They told us that he would be confused initially because of the sedation earlier on. And he did improve but he was still confused even when all the sedation, the drugs were out of his body.

So that was worrying because he was still confused even though the sedative drugs had worn off. And my daughter was definitely worried that he was going to be permanently impaired but he has improved. And now I think, except I think you’d have to do special testing to find, you know, any deficits, any problems now.

So hes almost back to normal?

Yes.

Obviously he won’t have remembered the accident but, but his memory generally, short – ?

I think so yes. His short term memory was poor in the first couple of weeks. Even a week ago he couldn’t remember what hed had for lunch. He couldn’t remember whether hed had physio that day but all that has, over the last couple of weeks, has gradually improved. And now hes virtually normal but they have said you know that he could continue to improve over several months.

I mean there are times, there is a stage as well where they don’t have any inhibitions. And he would be lurching around and there were some chocolates on the desk and he was just helping himself. And it was funny but there was, it was like well, you know, you ask, and all the manners and things had gone in one respect. We fed him, I fed him a meal once and he just would take a mouthful and then literally spit it back at me and I was catching food everywhere. And they said you know that will happen. And that lasted a day.

There was another day where a consultant came in and was speaking to him and [my son] has always hated reading and anything like that, and his use of language isn’t particularly good. He sort of doesn’t use very large words very often. And he started talking in a way that was, I felt well what’s he done. It was so eloquent. And he was saying words I’d never heard him use before. And he sort of answered this consultant and I thought, my goodness. And it was as if part of his brain that clicked in, that wed never ever seen before and we haven’t seen since. It’s sort of gone again but it was there for that time and that was amazing. So that lasted a day.

The middle son got great pleasure getting him a Macdonalds because they said he needed, hed lost so much weight. I mean he was absolutely stick thin. This six-foot lad with no, well he must have dropped to between five or six stone. It was frightening. And so he needed to get some solids into him and so MacDonalds was the order of the day, and he loved it. He thoroughly enjoyed that and it pleased the other one completely.

And there was a lot of banter. And one day they sat and one was rolling tissues up and throwing it and the other one was catching And the younger one became the elder brother for a while and he was very, very caring. And I think it made them realise how important they are all to each other. And that they are a whole, the three of them, and if you take one part away, it’s huge void.

He was also, while he was in this room, he was allowed to choose what to eat and the food you know, there was lots of choice. And they really wanted him to just enjoy what he was having, so we were able to do that. He would get up and walk and he would lurch everywhere. But there were always people helping him. And he would walk around and everyone was chatting to him and he was very’ hes very friendly, very sociable anyway. And that was the other thing, we could see his character coming back. He didn’t lose, nothing of that was damaged.

Husband’She had actually interestingly been into ITU, because she was beginning to remember things from the extended four week period and she wasn’t sure whether they [hallucinations] were real or imagination and so’

Daughter’She thought she was on a ship didn’t she or something about that. And it was to do with the noise or’

Husband’Well one of the big issues was that, a lot of her sort of background is Jewish Polish so a long time ago, but obviously with the sort of holocaust and stuff like that, theres that sense that relatives of hers, that she had never met, but many of her relatives would have died in that. And when she was on ITU she was in a bed near a window and when you looked out of the window you could see the hospital chimney with smoke coming out of it and that had also played into this thing about, you know, being held prisoner and you know sort of Nazi guards and things like that. And that continued to be played for a while when she was on the medical ward, they moved her into a bay away from the nurses station and she began to get better.

Daughter’But that had already happened before she went into Intensive Care the first time when she had had the thing with the nurse, like when she was on the morphine when she had already been having’ that seemed to be a recurrent sort of theme throughout really.

Husband’And anyway when they moved her into this other bay again she had a clear view of the chimney, it was literally virtually outside the window and’

Daughter’Haunting her.

Husband’And other chimneys with other sort of smoke coming out. It was a hospital boiler house basically is what it was. But obviously it was very unsettling for her. And so as she began to get better, one of the sort of follow-up after care nurses from ITU came to see her and we told her about this and so she said would it help if she came down to ITU. So they actually wheeled her down and she had a little sit by the bed that she had been in, and then she said, ‘oh look that is what I was remember, you know this chimney, I can remember that and wasn’t there somebody’ – and she sort of vaguely remembered a sort of a conversation where a couple of the nurses were talking about, you know, boyfriends and things and she remembered. So it was obvious when she was there that a lot of what she was remembering was remembering rather than imagining like [laughs]. Yes so that was quite good.

So she got her face and her facial movements back slightly, but was a bit sort of twitchy and, you know, she couldn’t really control her movements. But it at least meant that she could sort of see us again, even though she had, I think she had double vision at that point. So she was given a patch to wear over one eye to stop her from having this sort of difficulty of seeing around.

And she started to be able to communicate, using the boards with the letters on. But it was quite funny that she, having been through that for the last probably about a week and a half into her illness, and we thought, you know, the first thing she would try and communicate would be something really profound or, you know. And actually it was something like oral hygiene was her first communication. Because she wanted to have her mouth cleaned because they hadn’t actually cleaned her teeth. And it was, that was quite interesting to us. That was the first sort of realisation that what really mattered to her was being comfortable and being clean. And just everything that you, you know, you don’t really think about what’s going to happen in that situation. So we were then able to ask the nurses if they could clean her teeth for her. And we also started, sort of day by day we would clean her face for her and do things that I think she didn’t mind the nurses doing, but sometimes it was, you know, she liked it if it was someone from the family doing it, because it just made her feel more comfortable.

So I started going to visit her probably twice a week. I’d sort of take half a day off work. I live quite a distance from the hospital. So I actually had a sort of two-hour journey to get there and two hours back again. So I’d take half a day off work and go down. And then I’d go down on the Saturday. So it was quite a, it was sort of for, I think that was for about two months when she was in Intensive Care. But it just seemed like, our family are quite close and it just seemed like we all wanted to make sure we were there as regularly as possible. So from that point we did start to see some improvements. They put my sister into a chair every day. Which I know she hated to begin with. She found it really uncomfortable because she couldn’t support herself. But it was to keep her upright so her lungs could drain better. But she really hated it. They did take her outside a couple of times on the balcony. Which she really liked, she liked having the wind in her hair and the sun on her face. And then they started putting her into, I’m not sure what it’s called, but a thing like a board, they put her on a board so that she could be tilted upright to stand up. And I know she found that really difficult the first couple of times.

And after three months, he started coming round?

Yes.

They reduced the sedation?

Yes.

And how was he when he came round?

He was well, they warned us that he would be very disorientated and might not remember what happened or might not remember who we are, just because of the drugs. He didn’t have any head injuries, so we didn’t have to worry about that sort of thing, but the drugs he had. But he did remember who I was and I brought our baby in to see him. And he liked that, even though he couldn’t speak, his like face just lit up when he saw her.

Did he have a tracheostomy?

At that point he still had like the ventilator tube in his mouth. He eventually had a tracheostomy. But he knew he was in hospital, but he was just really confused. And he still remembered his accident. Which helped, because we could say, ‘You’ve been poorly. But he didn’t know it was three months. And then when he saw our baby she was like six months old. So she was really big and had teeth, and before she was a little baby. And he got upset and that confused him. But I think that’s what made him realise how long hed been in there. We hadn’t changed, but she did. But once wed sort of explaining things to him he did start to seem to understand, but then hed get confused again just’ so it was quite hard to deal with that, I thought. Because I thought he would understand, but he didn’t. And I found that a bit difficult, to try and help him.

He was on HDU, we moved there just before Christmas, and he didn’t come out, I think we didn’t come out until, it was 28th January. So he was on HDU for a month.

But it was quite a battle keeping him there, because the nurses could see how much better hed got. And they kept saying, ‘Oh, he doesn’t need, you know, he should be on a public ward. And we fought tooth and nail to keep him in a room. And I kept playing the MRSA thing and I said, ‘Well, you don’t want to spread it round the hospital, do you? You know, it could spread, it could spread. You know, you never know. And so they did say that if we went onto a public ward we could, you know, have a room. But he would still have been with a nurse who was looking after probably three or four other children. And he does actually need, you know, 24-hour, not someone sitting beside him, but he needs 24-hour awareness. I mean if he shouted now, I’d be off like a shot. So, you know, hes quite high-maintenance. And people don’t actually, you can sort of say, ‘Oh, hes very high-maintenance and they say, ‘Oh, yes, of course he is. But it’s not actually until you’re with him for a day that you do see, you know, ‘Can you move my arm? Can you scratch my nose? Put my arm a little bit higher?’ you know, that sort of thing. But it was a very, very, hugely traumatic time.

Mother’The first outing from the ward was actually while he was still on HDU. One of the nurses there took quite an unconventional line with her patients. She was an Army Reserve and shed been out in Bosnia and all sorts of places. And so she was a bit more sort of gung-ho. And she said, ‘Oh, to hell with this. Well just put him in a wheelchair and take him outside. And it was by then September, but it was still, the weather was lovely. And she just wrapped him in a blanket and sat him in a wheelchair and we took him outside. And he just sat and watched cars parking and people walking by. And then he saw his physio up on the stairs and she waved to him. And he followed her with his eyes. He couldn’t wave at that stage, he couldn’t move his arms. But this fabulous sort of gung-ho attitude of this nurse, said, you know, ‘Oh, to hell with this. Well take him out. And it was wonderful. I mean all this stimulation was just bringing him on and bringing him on. She cut his hair, she cut his beard, because he ended up with a beard like an Old Testament prophet. And so she trimmed that very nicely. I took his beard trimmers in and she did that for him. The next day we came in and found someone had trimmed him to a goatee, and the day after that he had just a moustache. Which was, you know, patient abuse [laughs], because the guy couldn’t argue. They were just using him as a model.