Not Dead Yet

This week I walked into the doctors' surgery for the first time after my release from rehab and she looked at me and said, "Bit of a cat of nine lives, aren't you?"

Well, yes. In December I bled out half my blood supply before they got me to hospital. 

The exchange went like this :

Ambulance Lady : What's her BP?

Ambulance Man  : 50

Ambulance Lady : Over what?

Ambulance Man  : Nothing. I've got nothing.

Then it was flashing lights down the motorway, ER staff desperately pumping blood into me (in answer to the question "Do you have any Kiwi blood?" I can safely say I probably have more than most), scans and surgical procedures. After I'd turned the corner I was moved to a regular ward for observation and released before Christmas. 

Then there was The Haemotoma. It appeared from the incision in my neck to pump more blood in. It was big, blood-filled and bled overnight, so off back to hospital for that. More blood ingested, and then, accompanied by a stern warning not to get the site wet and to get it properly cleaned and dressed each day, I was released yet again.

And here my memory begins to blur. Honourable Husband and Beloved Daughter came home to find me being violently ill (we're all developing a severe dislike of bathrooms) and by common agreement, apparently, we headed for hospital, where I jumped the triage queue by collapsing. Two days later, a doctor noticed that my eye was abnormal, they did a scan, and lo, I'd had a stroke. The white area in the picture is the area covered by blood. 

After the doctors got that under control, I was moved from EU to the stroke ward, and there I spent the next month hallucinating, refusing medicine and food, not recognising visitors and generally being obnoxious.

Just as I started turning back into a reasonable human being, albeit one sans the ability to walk or (as I discovered) read or write, I was transferred to rehab in Pont Chevalier; and that is a long and satisfying story of an astounding recovery. I have only one word for the TO's and nurses who goaded, pushed me into never giving up; and that is RESPECT. 

So here I am, confident on crutches, and writing all about it. Cat of nine lives, called Lucky.