Yes, it is coming up shortly. That's correct. On December 31/January 1, it
will be one year from the time that I entered the hospital in Windsor that saved
my life! I'm going to write this article and a number of others about my
illness, my recovery and what I want my future plans to be.
I suffered a sudden illness, where a rare form of Encephalitis ended up
attacking my brain. This virus is difficult to diagnose at first because it can
mimic other diseases, but it is life-threatening, if not dealt with immediately.
Fortunately for me, one of the people in our Emergency section who saw me had
some knowledge, which resulted in a number of steps that had my illness
identified very quickly and then treated successfully. For that, I am extremely
grateful because otherwise who knows what my outcome would have been.
Sure, I'm still in the process of re-developing my life and my activities,
as well as trying to eliminate as much negativity as possible. Fortunately,
according to the medical people in this area, I'm doing quite well and am no
longer suffering, although there are a few of its negative effects still
impacting me, but I am actively working through them.
As I wrote previously, I do want to let you know about my illness and the
actions taken to overcome it and what the future may well hold for me. Obviously
I'm doing it because it was a horrific matter that challenged me so greatly. To
be direct about it, writing about it and talking about it publicly will help me
eliminate the horrors it has caused me in my life. It is something that I know
many people share regarding their own terrible medical issues as well.
Here is what I wrote before in one of my articles that I now want to deal
with in this article and in several more that I will write over the next little
while:
"I expect that my introductory comments concerning this new blog may take
several articles. In effect, I'm talking about my life story of what happened to
me as of December 31, 2014 and in particular starting January 1, 2015.
Moreover, I want to tell you about a number of things that occurred the last 10
months...
I really don't have the faintest idea about how many articles I expect to
be writing on this topic or exactly what I will be writing. I just will let the
articles in effect write themselves. I just wanted to give you an explanation
about what happened to me, who were the people looking after me, my experiences
with them, talking about a number of the different professionals whose function
it was to treat me to make the feel better and what the consequences are for my
wife and children and myself too.
I want to talk to you, dear reader, about my illness and what I know about
it. I want to explain to you the medication I took and some of the events that
took place during the first 6 weeks, and much later, after I caught on about
this subject. I need to talk about moving from my old address to this new place
that I found where I am living now. There is just so much to write about that it
is mind-boggling to say the least."
Let me start out in this very odd fashion. I have no idea about how many
articles that I am going to be writing for you nor, to be quite blunt, what the
contents of each article will be. I will just go to write what seems to be
important to me and which I hope will be useful for you for your life as you get
older.
It all started on December 31, 2014. I just felt terrible that day with a
fever, some coughing and a headache. I can't remember why my wife Marsha and I
decided to go to the hospital but probably it was because my doctor's office was
closed at that time on this day that I was feeling sick. Accordingly, we went to
the Emergency Room at the Hôtel-Dieu Grace Hospital because it was relatively
close to where we lived and I had good experiences there before.
I have to admit I can't remember a whole bunch of what happened that day,
but I know I was there for about 7 hours and that not much was happening for me.
I told my wife that I had enough, was feeling a bit better and I wanted to go
home. She agreed to take me back home although, I don't remember it, I was told
that some of the Hospital people were not too happy about me leaving. They
wanted to proceed with more testing, but after 7 hours, I was exhausted and I
thought maybe I would be better off at home. I was actually starting to feel
better.
Unfortunately, the next morning when I woke up I was feeling terrible
again. I really do not remember much about us returning, but I know that we went
back to the Hospital again into the Emergency section. In fact, I don't really
remember anything that happened on that day and what happened subsequently. All
that I know is that apparently I had extreme difficulty speaking and made little
sense in what I was saying. I was also mixed up and speaking gibberish. It was
so bad that I was told that I was admitted into the Hospital into an Emergency
section about two hours after I arrived there. I do not have the faintest idea
about this taking place!
Clearly, that should give you an indication about how bad my state of
health was. In fact, I cannot remember anything happening, not only in the
Hospital for about 2 weeks, when I was there as a patient, but also after I
returned home for about 4 weeks or a bit longer. I really don't remember a
thing. All I can tell you, dear reader, is what I was told had happened. Even
with that, I still don't know everything that happened both in the Hospital and
at my house when I returned home to be treated for illnesses.
Of course, in January last year, the weather was extremely cold and quite
snowy. It made the visits to the Hospital to be with me very difficult for my
family members.
My son, Michael, lived in his house about a block away from the Hospital
and he walked every day to come over and visit with me twice a day when I was a
patient. He was there both to help me, my wife and my daughter cope with my
illness, but also to look after me in my room as well while I was in the
hospital.
My requests on him at this stage of my life because of my illness were
quite demanding and for which he had to cope. Apparently, I made him deal on a
number of matters for me, no matter how simple, or even ridiculous they were.
Don't ask me what they were because I don't remember very many of them.
Apparently, I would make demands on wanting several blankets on me, in a very
particular way. Even though this seems to be rather absurd now, my son gave
into my silly requests many times to try to keep me content.
My wife, Marsha, who had not really driven our "new" vehicle very much,
learned how to drive it in during daylight and night time hours, and even
through the awful weather conditions. She came almost every day to the Hospital
to help look after me. It was very interesting to hear that because of her
position as my wife, the medical people always had to ask her for final approval
on issues that came up. That was not something easy for her to do. She had to
make some very tough decisions in a very short period of time. From what I
heard subsequently, she made some of the best decisions that obviously helped me
recover!
At such a fragile stage in the hospital, not many people knew what my
illness was or what action should be taken to help out. Many who suffer from
this rare form of Encephalitis end up dying. My wife said that after she
listened to the doctor, talking about my medical conditions, she was confident
that I would recover. I can only describe it as miraculous.
Clearly, some of the others on the medical side had to tell her of some of
the negative actions that she might have to decide upon quickly with the illness
that I had because it took about a week before they really knew what my medical
problem was. After many tests and ruling out different diseases, they received
medical news from the hospital in Toronto to whom they had sent my blood work
off, for confirming the diagnosis and proceeding with specific
medication.
The Hospital staff had to treat me for a variety of medical issues, some of
which were probably not required, because of the unknown illness that I suffered
until the report came back from Toronto. Fortunately, that even treated me on
some of the medical issues involving my disease even though they were not quite
sure what I had. Otherwise, they may well have started so late in my recovery
process that I might just be a vegetable in some old folks home even if I had
not died because the disease has gone forward so far.
My daughter, Melissa and her boyfriend, Bill, also came to visit. However,
my daughter unfortunately was under a great deal of stress every time she came.
Her boyfriend had a lot more experience in dealing with medical matters and
took the role, on quite a number of occasions, to make sure that I was being
handled well at the hospital, consulting with my medical team for updates, and
providing any important information back to my daughter.
My daughter had also experienced a number of very serious medical matters
in the past. My horrific kind of situation just added another terrible type of
trauma. Fortunately, she is working on recovering and doing the best she can
with coping.
Apparently, since my daughter couldn't visit the hospital due to her
extreme stress, she was able to coordinate people to come and visit me, and also
found out a considerable amount of information about my medical condition
through researching and contacting appropriate groups. This helped her out
greatly, even though it was tough to deal with the fact that this illness could
take my life. She also had to help my wife handle all the things that she
personally had to deal with at this stage of her life. As an example, several
times a week my daughter would come over to our place to help my wife with
preparing and serving food to me. Also, it was very important to make sure my
wife was taking care of herself both physically and mentally. It was up to her
and her boyfriend, Bill, to make sure that all the home duties were taken care
of because it was becoming overwhelming for my wife.
I have to admit that I don't remember a thing that took place at my house
after I left hospital. This is just information I have been told on what they
remember going through because frankly, I thought for the longest period of time
I was still a patient during that period of time in the hospital!
I think I will stop there because this article is getting quite long and a
lot of it has been set out before if you have read some of the earlier articles.
I still need to tell you in more detail what happened after I left the hospital.
If you have still read everything, then I am very grateful. I think it is
important that you learn as much as you possibly can about me and my recovery
and what I think might happen in the future, which could impact you, as we all
continue to age.
I will take responsibility if I am boring you because I have written about
this before but I need to write about it so I can heal. I need to reveal
everything especially to myself about this illness that I suffered so greatly
and the recovery that is taking so long. You need to learn not only for
yourself possibly if something like this happens to you, but also to members of
your family and friends if they suffer the way that I did.
I'll be writing more and posting more soon.
