Hello,
I found this forum and have found a number of the posts really useful, however I still feel a little 'lost' with where I am on my recovery.
I am a 39 year old male and had my initial SAH in August last year. Prior the SAH I had had a wellman screening in the May and cycled the Ride London 100 mile cycle in 6 hrs in the July, so considered myself fit and healthy.
My SAH occurred a week into my holiday (with my wife and 2 kids) in Mexico of all places. I awoke in the night being violently sick and having no feeling in my hands and feet. We had been out for a Thai meal and I had had fish, so the assumption was food poisoning!!
I spent the next two days in the hotel room only being able to drink small amounts of water, no food and managing the head and neck pain with ibuprofen.
After the two days my wife called the hotel doctor and I was admitted to hospital with suspected salmonella. 36hrs and 7 litres of IV fluid later I was discharged and spent the remainder of the holiday in the hotel room waiting to fly home. Luckily the hotel doctor certified me a fit to fly and I got wheelchaired through the airport onto the plane.
I don't remember much of the flight other than being 'not with it'. On landing in the UK, I took a turn for the worse and was in A&E within a few hours of landing.
I had a CT scan and lumber puncture and whilst I later found out these showed traces of blood, I was admitted to the hospital and treated for meningitis- both bacterial and viral, so was on IV anti-vitals and IV anti-biotics. 4 days later my bloods came back clear of meningitis so the doctors were wildly guessing as Zika virus or similar.
I then had a second bleed, collapsed, had another CT scan which was sent to a larger hospital for review where they confirmed SAH. I was ambulanced to that hospital and in surgery 6 hrs later.
My aneurysm was coiled and I then spent the next 3 weeks in hospital recovering before coming home. ( I hated the constant 4 hrs waking up for the nipodimine! - I just wanted to sleep!!)
Its now 6 months on and I have just had my follow up MRI today. However this has made me confront somethings I have been avoiding.
1. Whilst I am back at work, I can only manage about 30hrs a week. I did try full time in January but it was too much. In my mind I'm expecting to get back to full time. However, I'm scared that the reality is I may not?!
2. I had an extremely good memory before. I was something I was known for personally and in work. Now my short term memory is inconsistent- it either works or it doesn't. I have a feeling it will never return to how it was before. I feel the SAH stole a part of me.
3. I was told that with no risk factors in my life, it was likely that I was born with a weakness in the blood vessel that just went. However, my job was extremely stressful and I worked long hours with high stress. I was told this is not a cause?
Although changes at work have helped reduce my hours and stress (we recruited someone to do part of my job) I'm concerned still that work and stress may cause another SAH. What are other SAH suffers experience with stress?
4. I now do not know what my base line for feeling normal is. Therefore any tiredness/fatigue/headache/forgetfulness, I attribute to my SAH. How do I know what normal is now?
Sorry for the very long post, however this is the first time I am addressing some of this as I have been avoiding it, and it's useful just to document my thoughts.
Many thanks
Phil
