Was there talk about a defective artery that bled. I mean when they did the operation, did they actually tie something off or did they just mop up the blood, do you know?

My understanding is that the operation that was performed on me was pretty much to clear the blood out of my brain and then to mend the blood vessel that had burst. I don’t think it extended beyond that into the arterial body, into the arterial system. I think it was simply a matter of repairing a blood vessel, however you do that, I don’t know.

But anyway it was done and the blood has to be drained off because if your brain is flooded no doubt, that does account for a complete collapse in your ability to articulate and probably do a whole load of other things mentally as well.

So I’m extremely grateful to that surgeon who, who performed what must be a pretty, a pretty terrifying operation when. Now all operations presumably are terrifying to that degree but I don’t know how you get into the skull in the first place, thank goodness I wasn’t awake when it happened because I’m pretty, pretty awful when blood is involved.

I’ve talked about the fact they diagnosed the AVMs, have I? I can’t remember. Yeah, they did. Yeah, I did earlier on. Yeah.

Yeah.

Mmm. So all the time that I was, [clears throat], excuse me, [clears throat], during the time I was in hospital and rehabilitation units, I was waiting for the blood, or should I say the neurologists were waiting for the blood to disperse from my brain, enough for me to go and have, stereotactic radiotherapy on my AVMs because I had two, I think I said I had two. One is big, was big and very deep-seated and one was smaller and near the surface, too dangerous to operate on and so, in my last rehabilitation unit the grand pilgrimage was made to [a city in the north west], which is where, you have to go, to have stereotactic radiotherapy because it’s, it’s only done in three countries in the world, which is America, Sweden and the UK, and in 1996, it was only done in [a city in the north west], [laughter], so I was a friend went with me actually and I went all the way up to [a city in the north west], and stayed overnight in a hospital, [laughter], and they did a, another angiogram on me and the machine broke down while they were doing it. I remember this distinctly and so I had to stay in the machine with the metal helmet that they screw on to the bone of your head screwed on my head, stuck in a machine that was broken down, [laughter] which is quite unpleasant, and the relief when they took the tube out it made me cry, and

Was it painful?

Yes. Because the anesthetic had worn off, very painful. Yes, it was. And, yeah, and I went to, into a, another hospital, I was driven to another hospital then, where there was this enormous machine like something out of a science fiction movie, [deep breath], with a big metal circular machine that I was bolted into basically. But I, you could take music and so I’d taken the man I’d made friends with in my first rehabilitation unit, who’d really taught me to fight, had given me a tape of rock music, when I’d left and I took the rock music with me up to [a city in the north west], because it’s not very pleasant actually, to be bolted into this machine and because I had quite a lot wrong with me, I had to have quite a lot of passes in and out of there. I was in there for quite a long time. So I had rock music blaring out in this, [laughter], in this room, where I was having my brain zapped basically and they took some photographs of me afterwards wearing the helmet smiling because they’re about to take it off actually. But I can still feel the numb points up here where they injected me in the head and where they drilled in to my head to screw it on to my head. Yeah.

Do you understand what they were actually doing with the radiation?

Yeah. They’re firing yeah, what they’re doing is firing radiotherapy at, specifically at the specific points, at the AVMs. That’s what they’re doing and the waiting time to find out whether that’s worked is two years. So I had to wait two years, to find out whether it had been successful or not.

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.

Well, it started in 2003 when I was 82 and it started with small ischemic attacks affecting my eyes and movement of my hand and small things made me feel a little bit dizzy, faint. So later on, I took normal things, aspirin, this, that and the other, later on it developed and got worse. For instance, I was driving along and I’d get a partial vision blank. If I happened to look at a person in the face, I could only see half of the face and reading, I could only see the first part of a word. That lasted, to start off, 5 minutes and then back to normal.

Then of course that gradually got worse and I went to see the doc, went to hospital and they did a scan check of my carotid in my neck on the left side and they found that there was an obstruction there, so 6 months later when the appointment came up, they carried out an operation on my left carotid in my neck and a endarterectomy and while I was under the operation and it was a it was partial, just a small injection to make me feel a bit sleepy and I could hear everything they were saying and the object of the exercise was if , if there was anything that I could tell them, I still could talk. So halfway through the operation, they said they were, I could listen to them handing over to another doctor to do this, that and the other and then I said my right arm was getting numb. ‘Can you move your fingers?’ ‘No. ‘Can you move your right leg?’ ‘No. Then I blacked out. I came round at 2 o’clock in the morning in bed in a ward all wired up and there was a big bruise on my chest where he gave me a thump to start my heart going again and I recovered quite good from that.

Before you went into the operation, did they, can you tell me about any of the discussions that you had with the doctors? Did they tell, did they discuss the risks that might be involved in the operation?

Yes. I asked, I asked them point blank, ‘What’s the, what’s the percentage risk of me dying?’ And they said it was 95% successful, so I thought, ‘Well, that’s good odds, carry on.

So when you’d had the problems during the operation, how did you feel about that after?

Well, first, first, well I thought, ‘Well I’m lucky to be alive and secondly I thought, ‘Well, they did their best’ in fact, I was very, very pleased about, about it all, especially now, a year later when I feel perfectly alright. Perfectly normal person.