribbling.
Em said "I think you might be having a stroke". "Corse I'm avin a bloody sthroke" I blurted, "Geranambulance". Emuna dialed 999. The operator said she'd make me top priority but we may have to wait 50 minutes.
I was still clinging to a dining chair so Em fetched her wheelchair. Between us we managed to manoeuvre me into it.
The ambulance arrived in 15 minutes, along with 2 cheerful and efficient ambulancemen. They carried out the necessary checks to ensure that I would survive the journey, then wheeled me up the ramp into the ambulance, still on Em's wheelchair. She followed on with her stick and we were all strapped in.
I'd never thought much about strokes. I'd imagined that my risk was pretty low. Here are two things I didn't know about them. For an older person like me the risk of one quadruples after a bout of flu. When you've had one your emotions become amplified and sometimes uncontrollable.
Emuna is good at humour, we share a sense of it. She tried to cheer me up. Consequently, as the ambulance rushed through traffic, sirens blaring, I was laughing fit to burst.
They took us to Stepping Hill hospital at Stockport, the main stroke facility in our area. I was rapidly wheeled through corridors. When we entered the stroke unit the staff immediately went into action. It was like a well ordered military operation. I was fitted with a canula, checked over, taken to have my head scanned, about time some would say, then, when the doctors were satisfied that they understood my condition, thrombolised. This is when they pump a cocktail of drugs into you via the canula to break up the blood clot and prevent further damage. The sooner this is done after a stroke the less damage is likely to occur. I was lucky. I later met someone who had been lying on the floor for 2 days and 2 nights before he was found.
We were taken to a side room to await a bed allocation. The staff were clearly busy. One nurse said it was the busiest day she could remember. We wondered if it was linked to the flu that had been going round, from which some patients were clearly still suffering. I was thirsty, but every time I asked for a drink I was told they had to check that I could swallow first. Another thing I didn't know was that strokes often take away one's swallowing reflex. Food or drink will go straight into the lungs.
Eventually a nurse found enough time to check my swallow reflex, then make me a cup of coffee.
I was moved to a ward and started to remember how congenitally uncomfortable hospital beds are. Em had an adventurous bus journey home in a blizzard, including tentatively descending a long,dark, deserted and icy flight of stone steps when changing buses in central Stockport. Later that night I was moved to another ward and settled down for a restless night. The natural discomfort of the bed made worse by the fact that my right arm and leg were just immovable dead lumps of meat.
As I blinked into wakefulness after a fitful night's sleep I started to realise how lightly I'd been let off. Several people had tubes feeding them through their noses. Some were confused and would pull out their tubes, bleating constantly for water, which they couldn't have. On the second night a man came in who was so connfused that he thought the nurses were attacking him. The little movement I had in my leg meant that I could walk with two people supporting me.
A big moustached South Asian man came to scrub me to within an inch of my life, He looked like he would be more at home riding a white charger across a desert wielding an immense bejewelled sword.
The doctors on their rounds were like the United Nations. The head doctor reminded me of Henry Kissinger, partly his looks but particularly his East European accent. Other doctors included a very tall young Sikh, a beautiful Muslim woman wearing a hijab and a colourful dress and a smart young African man. Thank God for immigration.
I've heard it said by my more right wing friends that nurses spend lots of time drinking tea and chatting. I've never seen that. On the stroke wards they are rarely still. Their shifts are 12 hours and they rarely get a break from the constant demands of patients.
Hospital food is not wonderful, though, to be fair, it's improved since last time I was in. Nevertheless, there was still too much refined starch and sugar to be healthy. Em visited every other day. A friend started bringing her. She brought wholemeal sandwiches with tasty and healthy fillings, bagels, fruit and sugar free cake. I got visits from therapists, speech, occupational and physio. I was given tongue twisters to practice. I was taken for a walk the length of the ward.
I'd been promised a transfer to Tameside, nearer for Em. The problem was finding a bed, then finding an ambulance to take me. Suddenly, one night, two young ambulancewomen appeared at my bed to whisk me away. As we travelled I enjoyed intelligent conversation about life, the universe and everything with the young Northern Irish woman who sat in the back with me while her colleague drove.
At Tameside it was a similar routine. The man opposite me was pretty much totally paralysed, though he could eat if spoon fed. Others were nil by mouth and some were deeply confused. The daily doctors round was similarly diverse, though less colourful. Three of the chief nurses were little Indian women, so similar that they could have been sisters.
Each day I looked forward to physiotherapy. Very soon I was able to walk to the gym with a quad stick. I was soon moved to a room of my own. After one night I was moved back because someone came in who needed to be isolated because of an infection. After a few more nights I went back to the single room. It seems the infected patient, who was nil by mouth, had been crawling out of bed and trying to drink from the sink. I enjoyed having my own space where I could practice moving about without well meaning nurses intervening.
It was lovely having visitors, with one proviso. Having a stroke makes you tire easily. Having visitors is tiring. One day I had thee visitors. I enjoyed seeing them all, but I was shattered by the end of the day. I felt sorry for some people who had hordes of family visiting all day. I know that sounds ungrateful, but that's. how it is. 6 weeks after the stroke, I still have to conserve my energy.
At last, after about a month, I was released. I'm waiting for some rails to be fitted by the stairs but my walking has got good enough that I can carefully move around the house. My arm is making less progress but I'm confident that I'll get it back eventually.
I wonder how much this would have cost in America!