chlorox That is a good question. I have all my hospital notes, from when the ambulance arrived and it does not detail the cause. All I know for certain, is that I had a single stent fitted and in the 4 years since, have had no further issues. I would imagine that it was a narrowing of my main artery that caused the problem. 2 weeks after I was discharged, I had an ultrasound scan to check for muscle tissue damage and there was none.
I am going to tell you a funny story now. In fact two funny stories! This happened on Friday April 5th circa 1pm. I was taken to the local Emergency hospital which is 3 miles away where I was put into an enforced coma. Had the stent fitted. On the Saturday afternoon when my family were leaving when they said goodbye I showed signs of stirring. The same thing happened the next day. That Sunday after main visiting, my eldest son popped over on his own to see me and rang my wife to say I was sitting up in bed chatting away. The family had been warned that when I woke up they did not know if I would be brain damaged or not since I received CPR for 55 minutes, and that is a long time. ANyway, the next day, Monday at visiting a young lady Pyshio came in and said come on David, let’s get you out of bed and s ee if you can walk. Now, when you are in a coma you are catheterised which is fine but there is nothing they can do about number two’s! I pulled the sheets back, leapt out of bed, and said walk……I can do star jumps, and proceeded to! It was not a pretty sight but it made my family smile!
The next day I was transferred to another hospital for recovery. The first recollection I had was the Tuesday, waking up to find a lad I went to school with and had not seen since 1976 sitting in my room! Roll forward to Friday and my Consultant came in and asked how I was. I replied fine, when can I go home. He said you cannot, you are very unwell. You should not be here. I said I know, I ought to be at home. He said NO, I MEAN THAT YOU SHOULD NOT BE HERE! So, I asked again about going home (my wife is disabled and I am her only carer). He said that is next time he came to see me I could remember his name, then that would be a good start! So, as soon as he left the room I took a pen and notepad and wrote his name down. As soon as I had lifted the pen from the paper his name vanished from my memory. I tried time after time. So, I got my laptop, went onto the trust website, downloaded his picture, put his name along the bottom and converted it over to a screen saver (If i had to do that again, now, I probably would not know where to start) so when he came in and I could not remember his name, easy peasy! Well, he never turned up but sent in an assistant. This was the Tuesday, a week after transfer to that hospital and 11 days post arrest. Again, I asked to go home to be told I was too ill at the moment. When you are ill, you do not realise it. I was receiving no treatment that I was aware of so what did they mean ill? I said look, I have the sort of mind that has to have a target to work to. What do I have to do in order to be released and reluctantly, she said pass a cognitive test. I think it was called The Peko test. I said well go ad get one. No, you are not ready. Go and get one and let us see by how much I fail. No. Yes I said so reluctantly she went to get one. Right said she, you have 15 minutes to asnwer and the pass mark is 84%. I sat the test. I managed to completely miss out answering 2 questions and I scored 86%! She was most put out so I said I presume that there is no reason to keep me now then!
It was a long hard road to recovery, probably the hardest thing I have ever faced in my life, yet here we are! I still smile when I see the test!