What's the buzz - Tell me what's a been happening???

Whhooaaa what's happening??? The heading for this post came from Jesus Christ Superstar, the musical, but the 'Tell me what's happening' line, kept turning around, and around in my head - I was foggy and black, confused and kept on wondering why all the people around me looked so sad - I had NO idea. 


I know that I was in ICU for a couple of weeks and then Ward 7 at Royal North Shore Hospital, not that I knew where I was at the time, because it didn't seem to matter.


When I 'woke up' the first time, I remember that there was a woman that I knew standing beside my bed, her name was Dorothy and she ran the canteen at the local school - she took hold of my hand and said blahblahblah.

The next time I 'woke up', I was in Ward 7, so the doctors must have thought that I was no longer at crisis point, well, not for them it wasn't! For me however, it was like being lost in a major city, speaking a language I didn't know, looking at street signs in a language I didn't understand, it was scary to say the least.

As I said, I recognised my daughters, my ex-husband, sisters, my mother and a few good friends - but I could not make out a single word any of them spoke. My brain had been fried. Fortunately, the words they were speaking slowly came back to me (over months and years) - well, a lot of them did, not always in the right context but they started to come back in my mind, but I couldn't talk and didn't know this at the time, I just thought I was talking quietly to the people in my room.


The next horrifying thing to present itself to me, was having a catheter in, to help me to go to the toilet, that and the fact that I couldn't sit up! I just kept falling to my left or falling out of the chair that I had been put into. My sister's were so upset at this, that the nurses weren't able to sit me up out of bed again, or propped up on a chair because of that.


I stayed in ward 7 for another couple of weeks and then I was transferred to the Royal Rehabilitation Centre at North Ryde and even though I HATED it while I was there and one of the things I loathed was there were so many OLD people around, I didn't realise that I had had a huge aneurysm, in lay-people speak - a stroke - old people have strokes, not ME!!!

RRC (Royal Rehab Centre Sydney) Coorabel was the name of the centre where I was lodged and I was put into a room by myself - a great thing, let me tell you!! Where I stayed for a couple of months. Many patients spend a lot of time crying, me included! We cry for our old lives, the lack of privacy, independence, speech, of being able to do things where and when you want to, not being able to be with your children and other loved ones; now seems like a good time to refer to the rest of RRC - it is a fantastic venue for people who have been broken.

It has a Spinal Unit, Brain Injury as well as the adult rehab centre looking after stroke sufferers and others, those who have had Meningococchel and had bits amputated, strange flesh eating diseases and other exotic things, to those terribly burnt in accidents and others who have had the miserable and rotten luck that most of us could never comprehend, because they end up either paralysed or a quadriplegic. So, not 'stroke victims', because if you saw what goes on there you wouldn't call yourself a victim any more.

I have learned to absolutely love that place, the Doctors, Nurses, Neuropsychologists, Occupational Therapists, Speech Therapist, Physiotherapists, counsellors and so on, I have realised that they are a breed alone and have only the best interests of their patients at heart and I have nothing but respect and love and I am in awe of them.