My Stroke and the Coronary Care Unit

CORONARY CARE UNIT

What a swish ward. There were glazed sliding door panels and each cubicle was private. The ward was also pleasantly cool. Most hospital wards are kept far too hot, yet it is easy to add layers for those who feel the cold. Once you are shirtless and have pushed the sheets down there is nothing else that a warm-blooded individual can do. The amount of energy consumed in hospital wards must also be horrendous.

Anyway I was thankful for the air conditioning. Nurses introduced themselves and hooked me up to a meter which monitored my heart rate, blood pressure and other functions. There was a tendency to shout at me a little. I think that when patients seem to be having difficulty communicating there must be an impression of deafness or something!

My speech since leaving the scanner seemed to me to have deteriorated a little, but I forced myself to keep talking, regularly looking at the clock and saying, “the time is twenty-five minutes past one. It is one twenty-five.” My slurring gradually improved during the night. In fact, saying twenty-five, thirty-five, forty-five, fifty-five etc. was the most difficult, as was thirty-three and so on.

Every time I awoke I made a point of reading the time out loud to ensure I could still speak.

In the middle of the early hours of the night a young doctor came in, quizzed me again and checked all the functions of hands, fingers, legs and feet. He also checked my swallowing action to ensure that was working properly. Apparently many stroke patients have trouble swallowing and have been known to choke when trying to drink. I was given the all-clear from that point of view and then allowed to have a welcome drink of water.

The following day I was speaking a lot better and the consultants did their rounds. The hard-working Asian doctor from Casualty the night before was the only one I remembered and I was able to thank him for all his diligence the previous day. It is a shame that there are so many people involved in the process that you never get the opportunity to thank personally. The ambulance driver and his colleague, the helicopter crew, the casualty staff, CAT scanner etc. By writing this I hope they will see it as praise for all of them. I hope any minor criticisms I may have included are seen as constructive. My overall experience from the call to NHS24 to my hospital discharge was excellent.

I was later moved into a general ward adjacent to the coronary care unit and a mobile ECG was attached to me which was monitored by the CCU. I must say that several patients in the ward and later in the Stroke ward, had monitors attached to them and it was really annoying that you were continually woken up in the night by these units beeping to advise that a drip had run out or that there were some other parameters which needed adjustment. In these days of mobile technology, it should not be beyond the wit of the equipment designers to ensure that the alarm goes off in the nurses’ monitoring area, rather than waking everybody in the ward.

Even worse, sometimes the alarms would sound for five or ten minutes with no one coming to attend them and on some occasions I pressed my own call button to alert staff. Sadly I was never quite sure if this was welcomed or considered an imposition. Again technology could resolve this easily and inexpensively.

On the Monday I was transferred to the stroke ward and was allowed to walk about and sit out of the bed. As I looked around my fellow patients the realisation of how fortunate I had been struck home.

Opposite me was a man, about sixty-five who was paralysed down his entire left side. Next to him a man unable to control his bodily functions or swallow. In the next bed was an elderly man who could barely move. He appeared to be in his eighties and his wife came to visit him in a wheelchair. She was so dreadfully upset at his condition. They spent hours just holding hands. Another patient was almost mobile but one side of his face was distorted and he couldn’t get himself up or down. Adjacent to me was a fit looking septuagenarian who had collapsed while on holiday with a couple of friends. If he had been at home he may not have been found for some time. He was recovering well.

A stroke can take many forms but the mobility aspects are really quite frightening. The semi-paralysed patient opposite me told me that the person who had occupied my bed before me had woken up one morning to find his hand working normally again. This was what he was hoping would happen to him, but it seemed unlikely after ten weeks with little improvement.

He was over the moon that he had managed to walk three or four steps, but this was not unaided and his prognosis seemed poor when I left. Mind you, he was very cheerful and the life and soul of the ward, demanding baths he never got or even a shower and ribbing the nurses over his blanket baths! I remember one nurse telling him that he must not try to wheel himself about in case he fell over. She quipped, “If that happened you’d be accusing us of abusing you.”, to which he replied, “I should be so lucky!”

The stroke consultant with several student doctors came to visit me. He asked if I minded the students, but that was no problem. They have to learn by practising on someone.

He explained to them what had happened to me and then they all checked my pulse. The first one saying that my pulse was irregular. One subsequent student seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time and the consultant asked what the problem was.

He said, “Well it is irregular, but not all the time.” He was praised for discovering that I had an irregular irregularity in my heartbeat, which was the first I’d heard of it!