Thursday 31 May 2018

when the unexpected happens

All the time you hear about people getting sick but when it happens to you or a family member....

Early December 2017 my dad suffered a severe stroke. He lives with my mum. A few days leading up to his admission to hospital my mum expressed concern to me that my dad was starting to act strange. She said he was trying to use the remote control as a phone, thinking he had lost his car keys and not making much sense in what he was saying.
I responded to my mum by saying to just keep an eye on him.... I went through a list of conditions it could be such as a urinary tract infection and even said stroke but thought that was the worst case scenario.
As a nursing student my mum knows she can ask me for advice, even though I may not have all the answers.
The morning of his hospital admission my mum phoned me. She said that my dad was not speaking at all and looked strange. I immediately went over to her house.
When I arrived I walked straight in to see my dad sitting on the lounge. I noticed straight away that the right side of his face had drooped and he had saliva all over his face. I asked "DAD, are you ok???" I then noticed he could not communicate at all, he had lost his speech. I then pretty much determined it was a stroke and rang the ambulance.
I stayed on the phone to the ambulance until the paramedics arrived. They also thought it was stroke and took him to the hospital straight away for further tests.
At hospital it was revealed my dad suffered an ischaemic stroke (blocked artery) that effected 3 lobes.
After a week in hospital and seeing some improvements in my dads speech and mobility we got the news that my dad had been found out in the car park of the hospital and a further scan revealed he had a bleed on his brain and he went back downhill.
My dad spent almost 3 months in that hospital trying to recovery.

Now my dad is home with my mum and she is his full time carer with the help from us kids.
He is doing so much better now he is home. He was malnourished while in hospital and has been steadily gaining weight and eating healthier now.
His communication is still a daily struggle. He struggles to find the right words and sometimes it sounds as if he is speaking another language but is slowly improving.
He used to walk with a walking stick which he still uses now but is 5x slower.

We never thought this would happen to our family even though he ticked all the risk factor boxes. As a family we have all came together to do what we have to do. This incident has helped me understand the importance of family and has really made me think that we are lucky to still have him and to cherish the time we have together.


Kayla :)

No comments:

Post a Comment