Stroke Patients are People

In this article I will stitch together some old stories and record a lay person view of my stabilization at the stroke center. How much of this was to counter the effects of my stroke I do not know.

Taken from my discharge report, but too complete to copy here, are path. Lab results of the minerals and stuff which circulates through our bodies to give life and makes us who we are. I hope that’s near enough!

For me it starts with a 10 line report with corrections which I do not understand, then a second the same, then finally a third one, a blood test completes my makeover. I am a different person – perhaps.

My sincere thanks to the stroke team.

Moving on, I felt a pain in my lower stomach which a physician said was due to a blood leaking in my pelvis. An M.R.I did not find the source, but he continued, finally reporting that the bleed had stopped and had been absorbed but its source had not been found. So what causes the bleed? My fall at home was not severe, and could a stroke do it? Or was it just one part of an old person’s body just packing up? How do I know the doctor was a physician? Surgeons usually greet you with “I’m a surgeon” and he didn’t.

Moving on, I was sent to the gym by mistake and given a roast lamb dinner by mistake. I have a restricted throat and spluttered, choked, and passed out. I woke surrounded by men in plastic suits plumping water into my mouth and sucking it out with what looked like a modified vacuum cleaner. I was dried up and sent to a new bed where two days later I came down with pneumonia. You could say hospital was the best place to have this ailment- but don’t!

But, as they say in children’s adventure stories, “worse” was yet to come “. I was about four days before transfer to a rehab hospital when the two exercise therapists decided to take me for a walk in the gym without a frame. Now, if I walked clockwise round the room, my weak left arm could touch a safety rail on the wall. Walk the other way and my strong right hand would give me good support. You guessed it! Clockwise was chosen and I collapsed and I collapsed and caused a code blue alert. Details my “recovery from stroke”.

I spent my remaining time in a new bed or in a wheel chair guided by a senior nurse.

Now to treating people. I think major stroke units should run their own emergency staff a cardiologist should be within walking distance at all times. A radiologist should be at short call. A senior neurologist and physician run the show.

As the patient is in a stroke induced coma he should be under 24 hour stroke nursing care with a resuscitation specialist within shouting distance. The unit should have first call on CT and MRI and their operators. Regular use should be made of social workers to help family for they are together with their old S.A.P., the most important people under treatment