Marching On

 Nearly we are at the end of March, and what a busy month it has been for me. The Ides bought me no foul. I was concerned, as on the 15th I was to make a trip to Flinders Hospital to have the vascular team examine the ultrasound pictures of my carotid arteries, which were taken a week earlier at the Sir Mark Oliphant building on the other side of the Expressway to Flinders Hospital.

At my consultation a lady doctor, not Thaven, the man who did my surgery, told me the pictures were all good. I could henceforth drop the Clopidogrel blood thinning medication but I should continue the 100mg aspirin for life. Also the Atorvastin. I asked her could that dose be reduced from the very strong 80mg with time. She said she wouldn't if she were me, but I could if I wish, reduce to 40 mg when I'd finished the 80mg stock that I have. I have a few repeat prescriptions so as of the15th I have been cutting them to have half a tablet each day.

Interestingly, on my way out of the hospital, when I was wrestling with the pay machine in the car park to gain exit ticket, my phone rang. It was the lady doctor. She said they'd had a close look at the images and there was some residual narrowing in the artery they cleaned out and she was going to organize a surveillance ultrasound for six months' time. I have since had a letter telling me I'm booked in at the Victor Harbor Medical Centre for ultrasound on the 11th of September (another significant date). I reckon Thaven had come in and asked how I went and took a look at the images and overruled her which caused the phone call so soon after I left the vascular clinic. Anyway, I don't mind. A future check is a good safeguard. And because it's 6 months away, the Victor Harbour place where they come to do them once a week is not booked out, as it was when I had to go to Flinders on the 8th.

We had another trip to Adelaide on the 23/24th. Gord had bought a ticket to go to a music festival at Seppeltsfield in the Barossa Valley. One of his favourite all-time bands was performing there, Cheap Trick. Gord organized and paid for hotel accommodation at the Rose and Crown in Elizabeth. It had a sportsbar so Lib and I could watch Melbourne and Hawthorn playing while Gord was at his concert. After checking in at the hotel we took Gord to Sepplesfield about 30 minutes away. It took us 50 as we took backroads by mistake. Then Lib and I got lost on the way coming back through Elizabeth, wrong turn again, and it was over an hour. Still, we caught the last half of the game on the bigscreen. No sound, as music was playing, and a table with a bogan family next to us, grandparents down to feral children made increasing noise as the pots went down, making them more pissed and louder. Footy finished, I went off to buy pizzas up the road, while Lib had a crack at the pokies. I gave her $20 and she came back with $50 so that about paid for the pizza, as Gord reimbursed me for his. He ate his back in our room after we picked him up at the festival in darkness at the arranged time and place.  The hotel accomm was like an apartment with 2 bedrooms and a fridge and microwave in a kitchenette. All good, a nice weekend and a break from normal routine. *

Another trip to Adelaide was this Wednesday gone, to have our Skoda serviced at the dealer where we bought it. Lib stayed home and cooked a casserole and had a bit of quiet time by herself, while Gord and I enjoyed our day out in the city, lunching in the Rundle mall and shopping at the central market.

 

We had two lots of visitors from Victoria during March. Old friends John and Nicky Bridges from Moyhu stayed a couple of nights at the Port Elliot Caravan Park in their A-Van and Annie Hiskins and her friend Margot stayed a few nights in an Air B&B, also in Port Elliot. These friends go back to the 1970's so it was wonderful to see them and have them for dinner and see our environment.

On March 5 I had a crown fitted to a screw that was implanted in a gap in my lower jaw late last year. It works well, I can chew easily and confidently on both sides now. When I got in the chair I asked dentist Ah Ling, a delightful young lady, how she was. She said she had a bad start to the day. She left home in her VW Golf at 7am to pick up two other dentists, they drive share rotate, but not a couple of hundred metres from her home she somehow clipped a car parked in the street and her car tipped almost to rolling over and came to rest badly damaged all up one side, probably totalling it. But here she was fitting my crown that she'd measured up the previous week. All computerized, the measuring and the machine that makes the crown.

Between all this happening when I can I walk down the river late afternoons, I water some of the river group's young plantings by water bottle, and I've made good inroad into 2 large boxthorn thickets, cutting my way in and sawing off the stems near ground level and painting the cut with roundup. I also cut my way into the base of a big olive tree and drilled holes around and filled with the herbicide. It may take another go or two, it's multi trunked from the base and I therefore couldn't get the drill to a few places on the inside of the meeting trunks. These tree weeds are on the council's and the Friends' group list to be removed, and on my list to do this autumn, so it's satisfying to get it done. As I get about, I also pull out any persistent African daisies I see, and cape ivy and boneseeds. They keep appearing. Most of these weeds are Sth African in origin. I'm led to believe the first came here as ballast in sailing ships that was unloaded in ports to make way for wheat etc for the trip back.

February and March have been bone dry, bar for a light shower at night a few weeks ago that barely wet the ground. We badly need a good rain now. One of our Friends' group members was killed on 21 Mar, hit by a truck while riding on the Nullabor in the Fremantle to Sydney race. He was 62, an ex Kiwi, a lovely bloke I had enjoyed working with at a working bee. It was his 6th time in that race, and he had ridden his pushbike completely around Australia.

An event of significance for me in March was my sister Meredith's 70th birthday. I could not participate in person, but it was nice reflecting that my little sister had reached 70. I'm soon to be 72 and Jod turns 75 later this year so we are fortunate. April Fool's Day Monday. I'll try to avoid putting my foot or mouth in it.

* When we stayed at the Rose and Crown hotel we were given two complimentary drink cards to the value of $10 each. After we returned from taking Gord to his festival we made use of these, a pot of beer for Lib (Hahn super dry) and for me I meant to order a soda lime and bitters, but in a slip of the tongue I said brandy lime and soda, at least that's what came. I explained to the bar lady I'm off alcohol and had made a mistake. I asked her to get me the AF drink saying I was happy to pay for it. She made my drink no charge and commended me for going alcohol free. I was most impressed. Later I ordered another pot for Lib, it cost $10. I wondered at the bogans who were making all the noise, sitting there knocking pots down. At $10 each pot, they must have plenty of money.

I

The Ides Are Not Yet Done

 Julius Caesar was assassinated on the 15 March 2068 years ago, in the year 44BC. Legend has it he was warned by a soothsayer in the days prior to "Beware the Ides of March", but maybe this is because it was included in Shakespeare's play Julius Caesar.

I have long liked March as a month. Whilst it can be excessively hot, have big rain events and storms, it often has lengthy spells of lovely stable weather. The days are shorter than in the often-brutal heat of February and an evening dew commences bringing some calm to man and beast. The beginning of autumn. Deciduous trees and shrubs begin to colour as the leaves transform from growth to senescence. It's a time of rich harvest in the garden and farms. For me in recent decades, March has been the time for many family holidays, chosen because the changing season gave me some relief in work commitment.

The good thing about having written this blog is that I can go back and see what I was doing at a point of time, with the tap of a few buttons. I scrolled through March each year today.

2023 - Last March I wrote about neighbour Helen's dramatic departure around the time of her 79th birthday. Our friend Ian from Canada and his sons were staying with us at the time. It was Helen's 80th birthday this year. I visited Estia Nursing Home to see her, but she wasn't there. She'd checked out with one of her daughters for 5 days that very morning. I left in her room a card signed by us, a bunch of flowers from our garden, a block of chocolate, and a container of pineapple from one I'd sliced that morning (when I cut up a pineapple in the past, I'd always give her some when she called on her daily visits.

2022 - Raging floods in Qld.

2021 - We moved to McCracken from Gembrook.

2020 - We were on holiday at Henley Beach in Adelaide. Covid taking off.

2019 - Blocked septic drain Gembrook, 40C, effluent flooding back into bathroom through shower outlet.

2018 - Rain after prolonged dry spell. Thomas the Tank engine cancelled in Gembrook. Ha Ha!

2017 - No blog post, because we were on holiday Sth Island New Zealand. Caught up on blog about it in April.

2016 - Holiday lakes Entrance. Full on Rheumatoid shit, abatacept injections.

2015 - Trip to Canberra with Gord to watch cricket. Holiday to Adelaide.

2014 - Wrote to Melbourne Football Club telling them I was not renewing my membership because of largesse in the AFL, snouts in the trough, Demetriou leaving with payout $2mill after salary similar. This didn't last long, I renewed the next year. (Glad I came across this, I told my friend Graeme Forster the other day I had continued my membership right up to the 2021 premiership. I was wrong, I stopped one year).

2013 - Holiday Nth Island NZ.

2012 -NHPEM turmoil. Big storm. Old butcher shop at Silverwells flattened by huge pine tree down full square on.

2011 - Floods Western Vic, biggest in history memory.

2010 - Big rain early March, more later.

2009 - Holiday Normanville SA after a few days at Lakes Entrance.

2008 - Holiday Lakes, visit from Ian Sinclair and Kulan.

2007 - Father Lyle died 24 March. Prior to that we did a trip to Lakes and Cape Conron.

On his way to the Theatre of Pompey on the Ides of March Julius Caesar encountered the soothsayer and said, "See, we are at the Ides of March." the intonation being that no harm had come to him. The soothsayer replied, "The Ides are not yet done."

A Stroke of Luck (4)

 While writing this post, for some reason all that I'd written was lost and the draft reverted to a blank. Frustrating. Starting again, this is to be a precis version, I'll cut to the chase and get quickly to the story I wanted to relate without some of the explanatory preamble.

 

After coming home from Flinders Hospital on 28 Jan, I had Gord drive me to my doctor clinic Tuesday 30 Jan so I could make an appt. for late Feb to (1) Doctor to clear me to drive again, as it's mandatory after a stroke, you can't drive for four weeks. (2) Get new prescription for the Atorvastatin and Clopidogrel blood thinner the hospital put me on. I went there in person as I thought a doctor or nurse may be able to check my wound and change the dressing. There was a lot of swelling in the neck wound area, we were aware this would happen, but were not sure how much is too much. I was not in pain. The receptionists made an appt. for me for 23 Feb and told me to go to outpatients to have my neck checked as I'd had a procedure a public hospital and had started my adventure at Victor Harbor, all the info would be there.

 

So I did. Next day, Wednesday, was our 43rd wedding anniversary. We had a piece of eye fillet beef planned for a celebratory dinner. Lib drove me to outpatients about 3pm. We should have gone up in the early morning, I may have been attended to quicker. As it happened. I was not called in till about 7pm, and then only because I approached the triage desk and told the lady I was checking out. She asked me to wait five minutes, the nurse really should take a look at my wound. In a few minutes the nurse came out and I was taken in and sat in a treatment room. Here I waited another half hour. They brought Gord in to sit with me, I'd rung him earlier to come get me when I'd decided I'd had enough waiting. 

The good part of this episode was, prior to my impatience and decision to leave, I approached an old bloke sitting on the other side of the room. He'd come in after me with his daughter and like me they sat waiting for hours. At one point he was called in and was away for about 10 minutes, as I had been, before coming back. This initial call was just to have a student nurse check the blood pressure and ask a few basic questions, date of birth etc. Everyone in the waiting room had been called in for this. The old guy and his daughter were conversing in increasingly agitated tone, and I heard him say to her that she should go home, as she had said she was needing to buy things for her family's dinner and get home. He said he'd catch a taxi home after he'd been attended to. She left and the old bloke sat looking sad and lonely.

With the example of the lady Sarah in Flinders hospital in mind, when she approached me to ask how I was, and how she later explained she was helped greatly by the other lady with MS who'd approached her leading to her resolve to help others when she could, I went over to him. I asked him if he was OK, could I get him a drink of water or something or something else from the vending machine. He politely declined. I went back across the room. Ten minutes later he came over and sat next to me and started a conversation. He was an interesting man. After about half hour of conversation, a nurse came out and asked for Robert, which he had told me was his name. With relief he got up and went to her and they went in through the door. A minute later he came back and sat down next to me and laughed as he said they wanted Robin not Robert. A lady then went in with the nurse. Lib rang and said she was waiting to put the meat in the oven till I called saying I was ready to come home. This is when I decided I'd had enough and went to tell them I was checking out.

After I'd been taken inside and had been waiting a while I went to the loo, and walking past other rooms there was Robert sitting in one patiently waiting. I stopped and we laughed in a quick chat. Robert had told me he'd be 89 in May. He lived in Goolwa, worked on the barges before retiring, out in the sun most days. He had evidence of skin grafts round his eyes as a result of he said a lot of trouble with melanomas. He played tennis most of his life at Goolwa so he'd had plenty of sun. He lived alone, his wife had died some years earlier. He still watched the local footy and tennis, after he retired he had a little sideline restringing rackets. He'd lived in Goolwa all his his life, his father was a commercial fisherman on the lake.  He loved where he lived, he had a big lounge room window where he could sit and watch walkers and joggers going past along the track, and the Murray River flowing by.

It was nearing 8pm when I could leave, a doctor having checked my neck wound, and a nurse putting on a new dressing. On my way out Robert was still sitting there by himself in his treatment room. I stopped to say goodbye and good luck. I said I'd like to visit him in Goolwa and have a cuppa while we watched the Murray River flow by. He told me his address and surname, Davis. Easy, he said, Bob Davis. I said Bob Davis used to play and coach Geelong  in the VFL. He said "Yes, I used to play there." Then with a laugh, "I'm joking."

I'm sure Bob had joked that many times. I look forward to visiting him. He said to bring Gord and my wife. The roast beef was good, but the gloss of the day was gone.

A Stroke of Luck (3)

 Lib and Gord visited me the next day, Tuesday 22 Jan. Sarah and William had both left the ward the previous day, their beds filled by others. To have clean clothes was pleasing. I was scheduled for an ultrasound on my carotid arteries and was taken in a wheelchair in lifts and long corridors. I said I was able and happy to walk but they insisted I go in the chair. I'd well learned by this time that in hospital everything worked to a procedure which couldn't be varied. Everybody drilled in their role. A bit robotic. Lib and Gord went off for lunch while I did the ultrasound.

 

The lady doing the ultrasound took heaps of pictures of both left and right carotids. I asked her what she was seeing. She said she was just trained to take pictures, not interpret them. I had to wait for the vascular team to come later in the afternoon to tell me my right carotid was 75% blocked and I'd be booked in for surgery either Thursday or Friday, after which I'd be two or three days under observation, then I'd go home Sunday or Monday probably, barring setbacks. Lib and Gord had gone home by this time, so I rang them with the news. Lib had brought me a Tony Park novel, 'Silent Predator', and Gord gave me a biography of Paul Lynde the actor comedian. Two contrasting reads so I determined to switch between them, something I don't normally do, usually it's one at a time for me. The Australian Open tennis was on TV night and day, meals came like clockwork, and the nurses were at me every hour so with their monitoring. There were a lot of TV channels to choose from and I watched the classics station a bit. Shows like My Favourite Martian, Bewitched, I Dream of Jeanie, The Beverley Hillbillies. I really laughed at these, fifty years on, I realize the satirical brilliance they were.

 

A lovely young lady named Bronwyn from the vascular team came again on the Wednesday. She was of South African origin she said when I inquired as to her accent. Said her family came from Capetown when she was 13. She ran me through the pros and cons of the operation, the sequence, and gained my permission for it, and detail that would happen while I was out to it. It was not without risk, there was a 2-4% chance I could have another stroke during the op. She said she'd see me again prior the operation. Another group of three came to talk further about my wishes/instructions should things go wrong, like a formal delegation attending to paperwork. Apparently, there are 3 stages of resuscitation, did I want 1,2, or 3. I chose the wrong one going by their raised eyebrows, I didn't really grasp what they were saying. I changed my answer to say give me the whole hog to which they said "Good, that's the right answer." I added that if I came out a non-compos banana wife Lib could tell them to switch off the machines. The anesthetist's assistant James came to see me and run me through the process.

 

I was then told I was booked into theater first cab off the rank Friday morning, Australia Day, a public holiday. There were two surgical teams who could do my operation if it was Thursday, the emergency team and the other, which didn't work public holidays. So, I'd be done by the emergency surgical team. About 8am I was scheduled, but if there were emergencies on the morning, mine could be delayed. I was to fast from midnight the night before, so my last meal was Thursday dinner. I slept well, packed my stuff, into bags then one big plastic bag a nurse gave me and sealed it with my name three times on it. After theater I'd be going to recovery for four hours, then a high dependency ward for a day. They'd put me in a hospital gown. I waited a couple of hours, something must have come up to jump me in the queue. I was wheeled down to the prep area. I waited another couple hours. The anesthetist, an Irish guy named Morgan, with assistant James came and talked to me. I told them I hoped they would have a good day. Bronwyn from the vascular team came again. Then the surgeon/doctor, Taven Ramachandren, a youngish guy, very pleasant and reassuring, ran through what he was going to do. Cut the artery and seal it, blood would go to my brain through the other carotid and veins so I'd be OK. Then he'd slit the artery where the blockage was and remove the plaque blocking it. When finished that he'd place a patch on the slit so that it could heal up with less risk of attracting more plaque and starting the blocking process again. I told him also I hoped it was a good day for him.

The nurses in the prep room were excellent, I can't remember the name of the main one who attended me.  We talked about family and kids. She was divorced she said with two teenage boys. Her husband some years ago refused point blank to have a vasectomy, and their relationship deteriorated from there. I said that was a pity. Sex loses its importance the longer you go. With a lot of think time I concluded if I died on the table, it was OK. I believed in voluntary euthanasia; I was past my best and had had a good life, it would be nice and neat with no pain and suffering into crippledom. I was wheeled into theater about midday. The theater nurse Kate was brilliantly comforting and competent. Doc Taven was there, so were anesthetists Morgan and James. They peeled the gown off me and placed a warmed blanket on my legs and torso.  As I looked up into the faces and the lights, I realized there were $millions of equipment and training about to perform on me. They were there to get me over this, not kill me. They told me to breathe deeply. The next thing I know I'm in the recovery room. I was there four hours and a bit tired and groggy. The doc came in, said he'd ring Lib and tell her it went well. He said he did have complication as the artery was crossed over/twisted with another vein or such when it should have been straight. Why? He knew not. The nurse there was nice, said she lived at Aldinga, her husband worked at Coles in McCracken. I said I'd look him up, I shop there often. His names Ken and he's tall and has a bushy beard. She said he's qualified in horticulture but tired of working outside in all weather.

From there I went to the high dependency ward for 24 hours. The nurse taking me there said Ash was brilliant and would take good care of me. Ash, a big chubby guy, had earrings and a nose ring and bright green hair and was as camp as you like. He was good though. He said Lib had rung wanting to know how I was. He said he'd ring her and say I was good, the operation successful. Apparently, the number the Doc had was wrong on the hospital records, I'd given them the wrong number when being treated for shingles a couple of years earlier. I'd told him to ring the landline as Lib's mobile often played up. When he did, he was told it was disconnected, he told me later. I apologized to him. Nice guy, I'm booked to see him March 15 when they do an ultrasound to check the artery. Ash knocked off in the evening and was replaced by Debbie. It was one on one nurse to patient in the high dependency, so she was there on an off all night. It was most uncomfortable there. I had a catheter up my penis draining the bladder to a bag, a draining tube from my neck wound removing bloody fluid, tubes in both wrists. One feeding me antibiotic, the other I'm not sure. Blood pressure was monitored constantly and for a while I was getting oxygen by tube into the nose. ECG wires hooked up to monitor. I couldn't move much, my cock got stingy, I worked out by moving it and the tube the draining would restart and the feeling I wanted to pee stopped. All most unpleasant. I didn't warm to Debbie initially, I thought she was a bossy boots. By the next morning as the tubes and wires were disappearing, I was feeling better, we got on fine. As she pulled the catheter out, I said it must be a bigger tube and a harder job for women patients. She said no, men need a good tube to get past the enlarged prostate. It's more difficult. I was glad they did mine while I was out to it in theater. She said there was blood in my urine, probably because of some trauma getting past the prostate.

Debbie came with me as the orderly wheeled my bed up to the next ward for me, the observation one before discharge. We'd both loosened up. She'd let her hair down and I noticed how attractive she was. She said she was a bit sunburnt from her day off the previous day. She'd had drinks with her partner in the backyard with friends, and she was sensitive to the sun. I told her she should be careful with that. She said she only had a couple of drinks, she's not really a drinker, but her partner had lots, he's a binge drinker with company. I told her to be careful of that too, and that I gave up alcohol four years ago and was so glad I did. When she handed me over to the next lot of nurses she stayed a while. I thanked her for being so efficient and also being so delightful. I said if I was thirty or forty years younger, I'd be asking for her phone number. She farewelled me warmly with best wishes for the future.

Lib and Gord picked me up about lunchtime the next day, Sunday 28 Jan. My neck still oozed a bit of blood and fluid, but the nurse Gina Ok'd me to go. She was mature age, of Polish origin, said she escaped what was then communist Poland, in I think 1987, with husband and young child. They went on a supposed holiday to Italy but never went back to Poland and came to Australia via a refugee organization. I exchanged stories with her of Polish people I had known. We bought some lunch in the cafeteria in the hospital foyer. Man o man, was my mideast lamb and salad roll thing grand after two weetbix and a piece of untoasted brown bread for breakfast, after no food for the 30 hours prior to that. We stopped at Morphetvale at a 24/7 chemist to fill my prescription for Atorvastatin and Clopidogrel blood thinner and the over the counter 100mg aspirin they've put me on. so I'm on the drug train now for a while. It was great to get home and see Pip and walk down the river, then sleep in my own bed again.

 

 

Stroke of Luck (2)

 I drifted off to sleep at some point after learning I was going to Flinders Hospital for an MRI. I'd told Lib on the phone about it, I told her I'd be in touch when I got there and knew something. I was woken at about 1.00am and told there was an ambulance there to take me to Flinders. I had brought a bag with a change of clothes and a toothbrush when I went to the hospital, so I was good to go. The ambos were good. Ken rode in the back with me. Before we left, he had some trouble getting the machines working after hooking up the wires for the ECG to the tags still on my chest and abdomen. The young lady Ashleigh was the driver. Tall and pretty, I'd seen her shopping in Woolworths in her Paramedic gear. Ken and I talked all the way down. Hell of a nice bloke, he lives in Goolwa, late 40's, played soccer mostly, says he didn't have enough courage to play Aussie Rules, got cleaned up going back into a pack for a high ball in his early days try out. I told him not to confuse courageous with stupid. I was stupid once and dived on a footy when a bloke was charging through from side on and was concussed with a broken jaw. *

We arrived at Flinders in what seemed like no time. Ken kept me talking. I think he found what I was saying interesting, either that or he was very good at keeping me going to break the monotony of a trip he'd done often. We didn't go to a ramping queue, as I was booked in, so we went in a side entrance with no delay. It was 3am as I was wheeled into the stroke ward, to bed 1 of a four-bed ward. It was quiet as a young lady delightful in looks and manner and of Asian appearance rattled of some details and asked questions. I was feeling fine, the question she asked me about whether I consented to be resuscitated should it be necessary seemed a bit over the top, but she explained it was a question she had to ask everyone. I was then hooked up to the ECG machine again and repeatedly a nurse came in and checked blood pressure and temperature and shone a little torch into my eyes to see if the pupil contracted. They always started this check with the question "Do you know where you are?" Then "What month is it?" followed by "What day of the week is it." This whole checking thing went on hundreds of times in the 9 days I was there.

I was in territory foreign to me and resolved to comply and be an easy patient. I was tired, and began drifting off to sleep, only to have the partition in front of me suddenly swiped across to reveal an elderly gent with a beard and a hospital gown looking at me quizzically. He stood still for a few seconds then said, "Sorry, I thought it was my bed", and he slid the curtain closed. I the heard someone I assumed was a nurse directing him to his bed. A little later I heard him calling out he was lost and didn't know where he was. There didn't seem to be nurses around, so I thought I'd better get up and help him. It took a little time for me to unplug my jack connection from the union to the ECG and when I did and opened the curtain I had a huge surprise. There in front of me was a young lady in short pyjamas telling the old guy where his bed was and speaking in the gentlest tone. She turned to see me and smiled a sweet smile but quickly focused back on the old guy. She was very beautiful. I had to pinch myself that I wasn't dreaming. I kid you not, I thought what on earth is a beautiful young lady like that doing in a stroke ward with old men. She seemed like an angel. I slept or at least dozed then till the next round of checking by nurses, which was never far away. Then it was breakfast, brought on a tray and placed on the wheeled table next to the bed. I was hungry not having had dinner the previous evening. That was my introduction to hospital food that I was to have as my sustenance for the next week. I'm not complaining about it, but it really doesn't warrant me spending time describing it.  

So now Sunday proper 20 Jan, is underway. Nurses kept coming in testing, monitoring the machine. A doctor came in and introduced himself. He told me I'd be having an MRI, but it wouldn't be till Monday, they weren't doing them Sunday. I didn't see him again, after that it was the vascular team who talked to me about what was happening. I had visits from an occupational therapist, and a physiotherapist, talking exercises and recovery. Through all this I felt fine, fully ambulatory and able to go to the toilet and shower myself. My hand movement felt almost back to normal, I was still a bit wobbly in the left wrist and elbow.  All the medical staff that talked to me emphasized that the first couple of weeks after a stroke was the critical time when a second stroke would likely come if it was going to, that's why I was being monitored so closely. Who was I to disagree? But I did feel a bit like a guinea pig in a testing laboratory.

That Sunday morning a doctor and others, maybe assistants or students, came and were talking to the young lady in cubicle 3 whom I'd met during the night. Wondering why she was in there I couldn't help but try and tune in to the conversation. I heard mention, I think, of steroid injections, family, fatigue. Great warmth in the voices. I heard sobbing. I heard laughter. It's hard not to be an eavesdropper in a public hospital ward. The medical team left and not long after the lady had a group of visitors and left with whom I assumed was her husband/partner. They walked slowly past my bed, he with his hand at her elbow and she seemed to shuffle a little. That was my first hint of what her ailment was, but I didn't know. She came back a few hours later with family, who stayed a while then left. Before long she was across from me talking to the old guy who'd had the orientation troubles during the night. She spoke so gently, referred to him by name, William. He spoke of his carer coming but hadn't yet. His carer was his son-in-law. She knew his birthday was in May, she said, she'd heard him answer the nurses' questions. Hers was in May too. He'd be turning 97. She was so kind and gentle with him. As she left him, she turned, our eyes met, and she smiled a wonderful smile and came over to me. "Hello, I'm Sarah. How are you feeling today? She walked slowly.

"I'm fine, thanks. I'm Carey. Nice to meet you. I have to say how good it was, the lovely way you talked to William helping him last night, and today." 

"I'm glad you're feeling OK, it's hard to sleep in here, there's so much coming and going. I thought saying hello and welcome may help you settle. It can be daunting when there's something wrong, but you don't know the extent, and you come into the hospital environment." This lady was right on every count, with everything she said.

She continued, "When I came in the other day, after the doctors had told me the MS diagnosis and left, a lady in bed 2 came over to me, and said she'd overheard. She said it was almost word for word what she heard ten years ago, when she had the same diagnosis. She said she's in here now because of a minor relapse, but the ten years have been good so don't be too down about it. It gave me great heart to have her encouragement. She gave me her phone number and we have contact." 

I thanked her for her concern and well wishes. I was moved to think this lovely lady has multiple sclerosis. I half heard her in a number of phone conversations with friends and colleagues. I could tell she had a senior position somewhere and was talking of reports and meetings. With everyone she spoke to she had the same warm, caring tone.

I was told the MRI would happen Monday, and depending on what it showed, I may need surgery. The day passed with a couple of meals, some reading, some television. That night, or more precisely early Monday morning, the calm was shattered by a new patient arriving. Apart from the nurses coming by every hour or so to wake you for BP and the other tests it was quiet until a commotion cranked up out in the corridor as they were bringing in a newbie. It was an old man's voice at full volume, "Get you fkg hands off me, don't touch me." Repeatedly, as staff tried to calm him. "Get off me." Eventually they got him into the cubicle next to me, and the drama continued. I think they injected him with something to calm and restrain him. Quiet came, but a security guard sat outside his cubicle for the rest of the night and all Monday until he was moved on somewhere. From what I could gather he had a urinary infection making him go nuts. In the calm after the storm, I wrote a note to Sarah thanking her for her kindness and included my email address and I said that I would write up my hospital experience on my blog when I got home and felt I could do it. I took it to her in the morning, first clearing it with the security man who was sitting back to the wall with Sarah's and the nutter's cubicle either side of him. I just handed it to a smiling Sarah and retreated without saying anything.

A doctor team saw Sarah in the morning again and she went out with family. I was taken to have the MRI and came back to see Sarah back with a big family group with her. There was a note from Sarah on my little wheeled table with my books. The note wished me well and said how meaningful my note was to her and she would keep it forever as a memento of her time in Flinders. It included her email address. She was obviously leaving. She talked to William and gave him a kiss, and introduced her son Leo, a small boy, to him. As she did this, she hugged and kissed Leo. Her family had gone out and before she left, she came to me, thanking me again and wishing me well. So nice. I refrained from hugging her and kissing her, but I wish I hadn't. Who but Carey could have a stroke and go to hospital and fall in love in three days? But the best kind of love. Love with no expectation or desire. Seldom if ever, I have I met anyone so fleetingly that has impacted me so strongly.

The vascular team came in and showed me pictures of brain from the MRI. There were three small spots of brain damage which had caused my arm and hand difficulty and the temporary loss of vision. I was then scheduled for an ultrasound on my carotid arteries for Tuesday, to establish the extent of the blockage in the right one and check the left. Later on Monday I went the toilet when the coast was clear, there being one bathroom for 4 patients. It was not a large room, somewhat cluttered with a frame over the toilet giving disabled people something to sit on, and a chair in the shower and another chair on wheels. I'd lifted the frame off the toilet when I used it previously but this time, seeing I had to sit, I didn't bother, thinking what's a few extra inches of drop.  Happily, I did what I had to do and went to pull my dacks up, tracksuit bottom, only to find them and my undies all wet with urine. What had happened was that because of the frame there were in fact two toilet seats a few inches apart. When I weed, it had gone between the seats because my willy must have been pointing not straight down which wouldn't matter if sitting on a normal seat, it would be inside the pan. So. I'd pissed in my pants which were round my ankles. Embarrassed, I had no clean clothes and had to ask a nurse for a plastic bag for my wet ones. She gave me a gown and some hospital underpants which were the nappy type. I felt a right goog. I rang Lib and asked her to bring me some clothes if her and Gord were visiting next day, which they'd indicated they were.

* That blow to my right upper jaw 52 years ago is very near the carotid artery. I'm wondering why my artery blocked. The medics keep talking about arteries like pipes and cholesterol build up, a bit of plaque breaking off and travelling to the brain and blocking flow. As a gardener I know if a hose is kinked it can develop a weakness. Same as a copper pipe under our house once that burst. It was explained to me that if kinked when installed, where it's kinked it becomes thinner there and wears through eventually with abrasion from the impurities in the water. I'm told cholesterol goes to repair an injury or some damage. Then can slowly build up too much. The surgeon said my surgery was complicated because there was cross over with my artery and other veins when there shouldn't have been. I asked him how this would have happened. He said he didn't know. I'm wondering could that severe blow to the side of my head stretched kinked or otherwise had something to do with this blockage. Maybe I think too much.

A Stroke of Luck (1)

 It was 17 days ago, Friday 18 Jan, that I woke up with a sleepy left hand that wouldn't work properly. My thumb and index finger were quite immobile. Wouldn't meet at the tips. Weird. I made a cup of coffee for me and a tea for Lib and took it to her, then went to my computer to check email. I ignored the left hand, thinking I'd slept with my arm strangely positioned and the nerves had gone to sleep, and movement would return soon. 

As I sat at the computer, I noticed difficulty hitting the shift key with my left forefinger. Then I had a bit of squiggly vision, so I shut my eyes for a few seconds. When I opened them, fully expecting the squiggles to have passed, I was alarmed that I had no vision at all in my right eye. Completely grey sheet was all I could see from it. Having seen many warnings about signs of a stroke and how time lapse is important, I went to Lib and said I think maybe I'd better get to the hospital. The vision thing only lasted a couple of minutes, I didn't time it. She agreed straight away saying it seemed I was having a TIA(transient ischaemic attack). We dressed; I had difficulty doing up the buttons of my shirt. Lib drove me to the hospital.

We were there quite early, and the emergency department had few people waiting. Lib told me later that as she left an ambulance arrived with a patient, and it was not long before it was a busy morning for the staff. I heard a lot of activity from my cubicle, it seemed there were other patients with more serious problems. A lot of noise and hustle and bustle. I was hooked up to an ECG, blood taken for tests, and my blood pressure was monitored regularly, and nurses repeatedly asked me my name and where I was, and what month and year it was. I was in no pain; all my faculties were in order except the movement in my left hand was still restricted. After a few hours of this monitoring, I was wheeled down somewhere to have a CT scan, before being returned to my ED cubicle. After a while a doctor came in and said the scan showed a blockage in my neck and they were conferring with Flinders Hospital in Adelaide as to what the next step was. I was told the doctors at Flinders were flat out busy which was cause for delay. I was moved to another ward in the general hospital and given a most welcome sandwich. I had not eaten at all and it was afternoon. Soon after the same doctor who had attended me in Emergency came in and told me I could go home. I was to make an appointment with my doctor and get a referral to a specialist. I would probably be required to get another scan. I dressed, rang Lib, she picked me up. I rang the doctor; he couldn't fit me in till a Sunday appt.

Next morning, Saturday I drove into town to the market to buy my eggs and dip and produce at RAW wholefoods adjacent the market site. Driving was a little less comfortable than usual. The indicator lever on our car (European build) is on the left of the steering column and my touch of it wasn't precise. I knocked it rather than touch moved it. Movement in my hand had improved but the arm was a bit wobbly at the wrist and elbow. I was clumsy putting things away when I got back and did a lot of knocking of plates and cups on the sink sides when washing dishes. I wasn't happy waiting till the next day to see our local doctor, so after discussing with Lib she took me back to outpatients at the hospital. It was afternoon by this time. More ECG, more blood taken and monitoring and waiting. I was told I may need to go to Flinders for an MRI, they were waiting for blood test results and decision by doctors after their conferring at both hospitals. I was unhooked from the ECG. A few hours passed. I got dressed and went out to find nurses in casual conversation that I'd been listening to for an hour or so and told them I'd had enough and was going home, could they please take the canula out of my arm. They said I couldn't go without signing a discharge form absolving the hospital if my condition worsened. Bring me the form I said. Please wait five minutes they responded. 

Within minutes a team of them were at my bedside with the form. They explained they were concerned I may have a further stroke and may be permanently incapacitated. I said, "Well that's why I came in here, two days in a row, and you sent me home yesterday. My blood tests must have been alright yesterday. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow. If we are waiting on my blood tests, if they're not alright you can call me back in." They asked me to wait while they consulted with Flinders and came back to say I was being sent to Flinders by ambulance where I would have an MRI to determine the extent of any brain damage I may have suffered. So, I waited and waited. At least I had a destination ahead. It was the lying there not knowing that I couldn't handle. A sailor without a destination port finds no favourable wind. 

And Next Year?

Today on this New Year's Eve I went down the river for my walk, as I do most days. In the carry box the friend's group gave me I had my hand tools and herbicide and gloves and also 2 two litre bottles of water. That was the main purpose of the walk, to water a few little plants along the way that I had planted fairly recently, things I'd propagated from seed that were not doing well in their pots. I thought I'd give them a chance out in the ground, even though it was early November when I planted them. They should be planted in winter, as were the others that were better plants, but fortunately we had good rain after I planted them in November, then more again in December. Little rough barked Manna Gums.

The path to the river starts a couple of hundred metres west of our house, at the bottom of Cudmore St. When I got there a deep blue Audi sedan was parked. It had a man and a woman sitting in the front. The lady in the passenger seat had her window down and I nodded to her as I approached, as I had to pass by the car close to it. She said something like "Going to do a bit of work?" 

I had my carry box in my left hand and a Roman hoe in my right and a flouro friend's group vest over my shirt. "Yes." I explained that I was going to give a bit of water to a few young plants, and that I often do some weeding and watering while I walk. I said I was in the river friend's group and collectively we'd planted many hundreds of trees and shrubs over a couple of years, and they were doing very well.

The man leaned across and said "Natives?" He said that was good, the land needs repairing. I explained, wattles, paperbarks, tea tree, red gum, hop bush, lots of other things. He was dark skinned. I asked him was he local and did he know his way around the river reserve and about the plants, I'd like to take a walk with an indigenous person who could tell me more about the flora. He said he couldn't help me with that, he was from Adelaide and most of the indigenous have long left this area. He asked me did I know of Archie Roach. I said, "Yes, he was quite famous and died fairly recently, didn't he?"

"He was my uncle," he said.

"Really," I replied. Then he said. "I know who'd help you. Moogy Sumner. He knows about the rivers. He's well known, he leads a group of young people in a singing group.

"Could I find him on google, do you reckon?"

"Yes, I'm sure you will."

As I left them, I felt a little empowered and pleased after the lady said I was doing a good thing. She didn't look indigenous. I always try to explain what I'm doing to people who ask. Most are comforted to learn what the friend's group does. The odd person has a negative comment like "Why don't you just leave nature alone to do its thing." But that's on the rare side, most are pleased to see weeds going and new plantings.

I watered my plants and found some weeds to pull. Over a hundred African daisies ranging in size from a few inches to a few feet. Very few in my patch reaching flowering stage as I've been getting them before they do mostly.  A hundred mightn't sound like much but add that to the over 900 I'd got in the previous 5 days and it's significant. And also, I would have done a few dozen small olives, boneseeds and sweet pittosporums as I've seen them too. And some persistent Ivy that's seeded after the rain. Not bad for the last week of the year.

Next year, more of the same. I do feel I'm making an impact and being useful in my retirement. And I'll be in touch with Moogy Sumner at some point. I see he's on Facebook.