20190528 – Tuesday – A new life

1. 20190528 –  Tuesday – A new life

Well this is the first time I have been able to write a post in a very long time, since the 4th of April, 2019 to be exact.

On the 3rd of April I was admitted to the Flinders Medical centre to have a knee replacement operation.

I had chosen to have an epidural rather than an anaesthetic because I had heard that, sometimes, in the elderly (of which I am classed these days) it can cause dementia to have an anaesthetic.

So an epidural it was for me….BUT that may have stopped the possibility of having dementia, but it did NOT stop me having a STROKE, right in the middle of the operation.

Because of the epidural, an anaesthetic into the spine, I was awake all through the operation, and was acutely aware of what was going on around me. 

I could hear the whir of the saw that was chopping into my knee. 

I could hear the conversations between the two surgeons doing the operation, and between the anesthetists who were also present.

Now I am usually a bit deaf in my right ear, but I could even hear, or so I thought I could hear, the conversations of the cleaners who were outside the door. 

What confused me was that their voices sounded like those of my two daughters, Helen and Jesia.

This I found very confusing.

But what was ACTUALLY happening was that I was in the process of having a stroke, and my poor brain was going into overdrive trying to make sense of my world.

I heard the doctors congratulating each other on a successful operation, and then it was all over and I was taken into recovery.

I don’t remember a lot about what happened after that, but what happened next was a complete surprise.

Before going into Hospital, Helen and Colleen, my daughter and daughter-in-law had set up a Whatsapp group between Helen and Colleen and myself. 

This result of this is that throughout the following two months, I kept in contact with both of them, commenting about my progress during and after my operation and consequent stroke.

This meant I had kept a record of everything that happened at that time, otherwise I wouldn’t have had much recall of those events.

I was in hospital for the required 2 days and then Helen (who was in Adelaide from Melbourne to be available for my operation) and Jesia took me home, and then went home themselves.

I rang my friend Darren Gore and began to tell him about my hospital stay.

I was all concerned that I couldn’t use my phone texting as I used to and I was convinced that my phone had been hacked and that someone had been interfering with the predictive text on my phone.

Darren listened to my conversation and found it completely weird, and so he very soon became convinced that I had had another stroke (I had had one back in 2008).

He rang from Darwin for an ambulance to take me to hospital and then rang my daughter and told her to get back to my place and see that I was taken to emergency at Flinders.

This was around midnight, so back my girls came and I was bundled off to hospital again, not in an ambulance, because I didn’t have ambulance cover as it happens, and so they drove me to hospital.

I was quite delusional during this time, and when I was finally taken into the emergency at Flinders, I was convinced that I was seeing an illegal medical practice selling spare parts for all sorts of patients.

In the meantime I was shunted around the hospital having all sorts of scans and whatever.

The next morning the doctor reported that I had an infection in my knee operation.

This devastated me, and when I was transferred into a ward in the hospital I was in a crying heap, because this had been my greatest fear.

Then one of the doctors who had been the assisting surgeon in my operation came to see me and assured me that the doctor had made a mistake and that there was absolutely no infection whatsoever.

I was so relieved but it still took me a time to recover my equilibrium.

It was then that they began to suspect that I had had a stoke, and what followed was a series of scans and and MRI.  

The MRI confirmed that it was indeed a stroke, that had occurred, and and testing of my heart to try to establish the cause of such a thing happening.

During this time, I was finding that I was “losing words” and when I was trying to speak I could not find the right word to day, and often used the “wrong” word instead.

Not only that, could not use my texting on my phone, properly, as before which distressed me quite a lot.

It confused the doctors too, and they soon labeled me as “confused and confusing.” I was confused and caused them to be confused as a consequence.

No one seemed to be able to work out what had happened to me, even though I was interviewed by department after department and put through test after test.

Eventually they were trying to find out what to do with me. 

They were going to send the first of all toe the GEM facility (geriatric) and then to the old hospital on Daws Road and finally they decided on the Hampstead facility for Stroke victims.

I was there for 2 weeks.

They were wonderful to me there, and helped me get my diabetes completely under control with diet (low carbs) and it has been under control with sugar levels between 4 – 10 ever since.

So in the end, with my sugar levels under control and my knee replacement going pretty well, it was only the effects of the stroke that was still the problem.

I finally went home to my own little place again.

But there the cold got me. 

I now feel changes in temperature very much and so, particularly. can not cope with cold weather.

Ali and Trev came to my rescue with a fan heater which made my life liveable once more.

But then I purchased a reverse cycle air conditioner and that fixed the problem once and for all.

Now, all I have to do is live each day one day at a time until I recover from this debilitating stroke.

I have had numerous tests since. 

I have had a PET scan to take pictures of my brain to try to find out whether I am likely to end up with Dementia. 

But if the doctors have found out even whether I have a brain or not, they aren’t telling me.

It seems to me we are in a system where the “right hand doesn’t communicate with the left hand” and so forth.

I guess someone, some day will tell me what that was all about.

For the first fortnight after hospital,I had a team of specialists coming to my home and giving me help with cognitive, and physio treatment  and occupational therapy, and now today a GP appointment and soon an eye specialist appointment.

So that is what has happened to me in the last 2 months. 

I can’t wait to feel “normal” again.

So my dear facebook friends, that is the story of the last couple of months of my life.

So good to be “almost” back.