hwyaden

thankyou xxx

wow paul - i've just read through yours and linda's story - what an incredible time you've both had, you've really been to hell and back .linda is very lucky to have you supporting her, and all i can say is i hope life returns to something near normal for you both soon, you both deserve it after the battles you've had. xxxxx

thankyou all so much, it's so reassuring to hear everything he's doing is normal. i wish i had some answers for the kids but they are starting to understand that he's not going to be home anytime soon. i forget how different time feels for kids. the past month has flown by for me but i guess for them it's felt a whole lot longer. i'll keep phoning to check on him for the next few days while i can't get up there and i hope he doesn't miss our visits too much

that's made my day, hearing about the gerbils! we keep threatening to play his computer games if he doesn't hurry up and get better (he's really protective about his games!). i'll sort some pictures for him too, maybe looking at our ugly mugs will scare him into getting better!

i've just ordered that book - it sounds just what i need right now. i'm amazed at the parallels between my husband and andrew marr. he had a bleed then cooked dinner for his family and went to bed with a massive headache. my husband also went to bed complaining of a headache and he couldn't talk properly. i thought it was a migraine and gave him painkillers, but he kept being sick throughout the night. the next morning i couldn't rouse him at all so it was only then that i called an ambulance

I'm generally an upbeat person (in fact i had a telling off from my inlaws for making jokes about hubby, how cool his scar will look etc. but that's the way our family deal with stuff). I've got 6 kids, aged 5, 10, 13, 16, 18 and 23. they have been the most wonderful support through this and without them i would have crumbled weeks ago. our 23 year old daughter lives and works in bristol (we're in the south wales valleys). she had loads of time off in the beginning but only visits weekends now as i was concerned it would affect her job, plus she had to move house the day after her dad was taken ill so she had the added stress of that. his estranged mother and sister have visited him but when he was a bit more lucid he kept shaking his head when i asked if he wanted them to visit again. His dad has only visited once as he says his car is not up to the journey (which makes me mad as we've been schlepping round in an old wreck for the last few weeks and just calling the rac out every time it packs up). so really we are his only visitors and i'm terrified he'll think we've abandoned him if we don't visit often, even though he doesn't seem to realise we're there a lot of the time.

Thankyou so much for your reply. he had a bleed and they removed a large clot from his brain. he had a drain put in and was on a ventilator and put in an induced coma for 10 days. It's now a month later, he's now on the neuro ward instead of critical care. he's got a trachy in and is still nil by mouth. When he first came round he was very responsive, nodding and shaking his head and showing appropriate facial expressions when we told him things and talked about general stuff, but now he seems to have regressed in as much as when we visit he won't look at us and spends 100% of his waking hours wriggling out of his bed. he has a nurse with him constantly to stop him getting out and has mittens on as he keeps removing his tubes (he has to wear pads now as he pulled his catheter out ). we do get the occasional big hug off him but he won't respond to us any more. he has lashed out at me a few times because i won't let him get out of bed. The nurses said he'd had a good day on friday -the physio had him sitting in a chair doing excercises and the speech therapist put a thingy on his trachy so he could speak and he was counting and answering some questions. i just wish i could see the improvement when we visit. the kids ask me why he doesn't respond to them any more and i told them his brain is working very hard on healing itself so he can't manage everything. he's in hospital 32 miles away and it's horrible when we trek up there and then find him asleep for the whole hour of visiting. Gosh this post sounds so whiny - it's all about me and how hard i'm finding things when it's my husband who's doing the fighting! i don't have anyone i can talk to about it as people either assure me he'll be up and running round next week and back to normal or they think he'll never recover. my belief is he will get there in the end, maybe not the same man he was before he will recover, it's just going to take an awful long time. i'm feeling more miserable today as i bought another car yesterday as mine was on it's last legs and the ****** radiator broke in this one, so until that's fixed i won't be able to go and see him, and i've been going almost every day up until now. Thanks for listening to me rambling on, it feels good to put it all down into words.

my name is gail and my husband had a massive bleed on the brain a month ago. i'm feeling pretty lost right now so could use some good advice from others who've been through the same thing.