Nearly six months ago my mother, who is now eighty one years old, suffered a stroke. This in itself was bad enough. It was a haemorrhagic stroke meaning she had actually bled into her brain and there was obvious damage. But subsequent to this there was further problems caused by her actual treatment !
Prior to her stroke she had suffered problems with her throat for several years. She was referred to a specialist who told her that one of her vocal cords (apparently you have two) was paralysed. This meant that her speech was often not much more than a whisper, also, she often suffered from sore throats and coughing fits.
Then, about a year ago she was diagnosed with a problem in her middle ear which affects balance. She wasn't long out of hospital after a fall which lead to her breaking her hip when she was diagnosed with the balance problem. So, overall, it lead to her losing confidence and not going out hardly ever.
The stroke she suffered affected her ability to swallow so it decided to do an examination with a camera down her throat. In the process of attempting this the surgeon tore her gullet ! This was just about the worst thing that could have happened. All the hospital could do was place her on antibiotics and pray that she never developed an infection and that the tear would heal itself. She was very lucky. The wound was closed within five days, although complete healing would take much longer.
However, the occurrence of the tear had lead to a dilemma. She could now no longer be fed through a tube inserted via her nose. Therefore the only option was to fit a PEG. This is a tube inserted directly into the stomach through which high nutrition food mixtures can be pumped providing all the nutritional needs of the patient. As this was the only realistic option available to mum they went ahead with the operation.
But, as always, there was a complication. Normally, such procedures require a camera to be fed down the throat to guide the surgeon. But as this wasn't possible with my mum after the tear they had to go in blind so to speak. In doing so they accidentally tore an artery !
Again, the worst had happened. In order to stop the bleeding they had to feed a device in through her thigh and all the way up to her stomach wall. Luckily the 'fix' worked. Nevertheless she had to go onto critical care for two days and things seemed very grim for a while.
Eventually she recovered from this mess up too. Unfortunately all these complications interfered with her ongoing rehabilitation. Whereas she should have been having physio and occupational therapy sessions regularly, not to mention sessions with the speech and language team, and psychologists. Instead she was stuck in bed due to the dammed operation mess.More weeks in hospital followed. Eventually we were told that she would be getting discharged. Of course we were absolutely thrilled at this news. My mum was ecstatic at the thought of getting home.
Two nights before her planned discharge she woke in the middle of the night. She need the toilet so pressed the button for a nurse to come and help her. Nobody came. She kept on pressing the button for over half an hour. In the end, in desperation she got out of bed and tried to go herself. She slipped ! The fall resulted in a hairline fracture of her hip. This meant that going home in two days was out of the question. Mum was decimated. We were totally despondent but had to put a brave face on things for mum's sake. The fall led to a delay of over a month before she eventually came home. I've never felt such ambivalent emotions over a public service. The NHS saved my mother's life, The devotion, compassion and level of care provided by the majority of the staff on the Stroke Unit is beyond reproach. However, at the same time, several mistakes contributed to the fact that my mother's hospital stay was more than twice as long as it should have been. Thus there is a weird combination of eternal gratitude and outrage at mistakes which medical students and trainee nurses would have been disciplined severely for making.
I guess when all is said and done my mum is home. She has survived a stroke, a haemorrhagic stroke - the worst kind to have (statistics are basically that for stroke victims: 1 out of 3 will not survive, 1 out of three will be disabled severely and 1 out of 3 will recover). So, all things considered to say she has been lucky would be the wrong word. But it is a harsh fact of life that things could have been a lot worse for her. The fact my mum is till with us despite everything is such a boon for me that words fail me when it comes to describing how I am left feeling after the events of the past months.
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