Hello. My name is Ben; I just wanted to use this forum to get a few things off my chest before I go mad.
Janey, my 32 year old wife had a spontaneous SAH 5 weeks ago – and is facing months in inpatient rehab.
We have a 9 month old daughter, Arianna.
This is what happened:
On the 10th of June I was on my way back from work when I got a call from Arianna's Nursery (Jane had recently gone back to work as a nurse).
Nobody had picked up Ari that afternoon.
I thought this was a bit odd, I called Jane but there was no reply on land line or mobile.
My work is a good 90 minutes drive from home, so I called back the nursery – and they kindly sent someone around to our house to see what was up; this wasn't like Jane at all.
Through the front window they found Jane collapsed on the floor.
They called an ambulance, who kicked the door in and were about to take my wife to St Thomas' when I arrived.
On arrival in St. Thomas' A&E Jane was intubated and sedated then taken for CT head.
The CT showed a high grade SAH with mid line shift.
The scans were discussed with the neurosurgeons at Kings College and Jane was transferred there for further treatment.
On arrival at Kings ITU Jane was first taken for a cerebral angiogram. This showed an MCA aneurysm. The Neurosurgeon then talked to me - it was midnight by this time – and said that he wanted to do a craniotomy to clip the aneurysm and evacuate some of the clot in her brain.
Jane went to theatre.
By this time my parents and a couple of our friends arrived. They stayed up with me all night until Jane's operation was complete – about 6am.
Jane was 'flat' on ITU for a couple of days, but when she did finally wake up – it became clear that she had a dense left hemiplegia, being completely unable to move her left arm or leg at all.
******.
There was other neurology of course – droopy face, slurred speech, slightly dodgy memory – but those things seem to be slowly improving with time.
Jane was transferred for inpatient neuro rehab a couple of weeks ago. She has just completed their initial assessments and today we have sat down and had a family meeting with the team.
She has been given a provisional discharge date in October – and their aims are high of being able to get her walking again, and you never know, maybe the arm will come back too one day.
My difficulty is that (quite rightly) nobody can say “everything will be fine” or “No, your wife will never walk again” or make any reasonable prediction of how things will work out for Jane – there seems to be so much variation in how people recover. As a result it is impossible for me to plan or make arrangements for anything. Taking things “one day at a time” is starting to get very tiring now.
Anyway. That is enough of my rambling. Going to go back to hospital now.
Ben