Pat Sweetingham

Monday 16th June 2003 I walked to school, my son was in the reception school, he was 5 years old. After that, I cannot remember what happened to me but other people have told me. I went to the nursery, it was very hot day, and I started complaining of headaches. The doctor diagnosed a virus, and then 4 days later another doctor agreed with the diagnosis. Wednesday 18th June my mum came to my house from her home in Ireland and was here for nearly a week. Tuesday 24th, my husband Ian was working away Germany and his mum and dad came to stay.

I felt so ill I was in my bed a lot of the time then 10 days later, at 4 am, Thursday 26 June I got up to get a drink of water and collapsed. The ambulance was called and arrived in 5 minutes. My husband rushed to the A&E, Basingstoke. The staffs at the hospital were very good and I was given an MRI scan.

The pictures were sent to Southampton hospital to see what else the doctors could do I was they taken to Southampton; I was unconscious on a stretcher in the ambulance.

The children, who were by now with Grandma and Grandad, went to school as normal.

I had an aneurysm which was clipped.

The traditional "clipping" which would have involved a brain flap and opening the brain to a surgical clip on the aneurysm.

I was in coma but I do not know how long. I was in intensive care for 10 days Whilst I was in a coma a lot of people came to see me. They thought they wouldn't see me again. My husband Ian, my children Amy, Laura and Ben, my mum and dad from Ireland, Ian's mum and dad, and special friends. Ben didn't recognise me because of the way I looked - my hair was shaved and there were tubes. Laura fainted when she saw me.

The aneurysm left me with severe right sided weakness and expressive dysphasia.

Unfortunately, I caught MRSA.

At the end of July, I was transferred back to Basingstoke hospital. Every day I had physiotherapy and twice a week speech therapy.

I went to Southampton hospital in August for a CT scan and was diagnosed has an incidental internal carotid intracavernous aneurysm.

I was discharged from Basingstoke at 3rdOctober 2003. I was now able to walk upstairs. The community physiotherapist, Deborah and community occupational therapy, Mary were helping. My first attempts at walking the park with my physiotherapist were hard. I was beginning with sandwich making, and ironing simple item. The main meal usually cooks on the hob and oven. Needs to be able supervise only.

I had an appointment at Basingstoke in November for a field vision test; it was found that I could not see from the right side of each of each eye. I'm not allowed to drive any more, and I miss being independent.

I was initially seen for assessment within the communication aid centre at Frenchay Hospital, Bristol on Friday 5 November 2005. The assessment was carried out via a videoconference link. I have experienced considerable word finding difficulties. I was looking for a device with predictive text that would help me when I had difficult thinking of the word that I wanted to say. I also wanted a device that could provide me with a list of words to scan through. I also decided that I would like to be able to write my own e-mails to my family in Australia.

I have a slight right-sided weakness, but I am mobile and have fine motor skill. My speech and language therapist says I have some high level impairment of comprehension and although I am able to follow most conversation, I have difficulty following complex commands. I have a marked word finding difficulty and some dysphasia my speech is generally clear and fluent. I experience the same difficulties in written language as I do in spoken language. There has been no change in my intellectual functioning since my stroke.

Since that time, I has been loaned software within my home environment, to establish its effectiveness as a means of extending my communication. The software is a Co: writer sol. This is a sophisticated word prediction package. The user writes a text in any windows application and an additional window appears on the screen with up to ten word predictions at a time. With the text to speech facility switched on, the user can hear the words predicted before choosing the one they would like, and then listen back to the sentence they have created.

The rest of the story is positive, because I did not die, and I am still here and with my family.

I still have speech therapy and I also go to a Dysphasia group. The dysphasia group is on Mondays at Viables Craft Centre.

I was a policewoman in London, and then had the children. I worked at a nursery and then I had my stroke. I want to work but what can I do? I want to do something I enjoy and like. I want to do something with my life but not sure what yet? I do normal every day things, I still get tired.

Although I have had some help writing this, it is mostly my own words. Thank you for taking the time to read this.

Thanks to Pat for sending in her profile. Anyone else who would like to share their story can send it along with a photograph (if you're not shy!)

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