Stroke

I lost the use of my right, my right leg. My right leg is completely gone. I can’t feel it. I can’t move it. I can’t, I can’t do nothing with it. My right arm, I can move just a little bit not too much but just a little bit. And through the stroke itself I’ve developed diabetes. I’m now a diabetic which I wasn’t before. I also suffer with epileptic seizures as well, which can just come on at anytime. I don’t know when they’re’ coming on. Afterwards I can’t remember anything. I’m very tired. I’m very tired when I’ve had my, had a seizure. I’ve got to go to bed. The other thing is that I have as well what you call sleep apnoea, which is an illness where periodically while you’re sleeping you stop breathing. And it can be fatal, if not treated you can die from it. And I wear, for this I wear a face mask, a full face mask, when I’m, when I’m sleeping at night and I have done for the last nine years. So I’ve got that to contend with as well.

 

Yeah the, the other thing I forgot to mention Kerry was that since I’ve had my stroke, my eyesight has deteriorated to the point, where our local eye hospital has registered me blind now. So I am registered blind. I carry a card to that effect. So all and all the stroke has up, well upset our lives a little bit. But what we tend to do is we don’t, well we try not to let it get on top of us.

 

No it wasn’t.

 

No it was MRSA.

 

 

Yes, so, but I did have problems with that leg, because I’ve broken it twice, and basically it was in a walker boot, but, and I was getting treated - we lived in [name of city] then - and I was getting treated at the local hospital, but they eventually said – well, they didn’t actually say anything. I think they would carry on treating things, because I was getting sores and things in the boot, and they were sort of diabetic-related in that respect. And then I got a huge big lump and they thought it was - oh what’s it called? When your circulation and your blood and everything sort of, you have a clot. But actually I went into hospital and they said to me, because I’d had problems with that leg for about 18 years, and they said they actually – well, obviously they took the swabs - and they eventually came and told me it was MRSA. And then a man at 11 o’clock at night said, ‘Well, I think we’re going to have to amputate your leg tomorrow’ and – ‘tomorrow morning’ - so I didn’t have much time [laughs]. It was 11 o’clock at night, and so I rang [name of husband] and said, ‘I’m having my leg amputated’ and he couldn’t believe it.

 

In 1997 I’d had a kidney transplant. And they said, ‘It’s either going to be your kidney or a leg - which do you want to lose?’ And at the time my kidney was really important to me, and it just thought it gave me a different kind of life, and my leg has been bad for 18 years, so I said, ‘My leg.’ So - and they also told me with an artificial leg you’d be able to go skiing and do whatever you like, but actually I haven’t. But I mean, you know, in fact before my stroke I could walk and do anything quite normally. I didn’t even have a limp with the artificial leg, it was absolutely fine.

 

Yes.

 

Well they said the MRSA would go into my body and just work its way up and, you know, it would probably take anything that was susceptible to going, so my kidney would probably go. And I just felt, I mean I’d had it – well, I’d had it five years and I just felt, ‘No, I’ve only had it five years’, so I just wanted it to go on forever, sort of thing.

 

No it didn’t.

 

No, it came from the fact that when I was a baby I lived in Africa, and my mother apparently said I did have a fever and it turned out that I’d actually had a kidney infection and it had left scaring on my kidney, on my kidneys. And suddenly in my twenties I got another kidney infection and I started being treated at the hospital for this new infection and everything, and then they decided that I had kidney disease, but they actually said that the diabetes would aggravate it and probably - I mean that was when I was about 25 or 24 or something like that - and they actually said to me, ‘You’ll be on dialysis, you know, within a couple of years.’ But actually I didn’t go on dialysis until about 1993, when my daughter was about two, two and a half, so it was actually probably the pregnancy which had aggravated the kidney, but you know, I didn’t go on dialysis. They actually said I’d be on dialysis by the time I was 26 and I wasn’t, so I kept going until I was 32.
 
And of course you’d had a kidney transplant as well back in the days...
 
Well yes I had, that’s true, but also when, after I had [name of daughter] I think it was before I went on dialysis – yes, it was before I was on dialysis, I had to have a hysterectomy when she was just two and, because after I had her I carried on being sick and they couldn’t understand why. I’d had morning sickness throughout the pregnancy anyway, but I carried on being sick so, I mean, you know, it couldn’t have been - but of course the kidney people said no, it wasn’t the kidneys. It was my hormones. And also I was getting very heavy bleeding, so basically they gave me a hysterectomy. But the hysterectomy went slightly wrong and - oh I don’t know, I had one thing after another - and then when I was in intensive care after the hysterectomy they had to put me onto dialysis for two weeks. And then suddenly my kidney went into overdrive, like it was on a honeymoon period or something, and worked for six months, and then suddenly it went downhill and I had to go on dialysis at my daughter’s third birthday. So in fact I went into hospital, you know, over her third birthday I was actually in hospital having the tubes fitted really because I was going to go on CAPD [continuous ambulatory peritoneal dialysis] which is a system you can have at home.
 
I don’t really think about my conditions. Apart from the walking, not being able to walk. I think that’s the only thing that annoys me at the moment, because that does actually annoy me that I can’t walk and I have to rely on others to do things for me and I mean [name of husband], because we’ve got a step between our sitting room and kitchen, I’m usually in the sitting room, he has to do all the cooking. I mean he used to be a chef, but even so he still has to do the nightly cooking and everything so.

 

I have, well I did, I have a blood condition which makes my blood clot a lot faster. And I was on the pill. And I was on a drug for my rheumatoid arthritis and they say that rheumatoid arthritis can cause strokes anyway. So it was a combination of like a few things.

 

No.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah.

 

Yeah like, like 2% of people…

 

..you can have.

 

Yeah but we didn’t find out I had a blood condition until after I had my stroke.

 

It’s quite tough sometimes. I get quite frustrated that it’s sort of all happened to me like in few, in like about two years, like I had, I was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Then I had my stroke. And then I’ve just been sort of diagnosed with lupus and things like that and it’s just.

 

… it’s sort of all come together in like the two years and I’m like, I used to be so well [laughs]. Type thing. Like when I was younger. But, I still am but it’s just quite frustrating.

 

 

Yeah. I think…

 

 

I think so …

 

 

...so, yeah They say that I could have had it since I was wee because I used to have quite, I used to get quite sensitive skin, when I was out in the sunshine and then I used to get I used to get like chest pains when I was a bit older and then it sort of came to a head last year.

And the ambulance couldn't find us which was quite distressing. Although my husband was on the phone to the 999 person trying to direct them. And then because we're only half a mile from the doctor's surgery I thought perhaps I better get him to take me there in the hope that somebody was at the doctor's surgery. So, I had a little bit of strength left. I had enough strength to either go to the bathroom, which I wanted to do, or get to the front door. And I propped myself up on the wall in the hall and made my way to the front door and called [husband’s name] to take me to the doctor's. And the ambulance and the doctor turned up at the same time just as I got to the front door. And I thought, “Oh I can't stand up anymore I’d better sit on a step. But because I've got arthritic knees I couldn't sit on the step, my knees wouldn't bend and I started falling backwards. And I realised I was going to go through my plate glass door so I put my left arm down to deflect myself away from the glass. And I was going quite numb by then, so I didn't really know I’d hurt it at that stage. I landed on it, it was tucked under me. I landed on it.

 

When I was in the hospital the only thing I could feel, and obviously I couldn’t feel anything, was them tugging at my leg because they obviously knew it was artificial but they didn’t know how to get it off, and they tugged and tugged, and then I must have gone out completely, because the following day when I came, when I eventually came to, my leg was sitting on the side. And I’ve got a rubber thing which keeps it on, which goes right up to here and you have to, when you’re taking the leg off, by pushing a button, you have to pull the rubber thing down, but apparently they just pulled it off me somehow - they managed to, but it stays on by suction, I mean it must have been really difficult. So, but I thought afterwards they really ought to be taught. I mean, I can’t be the only person with an artificial leg who’s had a stroke, but they really ought to be taught how to take an artificial leg off.

Yes, well, it was and it wasn’t. I think the artificial leg in a way helped me because you know, I could see a lot of people who’d had strokes that their right leg is completely gone, but of course with an artificial leg from the knee downwards it’s solid, and your ankle’s solid, so actually it’s easier than not. But they did try to help me to learn to walk at the County Hospital, and they got me out of bed with hoists and everything, and I had to stand up and whatever, but the first time they put on my artificial leg, the rubber thing has to go on absolutely straight, and be clean to the skin, otherwise if you have any air pockets it can cause blisters. And because I hadn’t got any feeling in that side I didn’t realise that this thing wasn’t put on properly, because I couldn’t put it on because my right arm was so bad, and they put it on, and when they took it off my leg was covered in blisters, so I couldn’t wear it, actually, all the time I was in hospital so they had to give up on that side of things.