Brief Encounter…

The day after the first MRI scan I started the day with an experience which has now become a part of my daily life; I awake, lay for a few brief moments blissfully unaware of everything that is happening, then I remember. The momentarily state where I make the transition between being asleep to being fully awake is like a tiny buffer which gives me a brief respite from the current of electric energy that then sits burning in my core self until I fall asleep again the following evening. After I got up and thought through what Dr. B had said to me, I decided (as best I could) that there was no real point in worrying about what was happening and I would just have to wait until the next scan to see what the outcome was. I decided to be proactive and gave Dr. B’s secretary a call (I found out me was based in Stoke Mandeville hospital) but she hadn’t had a chance to see him yet but promised to call me back the next day and give me an update. I didn’t have to of pushed though, the scanning department at High-Wycombe called me a few hours later and booked me for the follow up tests on the Thursday. It was only two days to wait so I felt reasonably pleased. The rest of the Tuesday passed without incident, as did most of Wednesday. However, come bedtime for the kids, I had another ‘episode’ and the right side of my body went numb and I couldn’t talk again. My wife called an ambulance and I was once again back in hospital being tested for a potential TIA / mini-stroke. This time around the sensation was every different to the first, panic stricken experience; firstly, the feelings weren’t as as painful as the first time around and secondly, I didn’t panic which allowed me to observe the experience whilst it happened to me. The dysphasia was also less intense. Despite the fact that I managed my way through it far better than the first time around, andit being less unpleasant overall, emotionally it was actually far harder than the first time. On some level I had been hanging onto the fact that I’ve only had the one episode and had been focusing on the ‘potential brain bleed’ possibility from the first scan, still hoping that this was all going to end up being something resolvable and not too serious. The fact that I’ve had another episode so soon after the first one cemented in my mind that clearly something had happened, was still happening and was unlikely to just stop happening now. As I considered the implications of this emerging reality, a phrase suddenly struck me - “the beautiful and subtle human art of denial” I thought what a brilliant album title that would make. I hoped whether I would have the chance to write it or not. The A&E department was even busier than the last time around and I was again struck by how incredible the people working there are. By chance I saw one of the ambulance guys that had taken me in a few days earlier as I was wheeled into the observation area and he recognized me - he said “you back for the same thing?” and I replied quite pitifully “yes, they said I might have a bleed in my brain!” He nodded knowingly and said “sometimes these things sound worse than they really are” and gave me a quick wink before he disappeared. It made me smile - it was just the thing I needed at that exact moment and somehow made the rest of the evening more bearable. It didn’t matter if it was true or not, it was just the perspective I needed to get my own head into a better place and I felt very grateful for that brief encounter. After a few hours I was discharged and the view was I should just go to the scan the next day as this what I needed to get to the bottom of what was happening. My wife and I couldn’t help but to try and interpret what we were seeing in the behavior of the team at the A&E department that evening - to us it seemed as though there was all being kind, considerate and respectful, but we both felt as though where was something they weren’t telling us, or something they suspected but didn’t want to verbalize about what they suspected was going on. There is no way to know for certain because it could have just as easily been a manifestation of our own paranoia as we read more into what was happening than was really there, but there was look of pity in the eyes of the doctor would was looking after me that felt real enough have us both worried by the time we got home later that night. Go here to the start of the journey. Go here for next blog entry.
Go here for previous blog entry