Visiting

I'm up bright and early today again as I'm meeting a friend back in Harlow, and we are both going to visit my other friend who was struck down with a stroke a couple of weeks ago and is now in hospital on a long a slow recovery.

First of all though I go to the gym, and when I get back I set about preparing tea as I know that I will be quite late back from Harlow and probably won't relish the idea of cooking once I return. With those things done, I have a quick shower and then jump in the car to head over to Essex.

The trip wasn't too bad at all, but I have to say that considering I used to do this journey 3 times a week when I worked in Harlow, looking back I think I must have been insane, 3 hours travelling a day and fitting work in between probably wasn't the best move on my behalf I think.

The hospital visit went well, and it seems my friend has made much improvement since he was first admitted to hospital. He's off the ventilator now and can breathe on his own, but they have fitted a tracheoctomy just in case of an emergency. It also helps keep his lungs moist apparently. He's on a feeding tube as he can't eat anything that we'd classify as food yet and they've put him on an air mattress to prevent bed sores and the like.

As for the affects of the stroke, well you can see that the lesion he had was on the right side of his brain as it appears the left side of his body is mainly affected. He has feeling on the left side, but can't move his arm or his leg and his face has been affected too. The right side though seems to be working well, with his motor ability responsive and he can move bits of that side on demand. He can't speak of course what with the tracheotomy, but I think once they remove it his speech should be ok since I'm sure I heard him say "please" when asked if he wanted some water. Another thing unaffected is his sense of humour as we managed to raise quite a few smiles from him with cheeky comments about where the nurse was going to stick the thermometer to take his temperature and the like :)

I also got to meet his parents, who understandably are trying to adjust to the circumstances but seem to be coping well.

I have to say it's a shocking revelation of the state of the NHS when the nurse informed us that the physio equipment they have is in very short supply, well, practically none existent, and so we ran a few ideas past the nurse as to what would be useful to get to help my friend. We've now got some ideas on that front, and I also think that some kind of entertainment is called for. It's clear that my friend is fully aware of what is going on around him and so sitting in a hospital bed all day with little to do must be awfully boring. I think maybe if we got an ipod or something similar and put some talking books on it that would be a good way to while away a few hours. Maybe even a portable DVD player would be handy too. I'll have to see what the others think.

I stayed for about 2.5 hours in total, and after handing over my healing rock I made my way home and got back at around 7 pm, where I made tea and then we sat at watched TV for a bit (the last in the series of Planet Earth).

Posted by Abi on the April 2, 2006 10:33 PM