20080818 – Monday – The day I had a stroke

This story is for you Peter Halpin, you commented on this photo and said that I looked “so young” in it, and I wrote that this was taken before I had a stroke and you wanted to  know what had happened and what it was like to have a stroke and how it has affected me since.

Well, here goes. My niece, Sarah O’Connor was getting married up in Queensland and I was invited to the wedding. I did not really want to go because I had not been feeling at all well lately.

I had also did a very stupid thing at work. I accidentally transferred $14,000 into the wrong bank Account #. It wasn’t even one of Darren’s and my bank accounts, it was Ben Blance’s bank account. How I could do such a thing? I do remember the feeling that something was “not right” with me. When I transferred that money into the wrong account I felt an overwhelming “rising” in my brain. I felt as thought my brain was going to explode.

Darren in our offices on North East Road

Darren Gore, my business partner, was very good about it and we managed to sort it out without too much trouble. Luckily, since  the account that it had been transferred into was that of Ben Blanche who was the owner and manager of Lead Seekers and my business partner in one of our businesses as well, it meant that he would not be difficult about transferring the money back. I dreaded to think what would have happened it had been a stranger’s bank account and they had refused to give the money back!!

Satrah’s wedding

Then there was the wedding. I soo did not want to go, but felt it was important for me to do so for my niece, Sarah’s sake.

So I flew to Coolangatta on 14th August, 2008. I picked up a hire car and then drove to Nobby Beach and found my motel which was called “Magic Mountain Motel.”

The name should have warned me, but it didn’t. The motel was built into the side of a mountain and the rooms on the “ground floor” were not actually ON the ground floor but had numerous stairs up to each room. I was not feeling well, and I was so tired and did not want to have to climb up and down stairs to my room each day.

Magic Mountain Motel

So, I went to reception (in tears – exhausted and stressed) and asked for my room to be changed to one that had no stairs (or at least, few stairs). Management obliged, and I was allocated a room at least on the ground floor.

I had a bath and went to bed and slept all night until 7.15 am next day. The rest of my time in Qld passed ok and although I was still feeling weak and not anywhere near 100%, I managed to conceal this fact from everyone else and get through the wedding and its aftermath well enough, and I did enjoy myself and the wedding was beautiful.

Where Christine and all the gang were staying

On the 18th August, 2008 I cleaned my motel room and returned the key to reception. Then I did some banking, transferred some money to Darren Gore for the business, using Magic Mountain’s free internet. I drove to the house where Christine and the rest of the gang were staying and finally returned the hire care and went to the departures lounge at the airport to catch my plane back home.

Skyscraper at Southport

I had lunch at Tweed Heads in a cafe by the beach, sandwiches and coffee. I then drove to Southport. Southport is huge! it has grown so much since I saw it last in 1958. It is full of skyscrapers now.   I took some photos and then drove my car to the airport and returned it to the hire car place.

Waiting at the airport at Coolangatta

I got to the airport three hours early for my flight and after putting my luggage in I went to a bookshop and purchased a couple of books to read on the flight home. One was the “Seven Habits,” probably my 10th copy of that book because I keep buying it and then giving it away to someone. The second book was called, “Train your Brain.” This book was about how to increase brain activity and it had several things to do to increase brain activity. The book said that two ways to increase brain activity was to either read aloud or to do simple mathematics fast. It had some tests to do, so I decided to do one of them.

The test I did – simple mathematics, that brought on the stroke.

I did the simple mathematics test. The first time I did it, it took me 8 minutes, the second time it took five minutes. I began to do the test again, to see if I could complete it faster than five minutes. Then the strangest thing happened. I completely lost all mathematical skills (such as they were anyway). I found I could not do any of it, I couldn’t add up or subtract or multiply. I was desperate. I kept trying and trying and just could not do it and I felt quite confused. I rang Darren and talked to him about it. Of course he had no idea what was the matter with me and why I was upset that I couldn’t multiply, or “take away.” Then suddenly I remembered that I was supposed to be waiting for my plane back to Adelaide. I asked Darren what the time was and he told me 7.10 pm!! My plane had been due to leave at 6.30 pm. I shut off my phone, leaving Darren hanging at the other end, and rushed to get help from the flight staff.

The man at the desk told me that my plane would be long gone and that I would have to book on on a flight tomorrow and stay in a motel overnight. Then he asked me my name. I said “Fay Berry,” and he said, “Fay Berry!! You are the passenger we have been paging for the last half an hour. Quickly, come with me. He grabbed my arm and ran with me out onto the tarmac towards a plane that was there on the runway.  As we ran, he told me that they had paged me again and again. Apparently, when I didn’t board they began to taxi up the runway without me on board, but then they found that there was luggage on board without an owner.

They aborted the take-off and turned the plane around and came back and unloaded my luggage of the plane, or at least, what they thought was my luggage. Once again they began to taxi up the runway but then it was discovered that they had taken the wrong luggage off the plane. (Of course, since I had arrived 3 hours early at the airport, my luggage would have been first on the plane and they would have had to unload the whole plane’s luggage to get at mine). They put the luggage back that they had taken off back on the plane and the plane was out there sitting there, not knowing what to do next, when I finally woke up and approached the flight staff office.

Now here I was at the steps of the plane, ready to join my luggage on board!!!

I walked into the plane and looked down the length of the plane to the back tail area. The plane was FULL. All the passengers began to cheer and clap their hands and stamp their feet, because, “she who had held them up for so long was finally here, and on the plane.” I felt absolutely dreadful. My brain was definitely NOT functioning as normal. I looked at them all and felt so “responsible,” then out of nowhere I heard a voice speaking (mine?) and I said, “Would you like me to sing for you?” They thought that was the biggest joke ever and laughed and clapped and stomped their feet again. What they didn’t know was that I was not joking, I was deadly serious, and I didn’t know why they were clapping, so I sat down suddenly in my seat and just stared straight ahead as the plane took off.

Of course, I didn’t know I had just had a stroke. We flew home to Adelaide, and I disembarked and was reunited with my troublesome luggage. I took a taxi to Jeff’s place, picked up my car and drove home to my unit at Ash St Aberfoyle Park and went to bed, still not knowing that I had had a stroke.

When I woke up next morning, I was still in the dream state, and I was trying to solve a computing problem and count not do it. I got up and it must have been about 8, or 8.30 am. I decided to visit Don and Una (at 8.30 am??) and drove there. I was having trouble with the vision in one of my eyes and couldn’t see properly and it was messing with my other eye, so I drove to Don and Una’s with one eye closed so I could see out of the other. I knocked on Don and Una’s door and said “Hello,” quite cheerily (at 8.30 am??) and they invited me inside to share breakfast with them. They asked me about my trip and I thought that I answered them “normally,” but apparently not. Una began to look sideways at Don and Don at Una, and then Una suggested that we all take a trip to see a doctor. So we did. At my doctors, he did some tests and then arranged for me to have a brain scan and a chest Xray and after that he decided to get me admitted to Emergency at Flinders centre.  I was put into a side room on a portable bed where I stayed until about midnight.

I was feeling pretty miserable now that I knew that I had had a stroke. It seemed that I had had a bleed in my brain on the left occipital lobe of my brain. This is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the brain. The occipital lobe is the visual processing center of  the brain containing most of the anatomical region of the visual cortex.

It soon became apparent that I had lost some eyesight in both of my eyes. Months of testing on my eyes was conducted  for a study that I had agreed to participate in. It was very good really because it showed just how much eyesight I had lost (which unfortunately, is irrecoverable), but I felt very blessed in that it has not affected my life all that much. I can’t read in the way I used to read. I have to move my eye “along” a line of text now, whereas before I could just grab a large sections of text in one fixation.

I can still drive because I can see everything from left to right. I just have one strip right at the right of my eye where there is a blank band. I was given training to be aware of the effect of that and how to compensate for it. As time has gone on I hardly notice any difference in my eyesight now.

There were other side effects of the stroke which did affect me. I lost so much confidence. I am not that “young Fay Berry” you noticed in the photo above. I have aged 30 years in the last eight years since my stroke. I don’t have the confidence that I used to have. I am more emotional, more unsure of myself. I plan things these days, when I go away in my car and trailer, I don’t just “chuck things into a green bag and head for the hills” as I once used to do. But I still manage.

My time in hospital came to an end and I was very grateful to Una Strempel who looked after me while I was there, fetching and carrying for me and getting clothes from home and anything else that I needed. I had so many visitors, Meg Clothier, Leanne Moorhouse, Joe and Jenny Spruyt etc.

Well, that is how it is to this day. I walk with a stick and with a certain amount, but not that much, arthritic pain. I just get on with my life and keep doing the things that I love to do. I just hope that my legs last as long as my brain does. My little car and my trailer make it possible for me to keep doing things and going places that otherwise would not be possible for me. So thank you Darren for my little grey “escape machine.”

So Peter Halpin, that is what it is like to have a stroke. May you never have one. But it could have been worse. I still have “all my marbles,” and my speech is not affected (what a pity you say?). It is the physical things that I have trouble with, not the mental.

When Christ returns, I will rise up on eagle’s wings. Cant wait!!