West Sussex, UK - The ambulance ride was astonishingly noisy. It was the tyres in contact with the road's surface that caused this the ambulanceman answered me when I queried it. I retched violently and noisily several times on the journey and apologised to the crew who soothed me and said it was fine as they held a paper vomit bowl under my mouth. It was made in the same way that the mottled grey, cardboard egg boxes used to be.
At the hospital a young doctor saw me and I remember bustling persons with surrounding faces, dark watchful eyes, my blood pressure being taken, a painful injection in my bum and later another. The babble of voices babbled lowly about me. Inner ear were the words I kept hearing being repeated. I was utterly unable to get up or raise my head. A band I once loved called The Holy Modal Rounders cut a track on their c. 1968 album on Elektra entitled 'The Moray Eeels Eat'. The track was called 'My Mind Capsized' and those three words sum up what my head and vision felt like. I smiled miserably to myself at the memory of the song.
In the hospital I was asked by someone what exactly had happened. I was able to relate it all much as I have done in my last article on this event. Every time another doctor approached me I was asked what had happened. Explain it from the beginning they would ask. When I'd told my tale they would sometimes nod and say something along the lines of 'mmmm yes, that's what I heard'. While the memory of it all is now a little hazy, it's not that hazy. I must have related the sequence of events of what befell me that Sunday luchtime eight or nine times that day. I was lucid enough to tell it like it happened each time.
"Peter? Peter! Peter? I want you to sit up Can you open your eyes?" The young doctor was insistent. I think I groaned and retched horribly. He waited. "Peter?" he said more gently, "Peter, I know it feels awful but I must get you to sit up. You must sit up. You must sit up"
With a near supreme effort I opened my eyes and did so and it was like balancing my entire vision on a tray of oiled ball bearings on a choppy sea while standing up in a rowing boat. It was ghastly.
"Swing your legs over the bed please". He smiled helping me with the assistance of at least one other nurse. I looked down as I persuaded my reluctant legs to hang over the edge of the bed while trying not to let my vision or was it my mind turn upside down. I looked with utter indifferent weariness at my socks, the left with a hole in the heel and my dirty three quarter length Tesco trousers I'd been wearing when I'd been clearing up and weeding the yard.
"Peter? Are you ok? How do you feel?" the doctor asked as he helped me to sit up. My eyes kept wanting to close.
"As sick as a dog!" I muttered. He smiled.
"I know. It feels awful. I know it does Peter but actually, we think that you only have a problem in your inner ear. It's not that serious but it feels terrible," he said smiling.
"Ah! That's good to know!" I tried a wan smile with my eyes partially open.
He laughed and chatted away for a bit before he then asked me: "Peter? Tell me. When your vision 'tilted' as you say it did and then 'turned over' as you describe did you appear to be sideways on to it so that it was happening left to right or right to left rather than towards you and away from you? Do you understand the distinction?" He peered into my eyes.
"Yes, I understand the distinction," I said carefully, trying to concentrate on feeling normal but with an overwhelming desire to put my head back onto he bed and close my eyes. "It happened from side to side."
"Ah! That's good!" he said, "That's good". He conferred with the others. "A bit of debris, Peter, I am sure, has detached itself in your inner ear - there's always bits of stuff in there. Everyone has it. Anyway a bit has come away and is floating around and hitting the hairs in your inner ear that are responsible for your sense of balance. It's the same as vertigo. That's what's making you feel nauseous. I think I can fix it quite easily" he said triumphantly.
"Great!" I groaned trying to lie back.
"No! No! Don't lie down Peter!" he said, firmly holding me in place, "Peter! Don't lie down! Look! Look! Watch my finger. Hold your head still but watch my finger".
With effort I did. He moved his finger slowly to the left, looking into my eyes as he did so, then to the right, then up and then diagonally and then down. I concentrated with some effort and followed his finger's moveme4nts picturing my dolorous, semi-decrepit face and wondered if I had dribble stains round my mouth.
"That's good!," he said to the others gathered in the room. He then in a low voice spoke to them - there must have been five others besides the doc - and I heard the words 'hornpipe' and 'Appsley Test'. "Peter! Peter? Look I want you to listen carefully Ok? Peter? I know It's hard but you'll feel better soon I promise. Peter? Sit now with your legs over the bed and look to your right. Ok? Look to your right and don't move. Ok? I'm going to lower your upper body sideways over the edge of the bed - don't worry I won't let you fall - and then lift you up again to the same position. Ok? Are you clear on that?"
I said I was, wondering what would happen when I vomited on him and how he'd take it.
He firmly, unerringly and comparatively swiftly, did exactly what he said he'd do. It was dreadful but I wasn't sick. I then had to reverse my position on the bed facing the other way and he lowered me right over sort of sideways and backwards at the same time with my head lowered almost touching the floor. He then lay me back on the bed. Five minutes later he asked me with a bright tone in his voice how I felt. I raised my head a little and said I felt dreadful. He told me that this movement would make the 'bit of debris' in my ear return to its point of origin. I would soon feel better. He continued to tell those gathered and myself that this was what an inner ear problem felt like and I would soon feel completely cured. It was not open to discussion. It was an inner ear problem and he had sorted it out with the 'hornpipe' and Appsley tests. I then realised he was going to discharge me and I felt utter panic.
"Look doctor, please don't send me home. Please! I can't walk. Honestly. I'm a strong man and resourceful and not keen to say in hospital and I know you are overworked and that there is a shortage of beds but honestly I can't go home. I can't stand up! I really cannot stand! I would if I could but I can't! Please let me stay here for the night. Please!" There was silence in the room and then some discussion amongst them all and then they left. I lay there quite still and with my eyes shut. I don't quite know how long it was before someone else entered the room but someone did and I was told I was to be admitted. I was wheeled off somewhere, injected in the bottom again, given some tablets to take and then lost consciousness. I remember being wheeled to a ward and a sweet faced nurse asking me if I wanted anything to eat. I thanked her and said no.
In the morning, soon after I woke and after tablets, blood pressure taking and another injection, a doctor probably in his late 40's came to see me asked how I felt and then asked me what had happened.
"Oh! Dear! Not again!" I groaned, "I told a dozen people yesterday a dozen times what happened. Don't you honestly know?"
"Look if you don't want me to examine you then that's fine by me!" he said clenching his teeth with vehemence and flashing his dark eyes at me," but I am the registrar you know!" I was staggered by this attitude and frankly slightly nervous.
"I'm sorry," I lightly whined, "I didn't mean to upset you…."
"That's ok!" he quickly snapped back interrupting me, "now, tell me exactly what happened." I told him. He listened nodding. "We'll have you scanned, I think. I'll book it in," and with that he went away.
I slept on and off and about midday I was wheeled off to be scanned. The scan wasn't too bad. I just was rolled head first into a tube thing that rotated and hummed. It was over quickly and I was taken back to the ward where I was with three other men considerably older than myself. One groaned a bit. The one next to me had his clothes on but lay on the bed with his hands behind his head. He sucked his teeth every couple of minutes and then exhaled loudly. I lay on my bed musing on my predicament and wondering if my dogs were ok.
"Doo yoo vant henny larnch?" a youngish blonde woman with blue overall things on suddenly asked me. I hadn't noticed her arrival. She had a clipboard. I considered. Could I eat anything?
"Just a little soup please if you have any?"
"No hot meel?" I declined. "Any froot, yoghurt or pooding?"
"No thank you" I said.
"Any tee, cawfee, a ban-an-a orer napple?" I declined again and said no thank you just soup. Her name was Katya and she came from Poland and had married and left an Englishman but had no children.
A little later a bevvy of entirely young female doctors came in to see me and the largest and most feminine - a newly-qualified lady doctor from Arabia I soon found out called Nadeel - questioned me as to what had happened. I told them all while addressing her and answered all their questions and at the end complimented her on her shoes which were animal print and of a nice design. She and the others laughed. She said that I had an inner ear infection and that she would be back later
I slept much of the day and about five thirty the previously shirty registrar returned.
"Hallo," he said, "I am sorry if I was a little off with you this morning but…" I interrupted him and assured him it was ok. I though it was a good idea to keep on the right side of him but I was as equally surprised by his apologies as I had been by his aggression earlier! "Well now, Mr Jones," he commenced, "well now," he repeated, " I'm surprised to tell you that you've actually had a stroke. It's surprising; very surprising but there it is! In effect you're too young, too slim, too fit to have one and you don't smoke at all you say or… drink too much?" He asked that last one as a question and I replied that I did drink a little too much on occasion. He paused. I waited, not entirely surprised by what he had said but unaware at that moment of the implications. He then went on to tell me how surprised he was at the result of the scan but it was without doubt, a fact. The damage had occurred in the back of the brain in the cerebellum - the area where balance is located hence my initial distorted balance and view of the world turning upside down when it happened and the accompanying nausea. He told me I would be moved to the stroke ward soon which was 'very good with lots of very good people there who will look after you (me) and that while a stroke was not a good thing it was undoubtedly the best time to get a stroke what with the astonishing progress in drugs that can be prescribed to helpme.' I sighed. Well that's that, I thought. How the heck did that come about I wondered as I lay there after he'd gone. What now Life?
I was moved soon after to Petworth ward, the one for stroke victims. I had a room to myself.
The next morning, Tuesday, Nadeel and the girls came around again and stood around my bed while their leader - a lady doctor - told them I had an 'inner ear problem' and she was going to demonstrate the Hornpipe and the Appsley tests.
"But I've had a stroke…." I began.
"No. You've an inner ear infection. Believe me. It's better to have that than a stroke!"
I didn't argue. My brain was razzled and I now realise I was very confused. She ordered me into the positions I had become familiar with and I had to watch her finger as before. I didn't protest. After explaining the position I must adopt on the end of the bed for the tests she thrust her bust towards me as she held my shoulders and with a 'keep looking to your left' shoved me over the edge of the bed. I was feeling much better generally but with this treatment I quickly developed a nasty, sicky feeling. The demonstration complete and with a satisfied look on her face she and the girls left. I could hear them going through my notes that were kept on a file outside my room and commenting on them.
A short while later I heard the busty doctor gasp and exclaim loudly enough for me to hear,
"He's had a stoke! It's here on his notes! Oh! Dear! What a faux pas! Oh! Dear!" I heard her laugh nervously and a rustle of acknowledgement of this extraordinary fact from the girls. "Really one must read the notes next time before visiting the patient! Remember that now ok?"
I am not normally the kind of man to go on about personal misfortune, especially of a medical kind. As a young man working for my father here at the Yapton Metal Co I would frequently come across invariably older male customers who on being asked a courteous 'how are you keeping?' would then regale me with their tales of illness and survival frequently insisting on showing me their surgical scars irrespective of whether I wanted to see them or not. I had an aptitude then to listen politely and these men took that to be interest on my part.
I relate here the tale of my stroke and subsequent treatment I received for three reasons: firstly, had I died Thornton would have probably written a bit of an obituary about me so as I didn't die I see this as a human interest story for Salvo. Secondly I have dealt with architectural salvage as an employee of my father and latterly in my own right for well over thirty years so my audience is in part contemporary with me and plenty of them of a similar age and life style I reckon at least judging by the bunch of odd-bods I saw at the Salvo fair. Lastly the business as I run it and certainly the premises it occupies and the way I work in it is old fashioned and will probably die out in due course with me. So I write for posterity too.
Yapton Metal Co
Story Type: Columnist
ID: 63501
Date Modified: December 20, 2011, 03:20 PM
