I don’t remember coming in the house, my home. I don’t remember that at all. I have very little recollection of the next month or two months. Christmas is a bit of a blur. I mean I love Christmas generally but I suppose it’s the healing process which you’re…Obviously I had brain damage and it’s the physical and brain reactions to accepting what’s happened to you that you think that. You tend to shut other things out. I don’t do ill. I’ve been with my, the company I work for, for 43 years and I’ve never hardly been. I wouldn’t say I haven’t been ill. Were all ill obviously but I’d never taken weeks in illness in a year and it was hard to accept the fact that what had happened to me, if you don’t do ill you don’t accept it. And the fact that you’re body is telling you, you can’t do what you wanted to do or what you normally do, it’s very hard to recollect and respond.

I remember during the period at home that my brother and sister came daily to see me. And that was, I understand from my wife, she looked forward to that obviously because it relieved her from looking after me. But having said that I have no recollection or very, very slim recollection of her looking after me. She tells me things now and I don’t believe her. You didn’t do that for me because I can’t remember it. So, I find that very difficult and we can have difference of opinions. I have to accept what she says though it doesn’t sit well for obvious reasons. I don’t remember it so it didn’t happen. She remembers it, she done it, so I have to accept it.

And so I was bought home, still very weak, only taking, well, walking small, very, very short distances. And I came home. It was very emotional, but very frightening. I came home and the escorts that I had, I’ve got several steps to come up, and I thought, “That’s easy. I can walk, lift my legs up.” And it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, just to get in those three steps, to get in the front door. I thought, “I’m going to get in there, because I’m not going back.” And I came home and that night I had the oxygen on all night, because I was so frightened that I would go to sleep and not wake up again, that I would stop breathing.

When I first came home I slept downstairs because I couldn’t do the stairs. And my husband slept on the sofa beside me because I just did not want to be left alone. I was frightened. The first day I was home, I stayed in bed. My children were around me, I was so pleased. But it was frightening. I had to, well, I couldn’t, I sat on a computer chair with wheels to be pushed around in the home, at home here. And I still had to be helped to be washed.

Having been under, I’m given to understand from the asthma nurse that whatever it is that they inject into you to keep you under sedation takes one week to clear out of the body for each day you are sedated. And so those sort of chemicals would have taken three weeks to clear out. And I was discharged from the hospital about a week, ten days after, so I had another ten days still, ten, fourteen days still. During that time of course I was very weak. I could have a shave one morning and a bath the next morning, but not a shave and a bath on the same morning.

You just feel exhausted?

Well, I was weak, yes, not exhausted. But I mean you are often weak after an asthma attack anyway, you know, so that was expected. But I had expected that it would take about three weeks to recover, which is usual after an asthma attack. But this didn’t, this took much, much, much longer, a good two months, a good two months, probably three. Yes, three months really.

But I was very much in for going out for walks etc. And wed go for undercover walks i.e. wed go to shopping centres and what have you. And in the first few weeks, probably the first six, seven weeks, the walks, if I was walking around somewhere, the average shopping centre, it would take two and a half days out of my life, the following days, because I just would not recover and I was just absolutely shattered.

Now it’s like getting down to, if I actually go out now to the average shopping centre and we spend some time, I can probably walk about a mile, but we tend to have a rest in the middle of that because well pop off for a cup of coffee. And then it’ll only take a day, maybe a day and a half to recover. So, you know, it’s time-controlled, you know. But I do as much as I can. I mean I’m a lousy house-husband these days, but I sort of put the washing in the washing machine and the dishes in the dishwasher. But I’ve lost, I mean I’m not doing the things that I would normally be doing if I was in this position. I mean I’d be on the computer, getting on the phone, doing this, finishing off the bathroom that I’d started and things like that. And getting rid of this lino that’s behind the settee, because I’ve got to do the kitchen and get that sorted out. But I just haven’t got the physical capabilities. I haven’t got the strength to do it in my arms. The legs are getting a lot better but the arms are taking a lot longer. I can’t work that one out.

Yeah. Did you expect to be up and doing things much quicker?

Oh, yes, yes. No one told, I mean they’ve advised me that, you know, you can lose 50 per cent of your muscle mass in no time whatsoever. No one told me just how bad that was going to be. Well, I don’t think anyone could tell you. You have to experience it to be there. Because from being able to sort of get up and walk and do whatever, you end up with a situation where, you know, you have to get a stick to get you up. I had to have a walking stick to walk. I mean fortunately I’ve been able to put that to one side. But that’s my pedantic attitude, not the walking stick. I should really, I mean we keep it in the car just in case. I’ve got two young kids, which, that was the critical bit, I couldn’t pick my children up. They were running up to me and, physically, I could not pick them up. Which I can at least get them on me knees now and what have you.

When I came home I had a package and I had carers coming in three times a day. One to get me up on the morning and help with the shower. Get my breakfast if necessary for me and one at lunchtime to put something in the microwave. But after a few days I was able to do that myself and somebody would come in the evening to get me ready for bed. And that could vary anything from seven o’clock in the morning and one didn’t come until quarter to twelve.

In the morning?

[laughs] Yes. And I also had a physiotherapist coming to the house and an occupational therapist and that was the first six weeks. If I needed it after then, they would have discussed whether I needed it and I had to pay for it. The physiotherapist the first couple of weeks, he came three times a week which was very good and they’d take me down the road for a walk and now I’d come back and do exercises laying on the bed and then some sitting on a chair and then out in the kitchen with one hand on the sink unit and do some more exercises that way. And so it was quite intense, if you know, quite tired after that [laughs].

And the occupational therapist, she took me up to Waitrose and to do some shopping. She suggested I should walk but I didn’t feel, especially it was very hot at that time, didn’t feel I could walk all that way so she took me in her car. And she also took me to the optician.

When I came home, I was again released with a support network. I had a carer, came in four times a day. Initially, they came in to get me up again, lunchtime, again in the afternoon, and then in the evening to put me to bed. And I had to have ‘meals on wheels. But what I didn’t realise was that a lot of people suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, when they’ve been in Intensive Care and they tend to push themselves too hard because they don’t think that they’re achieving anything. And so of course guess who has to get it – me!

So by the time, I mean, for the first two or three days, we got rid of the carer coming in the afternoon, and they came, they used to get me up. But after two, three mornings, they found I’d got myself up because I couldn’t lay there waiting for them, all morning. Although they used to come by nine oclock, you know, that was half the day gone, as far as I was concerned [laughs] because as soon as I woke up, I had to be out and about, you know.

‘Meals on wheels’ went after about three days because I didn’t like them. And then after about a week, I think she just used to come in the morning and again in the evening to put me to bed. And even after about ten days, it got so that, they rang me in the evening to see if I wanted anything because I found that I was managing quite well, really.

I have very, very vague recollections of other things. I know, one thing I do remember is when my brother came over, he offered to take me out. He was going to Sainsbury’s and he offered to take me and this was going to be a first for me. I’d only got used to the house and the hospital obviously while I was there. I have no recollection of the journey home in my sister’s car. Though I will go back to that in a minute.

I remember my brother, he walked before me to the front door, opened the front door. He then opened the outer door because we have like a lobby. I then shut the front door and the feeling that came over me of the hugeness of the world, God. I mean, it was almost like being a child again. It was awesome. I’m about to step out of the door and there is, and all I was used to was rooms. There is four walls and a ceiling and a floor. All I’d got when I stepped out the door was a floor. There was no walls, no ceiling. I stepped out the door and I said to him, it was being like a child again. It was frightening. It was awesome.

I stepped outside the second door and the feeling was awesome. It felt, I felt so weak, so oh I don’t know. It’s a job to explain. It was like, I was a child and I was going out with my father and I was looking for my father to help me because of the fear I was going through. But anyway we walked down over the path and, of the drive and I followed my brother and we got to the curb and there was traffic coming left and right and I felt so weak. Because of my ankle injury I’m thinking if I start walking across the road now and a vehicle comes I’m not going to get over. I can’t break into a run as I could before the accident. And again it was the second moment of terror, of panic. It was awesome. Anyway I followed him. He didn’t understand how I felt. Not because he didn’t understand but because I didn’t tell him. This issue again is a macho thing I think. There are certain things you will say and other things you are just not, you would suffer. And this was one of the things I was going to suffer.

Anyway we got into the car and I found that very strange because this is a very claustrophobic, and though he had quite a large car it still felt that, the roof was only inches away and the screen was only inches away. And I’d only been used to rooms and then all of a sudden I’m in the big outside world and then all of a sudden I’m in something even smaller. But I think I could handle it.

So I get home, I can’t, I’m on crutches. I’m on the couch. In a week I’d put half a stone on, one week, went to hospital outpatients, they couldn’t believe it. I said I told you shed [wife] feed me up.

Yeah I put on half a stone with all the food and everything and then went back to the hospital. And the Doctor couldn’t believe I put so much weight on so quick and back home again but I was using a stick then, after two weeks, instead, a walking stick so I weren’t too bad. I still couldn’t go out of the house, only to get air and that. But with all me family round me, I felt that I would feel better and better every day, eating loads and I just felt better than being in hospital. I know I couldn’t come out of hospital but when I could, she [wife] got me out. And the nurse come every day, changing me leg and so that were alright and after about four week, Christmas day it were yeah, I went out Christmas day to the pub with family like.

And I started, I felt better and better. I had me stick for about three month, no four month, before I could walk without the stick. And I kept going back to hospital every three weeks, well every week, then every three week, then every month. And I just kept putting more and more weight and they couldn’t believe it. And in about three month, I put three stone on. So I were like eleven and now I’m nearly, it’s eleven month now, and I’m nearly twelve stone.

I mean one of the real positive things is, this time two years ago, I was so sick I almost died and the consequence of that was that I was so weak I couldn’t move and do anything for myself. And it’s been a very long hard struggle but two years on I’ve got, you know, I’m able to look after my three-year-old and I’ve got a three-month-old baby. And you know at the time I thought I was never going to kind of. You know I was seriously having to kind of examine my quality of life and everything that I kind of thought and took for granted in the course of everyday life. And it is a really, really long, hard struggle back. But seemingly the body, you know, at our age in our kind of mid-thirties, I’m sure that it’s a slightly different situation if you’re a lot older, but certainly in your mid-thirties the body kind of goes to pot very quickly but you can also put it back again. But obviously I didn’t know that at the time and I had a physio working on encouraging me to be able to twitch a finger or twitch a thumb. And you know the thought of being able to lift my arm, let alone kind of, I mean sitting up or kind of standing up were weeks down the line. But gradually it came back.

Eventually my husband had to go back to work. He stayed home for me for six weeks. But it was frightening to be left on my own. Although I knew that people were only a phone call away, I was here on my own. But it was a case of just building up confidence. And so little goals were set. The physiotherapist came out one day and took me for a walk around the block. I couldn’t do it on my own, but I found that as long as I had somebody with me then I would go for a walk. The same with driving the car. To start with it was hard, I was using muscles that had gone. But it was just a case of building up confidence. I would have somebody with me, just drive down the road and back again. Silly little things really. But I’ve done it.

The biggest challenge was walking to the school, which is a fair distance away, to take my daughter. And I did it. That has been, that’s the only way I’ve managed to do things is by setting goals and reaching those goals.

Well I was so surprised, the pain relief was brilliant. I bought a little DVD combi for the bedroom thinking, because you know they open up your chest, it’s open heart surgery isn’t it? It’s quite a major op. I thought I’d be in quite a bit of pain for a month or so. So I bought this DVD player, DVD TV combi, thought I’d be watching DVD’s and films and things for a month. But there was no pain at all. The only pain was when you coughed. But, as I mentioned, I used to play rugby and I’ve had more pain after a game of rugby, people standing on you or whatever, than that. The pain relief was brilliant.

So I started walking, the second day I managed a mile, the second day I got home. Because I live in a rural place and there was this, about two hundred yards from my house, theres a little gate that leads to a farmer’s field and I couldn’t walk up to that before the op. But the first day I came home, I was able to walk, that was the challenge to me. Before the op I said, the first day I come back, I’m going to, so it’s things like that that I do now. That’s what I’ve changed. And I’ve explained how, with work, say if I’ve got lots of notes to do, before I would do three quarters of it and leave the rest till tomorrow. Now I’ll do all of it today and it’s the same with mountains. I’ll say right but I’ll go to the top. But in the past I could say right I’ll go nearly to the top and say I’ve been to the top. It’s like I’m challenging myself more.