I went in on Thursday, spoke to the specialist who at the hospital who was very good, very reassuring and said, No, I don’t think it I think, don’t think you’ve had a stroke, I think you’ve had an episode And that’s the first time I’d kind of heard the word stroke, which was a bit of a shock. And anyway so he arranged for me to have a, a, a brain scan, but said we had to wait, because I hadn’t sought medical attention immediately we had to wait so that if there was any swelling or bleeding or whatever it, it had gone down.
So I came home and said to my husband, Oh, it’s fine, you know. it’s, it’s nothing to worry about Started to get exceedingly tired but then I’d been complaining about tiredness before, because I’d previously been diagnosed with a heart condition. So thought, Oh, it’s just all part and parcel really Then I went and had my brain scan which obviously showed up that I had had a stroke and I must admit I was, I wasn’t happy with the way I was told wasn’t the same consultant that I’d seen previously. He started going through my scan pictures on the computer with his back to me and then said Oh if you look here, that’s the damage, that’s the damage to your brain, that’s how we can tell you’ve had a stroke And, Have you got any questions And at that stage I thought, Gosh I’m sure I’ve got thousands of questions but I’m, I really can’t think of any right now My husband asked a few questions about driving and, and stuff like that. And anyway then I came home, burst into tears and said, I don’t believe this has happened You know, I’ve gone from being Mrs Superfit, to being diagnosed with a heart condition to now having a stroke. All within 18 months You know, I’m really not coping with it at all.
It felt as if he was almost dismissive as if it was a very minor thing and, you know, kind of, I don’t know why you’re really bothering us with it It felt, and I said to my husband afterwards, I said, That’s actually quite a major thing in my life now, you know, going with everything else that’s happened over the last, you know, 18 months I said, and to tell me as if he telling me as if I had a, a coldrdquo; I mean, obviously he comes across it all the time and he comes across far more serious cases, and I understand that, but I just feel that he could have been a little bit more subtle in the way that he told me.
Just to actually point at a picture of my brain and say, Well, there’s your brain damage and that’s how we know that you’ve had a stroke You know, you mention brain damage and people think, Oh my God, you know, what, what brain damage You know, because brain damage to you means somebody who can’t, you know, perform certain functions of things. And, you know, just to actually say, well actually it’s, it will repair itself, there wasn’t any of that, you know.
