But I say I’m very comfortable when I’ve got my, my groups, my group. We have 2 groups. One is the stroke, stroke association, that’s, what we have a, theres about 20 of us and 4 of us in little, one table and we all, were all given little tasks, the task is something like perhaps a topic, what you think about this and the idea is that we just talk and of course we have a helper. These, they’re not, they’re not trained other than just trained, trained that way. They’re not sort of professionally trained, just good helper, helping and they just help us and the idea is that they will just sort of get us going, you know. So of course were all trying to do that and I really enjoy that because it’s 2 hours, we have a cup of tea and we have a raffle and we have a good laugh really. It’s great and weve got a good helper and we are, I find that’s fine. So I come away after about 2 hours and boosted by it, you know.

I think back to the groups, you know, the groups I go to, they really, all the time, they’re really, they’re smashing. That’s really enjoyable that where you can you can get the attention and they’ll listen to you and you’ll listen and you tell them the same story again, it doesn’t matter. It, it’s terrific and theres no, theres no judgement, you know, everybody’s sort of friends together, you know, that’s really nice, good.

You get better but you, I don’t know, I can only say, you can’t sort of understand why things are the way they are, you know, were all the same I suppose and that’s were it is. And I also read that one, one of the reasons why a lot of people consultants go into it or the doctors go into because they can’t put their finger on it because were all different. And it’s not something you can give someone and say, ‘Well, you do that and you’ll get better’ because you don’t and I’ve found that.

After 2 years, I’ve realised now, this is the best it’s going to get, you know, and I, and I think you say to yourself, ‘Well, I’ve got to get on with it, get on with it and battle on, you know and don’t worry about it’ and I got to a point where I wouldn’t tell anybody I’d had a stroke at all. I go into a shop and I’ll, I would just bash away, you know. Other people have said to me, ‘Well, why, why do you do that?’ because we all had a card, were all given a card. I said, ‘I can’t say that I’ve had a stroke, please be careful with me or something. I thought, ‘I wouldn’t do that’ I’d bash on, ‘Oh no’, they all said, ‘No, no, you, we found that if you tell people that you’ve had a stroke, people are quite set have you ever thought of that’ and I thought, ‘Well right yeah’ so I did say that and people did. And when I was on the telephone and got myself in trouble and I wouldn’t try to tell them that I’d had one I’d just bash on with it and, you know, I’d come away perhaps thinking, ‘Well that’s a mess’ but when I found people now, everybody’s kind and I think, ‘Well that’s good so that’s something that I’ve learnt you know, I was a bit proud or pride, proud I suppose, I was you think, ‘Well why do you do that?’ and they all say that.

So if I go in now and I get in real trouble, I’ll say, ‘I’m sorry, if you bear with me I’ve just had a bit of a stroke. ‘Right, oh yeah, what is it?’ ‘Great’ and you feel your confidence gets a lot better but all the time it is a funny thing.

Our, yes, my grandson sometimes were talking at some, or maybe hes reading something or I’m reading to him or worse still is when my wifes reading him and (is my wife alright? Is it?) yeah. Shell be reading something to him and then shell say to him, ‘Do you, do you mind grandpa just reading for, can he read a bit while I go and make the breakfast or something?’, you know, ‘Oh no, no, no, stay with me, stay with me nana’ because he knows I make a mess, I’m going to make a mess of it, you see. So sometimes he will, hell say and reluctantly he will start doing it. But once whilst we were looking through the, when weve got the book, he very quickly will tell me things that I’ve got wrong, you know, or words, ‘Grandpa, you said that, why did, you know, you said that grandpa’ ‘Oh yeah, sorry.”

I can’t do that, I’m going to do it, so I’ll bash it away and, but it’s, it, I think with me, it’s mainly the confidence you think and once you get, feel you can better, and my grandson here from [town] hes quite sharp and hell say to me, ‘Grandpa, you, you keep saying this’ you know or ‘Why did you say that?’ and I, ‘Oh, I’m sorry, [Grandson’s name] I don’t know. So we started words I could do and I couldn’t understand why because we, I think it was it, Mary Poppins, the supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Now, that was the one. Now I can say that. When we first tried it, [my grandson] said, ‘You say it, you say it grandpa, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious and I had no idea. And what I can’t understand about the stroke is that once you’ve practised it, I can do it, I can get it right, I can get it right every time I think now.

With the blockage in your neck did they ever discuss options for surgery?

Yes. Well, no. Because they all said you couldn’t do anything about it. They all say that and several and [the hospital at home] said the same. They said, ‘No, you can’t do anything about it now because it’s dangerous if they open it’ I believe I was told if you do it very quickly after the stroke, the they can, as I said, medication sort of drug, I don’t know, but they can do it, but I don’t, they can I, I nobody’s ever told me they can, they can do it. Everybody’s said the same thing, once it’s blocked, it’s gone, you know, you’ve lost it, it’s gone. And I assume that, you know, because basically when it’s blocked I think it means all those blood, blood vessels are dead, you know, sort of like my eye. You know, they will never move again. They said, ‘We can’t do anything about it’ because those, those vessels are gone, you know, they’ve just been dead not dead but whatever the word is not dead its’ So all, so I don’t know but nobody’s ever told me they can do anything about it, no. No.

I think in terms of health, I did swim and I used to jog, I told you that before but no, not more, no. I don’t think so. Partly because I’ve had a problem with my knee as well. Which has caused some sort of a problem with that and it’s not been able to as much now but we, no, and of course my wife can’t too much walking. She can walk a bit, so we don’t sort of go out, you know, long hikes if you like, we don’t do that because that’s too much, you know, and even to go to [the local town] sometimes I’ll walk down with her or sometimes I’ll take the car down there and shell walk down and I will wait for her down there, you know and perhaps if she feels good, shell walk back. If not we have the car, I know its only a mile and a half, a mile and a bit from here but with walking round there and duh duh duh sometimes it’s too much so we don’t. No, I don’t do enough in terms of exercise, I know that and I keep saying, I’m going to go back swimming, because swimming even though my knees got a slight problem here I could still swim, so I’m going to try and do that. So I’m trying to look after it in terms of food. She my wife always gives us good food, decent food, and we don’t have any rubbish, you know, sort of junk food, junk food, we, I think we, pretty well in terms of that. But health wise, I think I’m alright at the moment.

One of the things that, one thing, it didn’t really help me but what, the sort of thing they come out with, we had one therapist, these 3 therapists in the hospital, she said to me once, she said to me, ‘Well, you quite quickly don’t you, speak quickly, don’t you?’ I said, ‘Well, the trouble is I do think like that. I do think quickly and because I can’t explain speak in the, the same way I get problem, a problem with it, so’, I said, ‘Can, you help me?’ and she said, ‘Well not really, you see, because short of trying to, trying to speak slower’, I said, ‘Well, yeah, I can’t do that because I, when I’m speaking slowly, I lose my concentration and couldn’t, couldn’t bleugh, bleugh so I’m, I’m trying to do it that and I’m thinking quicker than, so it didn’t work. She said, ‘Well, one, you could try to’, she said because somebody was had the same problem and he used to sit, this chap, he sat with his hand on the chair, the table or something and he would be speak like that and he kept like a metronome, you know. And that way, so for about a week, I tried that and it didn’t work but the sort of thing that, that, that might help somebody clearly somebody, she said that this chap, you know, sat and he got used to it, speaking like the metronome and I think that’s a bit strange but that’s the sort of thing that they come out with, things like that and I pick those and I think, oh I’ll try that. Yeah. No, it doesn’t work.

Can you describe how they used the Doppler scan on your neck? Some people might not know.

Oh no. Well, it was like it, it’s like a little microphone and they put it against here like that phew, phew, you know, it, its obviously picking, they’re measuring the blood flow through there and what you hear is phew, phew, phew, phew, phew, phew and of course that is transmitted to the monitor and you can see where the whole thing, it’s, I don’t know how when they actually a camera of sorts and then you can certainly feel, you can see it going through like that and she said to me, ‘Oh yes, that’s blocked that’s clearly blocked it’s not getting round. Well try in different positions like that’, and it’s there apparently here (pointing to neck) and she said, ‘Yes, that’s blocked and I’m told that you think, well if, I’m told if you if you can get it quickly, they can give some sort of a drug that will disperse it but I think in my case, it was totally blocked.

Now, one doctor came to look at me and he said, ‘Well’, he said, ‘Sometimes it isn’t a block in the, in the actual arteries. It’s sometimes theres a piece of the artery gets flakes off, not flakes off but it, it sort of comes off like a flap on the artery and, and it then comes across like that and blocks like a non return valve of some sort’ He said, he said, ‘It could be that’ he said. Because theres no reason why I’d had a block in, in there at all, he said, because it seems to me as, he said it could be the reason why it did that, it was a flap. But there again my own doctor said he said it may be the case but there again they had the eye later which suspects that probably theres something floating around in the actual system so I, we said OK, well, it might be a thought, I thought, maybe a thought but I don’t think it was the case. It was something blocked but what it does, although it’s blocked the blood has to go somewhere and it, apparently it finds other ways round to get the, into the brain, you know, it gets in the and, and that’s what happened. So that’s why you get a bit better but I know no more than that at all, that’s all I know.