Sharing our journey

My dear husband had an angioplasty on Monday the 22nd November, during the procedure a piece of plaque came loose and went into his left temple lobe causing him to have a stroke. I have decided to share our journey as it unfolds, many friends have told us about people who have made a full recovery, I thought it would be helpful to others to share our own journey as it unfolds. From this vantage point we don't know where our journey will end, but as believing Christians we believe God is with us and will carry us through.

I thought I would begin by sharing some of my husbands recollections it has been a struggle for him to share this but with patience we have a record of his perceptions of that day when his life changed,"at a stroke".

My wife Sylvia has helped me with this, I struggle to write it all so she has listened to my thoughts and set them down for me. I have decided to set down a record about my time spent in my stroke, in an effort to learn about my journey. On 22nd November I undertook a relatively routine procedure, an angiogram. This involves a catheter which is a thin, flexible, hollow tube. Cardiac catheterization is where a very thin plastic catheter is passed into the chambers of the heart. The catheter can also be passed into the main blood vessels of the heart (the coronary arteries). The procedure is highly complex and sophisticated but effective and involves a local anesthetic. Thousands of procedures are routinely undertaken without any problem.
The normal procedure lasts between 20 and 30 minutes. I had two previous angiograms, both involving further angioplasty. On the first occasion, I encountered a cardiac arrest, with the result that I had to have a defibrillator to recover. The second angioplasty was satisfactory with no position problems and therefore all was expected to arise ordinarily. However in this third procedure, instead of the usual 30 minutes, it continued for over an hour.
While the procedure was underway I felt a sense of an absence from reality. I could not give to the staff a sense of being real. I was awake but utterly lost, unable to measure myself. I was taken into a ward for a time of recovery. Again I was confused. I was aware that I was in a bed room (I has been awake during the procedure) but I could not give a sense of myself as a being. Two nurses were in the room with me and one spoke to me. I could see her but could not gain any sense of the other nurse present also. Furthermore, when the nurse spoke her voice appeared to be in a different room. It was a time of trance state. I kept checking on my face and my head to try to be awake, as I appeared to be in an appearance of asleep, but was in fact completely awake. I began to become afraid, to lose all sense of self or reality.
I was moved back into a bed room in the cardiac room. This is a centre normally where patients go following their procedures and then have a short period (normally a couple of hours) of recuperation. There is now a lounge area where patients are moved to after the procedure and then wait before being allowed home. I was kept in a bed, away from the lounge, albeit it was assumed that this was merely a precaution. As I lay in the bed, I became increasingly afraid. A kind nurse sat with me and held by my hand. She asked me for my name and my address, but I could not obtain any sense of words or reality, even though I knew what she was asking. I was asked to lift my hand – I could not understand what was being asked. Simple questions were completely unknown to me. A sense of terror began around me. I began to weep, a sense of hopelessness and helplessness. The only thing I could think was I had had a stroke and I am lost, I was terrified. All I could keep saying to myself was, “Lord where am I gone? What am I doing? Lord keep me!”
The next thing I knew they took me for a scan, there was this constant fear, I didn’t think I was going to die, all I could think was I was lost, I would never have a reality, in many ways it wasn’t just a stroke and lost, I was very aware of being lost. Then there were a couple of moments where I could grab hold of something that I could touch and then it would go again. The big thing was that I’d not be able to provide for my wife and children, there was clear understanding but it was as though there was a complete world that I had lost and couldn’t bring into the place I now found myself. I didn’t feel God’s presence but I was crying out to Him to help me.

When I saw him after the stroke I knew there was something seriously wrong but the nurses said it was just a reaction to the dye and he would be better the next day. I took the decision to stay in hospital accomodation because the hospital is at least an hour in the car away from our home. Our oldest son offered to take the following day off work to look after our younger children. The following morning John was still very confused, he knew me but kept forgetting where he was and I had to keep showing him where the controls on his bed were.He was struggling to speak and had severe headaches over the left side of his eye. The consultant visited and he was sure it was still just a reaction to the dye. I kept saying my husband was different and I was sure there was brain damage. It felt surreal the nurses had only seen him like this and I was trying to convince them he is a very intelligent man who had changed since the procedure. I felt afraid no-one would believe me. By the second day John began to be able to speak if he wrote things down at the same time. I think the nurses began to realise something had happened and they called the Doctor who decided to arrange an mmr scan. John couldn't pray or read the Bible but I was able to pray and read with him, he said he wanted to learn all that the Lord had for him to learn. We both tried to trust that this trial had been sent for a reason and good would come out of it. John was very frightened and I spent a fair bit of time slipping away to have a good cry. The mmr was cancelled on the Wednesday and it was finally done on the Thursay. John was given the mmr without earplugs and seemed in so much pain after it that I was convinced he was going to have another stroke. The following morning a Doctor came to see us to do some neurological tests, she went away to look at the scan results. She came in to see us to tell us John had unofficially had a stroke in his left temple lobe, part of that brain had been starved of oxygen and still looked infalamed which explained the severe headaches. The Doctors wanted to refer John to a Stroke unit in the area but we wanted the referal nearer our home because we had been away from the children for over a week and they needed us. So that Friday we came home, it was such a strange experience to come home with my husband whose brain had been damaged and no longer worked properly. He was delighted to be home but my heart was breaking as I came to terms with our new circumstances, we both knew we could only get through this if the Lord carried us through.