Getting Back into the Swing of Things

Well, it is now just over three weeks since a blood vessel in my head went pop and laid me low. Progress has been non-linear but in the right direction. Concensus is that I am still the Same Old Pete, just a bit more subdued and tired. Indeed, sleeping is something I do a lot of lately. I eat breakfast, I go back to bed exhausted for an hour. I entertain a visitor for forty minutes, I sleep an hour. I walk to the shops, I sleep for two hours. It becomes evident that I need to pace myself very carefully if I am to maintain recovery without setting myself back with each exertion.
And tramadol is a very welcome companion several times a day for the headaches.

When I think back to the High Dependency Neurology Unit in Frenchay Hospital, my first memories are of a week of shades of consciousness and a long tunnel of pain and confusion alleviated by regular, merciful morphine. Wonderful stuff, morphine.

But also, I am reminded of some of the other chaps in the ward and very grateful that my own decisive but oblique graze with fate was not as serious as some of theirs. Many of the other patients had horrendous conditions to live with. There were people afflicted with serious, debilitating depression, alzheimers and epilepsy. Some of the crosses these guys had to bear seem beyond human endurance to suffer. It is very apparent just how easily this organ can malfunction.

Also, the amount of compassion I witnessed is humbling. The nurses, bless 'em, were a little variable in their levels of empathy and I suppose this is understandable when one considers they deal with ill people and their unpredictable humours on a daily basis.
But there were some patients who had attendants 24 hours a day for various reasons that were never quite apparent. To see a hulk of a man, all cauliflower ears and broken nose, speaking softly and kindly to his charge as the poor confused fellow attempts to get out of bed every ten minutes due to confusion and frustration is quite humbling. There are some lovely, caring people in this world and they don't always look like you would expect them to.

My memories of that week are somewhat incomplete and jumbled. It was not a time of coherent thought for me. I remember not being able to speak, only to squeeze a hand; once for yes, two for no. I remember not being able to move my head, or even my eyes, due to the agonies of whatever was in my cranium being far too big for the skull that was trying to contain it. I remember drinking from a baby beaker for several days and my first glorious cup of tea after my several days of nil-by-mouth.

And I remember that there was a place full of incredible people with astonishing knowledge, equipment that was the pinnacle of human medical and scientific endeavour and poor souls with various chances of recovery.

And I am very grateful to be both still alive and on my way back to my old self, with whatever improvements I can make with lessons extracted from the whole experience.
It is a grand thing to live in the 21st century and to benefit from several centuries of cumulative medical knowledge and progress.