Daughter’She was being quite difficult at this point. It took about five days, a week for her to start’ because it was strange because at the beginning when she first went back onto the ward she was like a hundred per cent psychotic, delusional, really difficult. But then each day it would almost go down by ten per cent, so in about seven days, she was practically normal. And you could see it, even at the end you would think she was normal, and then she would say something crazy. But that just went after a while and she was absolutely normal again. But she didn’t remember any of the strange psychosis.

Husband’No, none of it at all.

None of it. None of the time in ITU and that first big in the general ward?

Daughter’No she couldn’t remember that at all.

Husband’I think bits of it have come back since.

Daughter’Later. But it was difficult.

One night [my son] actually had a Black nurse and he didn’t take to her and he was abusive. Another thing with a head injury, often they don’t know what they’re doing. And we were mortified, you know, we were, ‘Oh, goodness. But that’s just something the nursing staff have got to deal with. They, you have got a patient with a head injury, unfortunately, there is, you know, you can’t actually, it’s not like punishing, you can’t sort of tell them off or anything. He was totally unaware still. It was a good three, four weeks before he had any recollection of what he said or did. And so any abuse that’s caused or any harm, I mean the physical obviously you can’t have, but it’s unintentional. They are not aware of what they’re doing. And I do think there has to be a little bit of leeway.

And so we ended up having to spend another night up there because hed called us in. And that’s the other thing, because hes wandering, didn’t like to be restricted at all, he would get quite angry. And therefore we sort of would have to go in and look after him. I tried to get there every morning. So although we were back in [place name] every day I would try and go in for breakfast. And in fact one morning they actually put him on the phone to me and he said, ‘Where are you?’ [laughs] And to hear his voice on the phone was incredible.

And the nurses as well, they, going back to [the first hospital], there was one day when wed come, wed buzzed to say can we come in and see him and they called us through and they actually had him walking towards us, and it was the first time he had. And my in-laws remember the first time when they, when he actually said, ‘Hello, nanny and granddad. And up until then he hadn’t actually addressed them.

Then there was when we were at [the local hospital] there was one day when he was looking in the mirror and I suddenly realised he was actually looking at himself, he was doing his hair. Because for a long time there was a very glassy stare and apparently they’re looking at the horizon just to get their balance. But they’re not seeing anything else. It is literally just looking ahead and so it’s this horrible stare where they’re not looking at anything and that’s quite unnerving.

Mother’And it was noisy and it was hot. But we did have wonderful moments. There was one Saturday morning, we had the Patientline television thing going. And I was tidying his locker, and I heard him speak. And he shouted at the television. Which apparently is not unusual. ‘Do I have to watch, do I have to put up with this sort of rubbish?’ or words to that effect. And I was so stunned that hed spoken that I didn’t really take in what he said. And I then tried to get him to say it again. And he wouldn’t, or he couldn’t. And it was a long time before he really started speaking. And when he did, he actually shouted at another patient to, ‘Shut up. Because there was an old man who was gabbling all the time very loudly. ‘Shut up’ he said.

In the end with physiotherapy, he had a bed which they’d kept the sides up, because he was rolling about, thrashing about. And they had to get bumper strips, like they got for a baby’s cot, to stop him banging his head on the side. But they didn’t, either the sides or the bumper strip, didn’t reach the bottom. There was a gap of about 2 feet. And he, once he was moving around in the bed he was shuttling down to these gaps. And it was quite clear that sooner or later he was going to try and get out. And so in the end it happened that we were there, the physiotherapist was there, he shuttled to the end of the bed and stood up.

Father’And when –

Mother’I was in front of him. And I went, ‘Come on then. Come on. And he walked.

Father’And he didn’t just walk actually. He strode off across the ward and we couldn’t keep up. And so

Mother’It was wonderful. Because wed not known if he was going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. And all these things just went. And they weren’t important any more. We didn’t need to worry about how we were going to modify the house for a wheelchair. Because he was walking.

Father’Then we had a rather strange incident very shortly after that, in that he could now walk, and we were taking him to the ground floor of the hospital where there was a cafe, in a wheelchair at this point, just to get a cup of tea and show him something outside the ward.

Mother’Just give him a break, yes.

And how long had he been actually lying down? A month in Intensive Care?

Mother’Yes, and then –

Father’And then probably a good three weeks –

Mother’– two to three weeks.

Father’– in the general ward.

And he was able to walk?

Mother’Yes.

Father’Yes.

Husband’The problem was that this wound wasn’t really healing properly and I suspect they might have battled on trying to get it to heal. But the difficulty was then in the other foot, she began to get some. Basically virtually the first or second day she had been in, in November she got out of bed and her foot had slipped and just banged against the wall, the other foot, and there had been a little bruise there which sort of disappeared but never fully disappeared and that suddenly began to get worse. And eventually it was obviously deteriorating so the vascular surgeon decided that he would try a bypass on the left leg and so when they took her in to have that done, which was Easter time wasn’t it?

Daughter’No. Are we into Easter now?

Husband’Yes. She had something against the major Christian festivals at this stage. In ITU as well as at Christmas.

Was she in hospital all that time?

Husband’Yes. Hm. Yes. So basically he did the bypass and at the same time they then did an above the knee amputation’

Daughter’Yes because it wasn’t healing properly.

Husband”because the wound just wasn’t healing and obviously the blood supply wasn’t’

Mother’They came and did an inspection. The psychologist and the occupational therapist came and did an inspection of the premises and judged that he would be okay. But no, they weren’t coming to the house. And I don’t really think, I don’t see what they could have done.

Father’I think it would just be so dependent on the case in question.

Mother’I was a little nervous I suppose of having him home. You know, supposing he wasn’t coping? Supposing he wasn’t well? But the rehabilitation centre had made it quite clear that they would have a bed the following week. If we weren’t coping, they could take him. But I mean he just slotted straight back in. It was, it was brilliant. So, no, they weren’t coming to the house. I think they would have if wed needed to.

Father’I think it would be different if thered have been a higher level of nursing care required. Then the pressures on us would have been much higher.

Mother’Well, then he would have been residential in the care home, and that would have been appropriate.

He then went into intensive rehabilitation in November, and he came on by leaps and bounds. The only problem with that area was that they didn’t have a speech therapist, and speech therapy was what he needed more than almost anything else. Physio was very important and he got a lot of his coordination back during that period. And he also gained weight and built up his muscles, after the wasting away in ITU. But speech therapy was quite an issue, and we did as much as we could. And to be honest the psychology staff there did what they could to provide some level of speech therapy, by talking to colleagues and work from the Internet and from books. They went through stuff with him. And it helped. It did help, but he really did need speech therapy on a formal basis. Which he is now getting. Hes transferred to a community unit, which again is an adult head injury unit, which deals mostly with stroke victims or road traffic accident victims. But it’s been helpful to him, and hes had a lot of education as well on head injury and the results of that, cognitive impairment and the results of that as well.

They started to get him used to going home at night because they would do all this treatment in the day in the rehabilitation. It was non-stop, a full, in the gym getting his body strength back, walking, arm movements because the right side was extremely weak, albeit that it’s all come back now. It was slow but it’s all back but they are working on the weaker side. And then in the afternoon he has speech therapy and occupational therapy, and memory control tasks, so the whole day is extremely busy. But at night then, of course it was, you’ve just got to go to bed, go to your room, try and relax, and he couldn’t do that. He just, you know, would get agitated and angry and aggressive again. He wanted to go home, ‘I don’t need to be here, I want to go home. It’s, not helping me recover. I’m going out of my mind lying on my bed.

So they, initially somebody had to be with him all the time, somebody had to stay in the house and sleep there and get him up in the morning and take him back to the hospital. Then the hospital, their staff actually met him, would meet him in the morning and walk behind him to walk to the rehabilitation hospital which luckily isn’t far from his home. They would follow him and make sure that he was safe to walk back to the hospital and again at night they would follow him home and make sure that he was capable of walking home on his own. And that’s where we are at the minute.

Now he is allowed to, they suggested that we start to let him sleep on his own and get up on his own and start to live independently which is what he does, and his daughter as always stays with him at the weekends. So that’s where we are at the moment and he still has to go to the rehabilitation hospital every day for, he [laughs] writes but he just writes all the wrong words [laughs] and hell talk about going down the garden to his Fred, his garden shed, to get his tools and things like that. So hes doing extremely well and the doctors have all said, ‘Gosh hes a walking miracle. Because certainly his scans and if you see his head, the scans isn’t it? Oh the bruising is horrendous, the bruising is horrendous, that yeah we are shocked that he is doing so well. So that’s where we are today [laughs].