Andrew Browne

One Saturday morning in late October 1997, I was working on my car putting in considerable strain on removing some item or other when in a split second I felt everything in my head go blank but immediately afterwards I felt perfectly OK just worried over whether I had made a mess of my car or not. Over the course of the next hour whilst driving with my three children in the car I hit the kerb several times, had a near miss on the motorway and finally had a small shunt on a minor road. A friend in a nearby garage drove me and the children home. I kept on tripping over at home and finally collapsed on the floor only being able to pull myself to the bed with the right side of my body. I didn't know at the time that I'd had a spontaneous sub-arachnoid haemorrhage.

I was in bed when my wife arrived about an hour later. I felt a bit better and she gave me something to eat but as I still didn't look right and had no feeling in the left side of my body she rang an emergency doctor who arrived shortly after. He did a few checks and asked me if I had ever suffered with palsy as in his words I had lost my face? (Aha I thought, perhaps an improvement to my features at last) When the ambulance arrived I was almost unconcious but I could just make out what was going on around me and I appeared to be in and out of conciousness when my local hospital (Lister) diagnosed me as having a haemorrhage. I was taken to Addenbrookes shortly after and the nuerosurgeon said it would be better to wait for a couple of days to see if the blood clot (my wife was advised that the bleed had stopped of its own accord) that had filled virtually all the right side of my head may disperse on its own. It didn't and I deteriorated and had surgery to remove the clot. The surgeon did warn my wife that surgery or the pressure of the clot on my brain could cause nerve damage. After a number of weeks I was transferred back to Lister and put in a general ward. I had two small sessions with the physiotherapist and after a further few weeks was allowed home. I was only just able to walk.

A year later I had an acrylic plate (I wanted titanium with a view to all the chat I could have when walking through supermarket and airport electronic checkouts) plate to cover up that part of the skull that was removed during the initial operation.

I can walk and do most things I could do before the 'event' but from the moment I woke from surgery to the present day I have had intense burning sensation down the whole left side of my body and my left leg is a law unto itself (most of the time it feels as though a block of wood is doing the walking and when I sit down it feels like a rusty hinge). I am also partially sighted as a result of nerve damage in the brain. Concerning the burning sensation, I and my neurologist have now exhausted all the easy options of tablet taking and he has referred me to a hopital in Queens square, London who specialize in neurosensory problems. Interestingly, up until the time of my stroke I had suffered bad migraine, nearly every other day for the previous 20 years. Generally, I no longer suffer with migraine or bad headaches so there has been a plus side to the whole tale.

Andrew

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