Part 2.... Chapter 2.... 2007

My scattered memories of being on ward E are just that, scattered and random.
I remember my daughter and partner were there and if my memory serves me correctly, two friends were also there at some point.  Around that time the clippers had been brought in to do the deed I had asked to be done. It was time to get my head shaved. My partner couldn’t finish the job so my daughter took over and finished it for him. Once the head shave was complete I felt free. Even to me using the word “free”, to describe a feeling is weird, but I did feel free.

One of the patients on the ward had noticed with interest at me having my head shaved. She couldn’t speak English so sent her daughter over to ask if they could borrow the clippers, because her mother felt inspired by me and wanted to do the same. I said yes for the clippers as I looked over to the lady, on that we both just raised a hand and nodded to each other, no words where needed. We knew what we were saying, meaning and doing, if
no-one else did.
 
I felt new and ready to get up but I couldn’t, I couldn’t move. I wanted to get up and go to the toilet but my body wasn’t allowing a connection with my brain to get it moving, and I didn’t understand why.
I looked at those sitting and standing around my bed, they were looking at me with their mouths open, connected with a look of complete despair in their eyes. I asked out loudly, “Why can’t I move?”. I asked again, waiting for a response no one was giving. My daughter was the one who spoke the words everybody else couldn’t bring themselves to say.
 
She said it as it is, “Your paralysed Mum”, ….  I answered back in the same way, with “Ok”.
 
From that moment I didn’t know how to concentrate on any of my thoughts. They seemed to be in control of me. Stopping me thinking past what they want me to see, which was nothing. My mind had turned into a labyrinth, the network of pathways and passages all leading to the nothing. But there must be a way out, there must be some understanding of why I’m here. That was all what my thoughts were and still are screaming out inside.
 
Paralysed…. How? I asked the question but no-one gave me the answer. I was in silence again. My friends left and I remember hearing the tea trolley rattling its way past my bed as I kissed my daughter before she and my partner left to go home.
 
Another day on ward E and I was hating it. I remember shouting out at the nurses, “I want to go home, why are you keeping me here. Why don’t you get me a wheelchair so I can just go home?. I'm fine”. It got to the point that they were just ignoring my cry’s and that started me thinking. It was the first moment of self-realisation and will power since I'd woken from the coma and shaved my head. I will get up. I will do it by myself.... but I couldn’t, it felt and was impossible. My mind and body are no longer on the same page.

Every thing was so surreal. My partner showed up and I demanded he roll me a rollie, he kept saying no but I got one in the end and lit it. With the curtain pulled around the bed cubicle, one puff and I’m coughing like a dog and I could hear the nurses running around trying to find out what and where the smell was coming from. I handed the rollie back to my partner who disposed of it straight away. I have no idea why I done that, but it did give me my first giggle. 
 
Just opposite to my bed on the ward I noticed a patient who had a room all to himself, and I wanted that room. A very selfish thought I cannot deny, but I wanted that room none the less. I wanted to be in a room and not on the ward, and there was something about that room that I wanted. I can’t remember how long I was on the ward for, but before I knew it the room was mine. I had just got back to Morriston Hospital after being down at Singleton Hospital all day, checking how things were progressing with my left eye. Then on arrival back at Morriston, they told me the good news and moved me into my room with an en-suite ;-).
 
Now I have a room of my own with pen and paper in hand, it’s time to write, write and write more. I’m hoping the more I write the more my memory storage banks will be swayed and something will spring back to tell the truth of what has happened to me. But most of all why???

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