A Brain Haemorrhage

So I guess the best place to start is at the beginning.

It was April 24th 2022, a Sunday morning pretty much like any other. The previous day, my wife and I had been decorating our new house, but we hadn’t yet moved. Our completion date was a month away, but we were able to get a head start, so we spent a full day painting and having a few drinks whilst doing it.

That previous night, we argued at the dinner table, something we never do, and I still felt bad about it when I woke up, even though we had made up by that point. These things remain with you sometimes.

I could hear the kids downstairs with my wife, so it was time to get up and have a shower. More painting to do.

Dread

Whilst in the shower, I suddenly felt like I was drunk, as hammered as one could be with loss of all balance and depth perception. I couldn’t put my left foot on the floor. Like the most extreme version of ‘the spins’ you get when you’ve drunk too much and try to lie down.

It felt like the floor was falling away. I closed my eyes, thinking I was having a waking-up moment, but when I opened them again, the room felt even more lopsided. I couldn’t find my footing, but turned off the shower and somehow stumbled into the towel rail. I felt like I was being picked up by my feet and dangled from side to side.

I put the towel over my head and eyes and closed them tightly. Again, I thought it was just a strange few seconds, but something felt off.

Knowing

I heard my family in the bedroom, and I came out to tell my wife that I felt odd.

I didn’t feel like my words were in sync with my mouth or head.

I sat on the bed and looked at her, and carried on talking, but it felt like I wasn’t in my own head. She said perhaps I was just hot, which I disagreed with, and it crossed my mind that I might be having a stroke. But surely not, you’re 42, it’s just something else.

This was always my biggest fear. Something you can’t see. Something you can’t prepare for. You can’t see it coming.

I lifted my arms above my head and took a breath to see whether I could smell burnt toast, something I have been paranoid about forever. I couldn’t, and my face seemed to still be in one piece, but I felt hot and cold, weak and disoriented.

When I turned my head, the rest of the world took a while to catch up.

Pain

I suddenly experienced a stiff neck on my left side and went to grab it. My wife had the kids in the room, and I asked her to take them out. I just did not feel right at all.

Within a minute or so, the neck stiffness had turned into a full-on burning pain on both sides, like someone was pressing their thumbs into my neck. I dramatically rolled about the bed; I didn’t know what else to do.

I had never felt this before. It was somehow getting worse and moving into my head.

Then the one thing that I’ll never, ever forget: the ‘explosion’ in my head.

I have a pretty high pain threshold; I have walked off sprains and blows and whatnot, never been bothered by injections, etc.

This was pain I had never experienced. I thought my head was going to explode from the inside out. It was just indescribable. Well, I can describe it, but not to the extent that it deserves.

I can’t handle this. I need it to stop.

Realisation

At this point, something inside you knows things are not right. A rising feeling in my chest, like for the first time in my life, I feared dying.

There is no way I can take much more of this.

My wife called the 111 number, but they didn’t say much. After some time rolling around with a towel over my head and hoping for the pain to disappear, it didn’t. She said to me that she would drive to A&E. I refused, saying I couldn’t move.

She dialled 999 whilst I lay there trying to stay as still as possible. I needed the darkness; it was the only form of respite, and it wasn’t enough.

So fucking painful.

All I could think of was trying to get it to stop. When I look back, this was the prep I needed for what was yet to come: Pain. In its purest, most indiscriminate form.

I suddenly needed to be sick. I made it to the toilet to throw up, something I hadn’t done since a sickness bug had laid me up at Doncaster racecourse in 2021. Could it be a bug? Why is my neck hurting so much?

I went back under a towel and felt scared. This is not normal. You simply know when something is seriously wrong. Instincts are absolutely kicking in. A sensation was going through me. I can only describe it as a need for survival. Despite the pain, my senses felt on alert, but my body felt like it was taking a beating.

It’s not something trivial.

Downstairs and out.

I remember the ambulance arriving quite quickly. I can’t remember much about what they said. I sat up, they put the blood pressure thing on, I think there was some other stuff, but quickly I managed to put on some shorts and walk downstairs with them.

I threw up again on the driveway.

One of the paramedics offered me morphine in the ambulance for the pain. I said no, for some inexplicable reason.

I guess I thought it would be over soon. This was a mistake I wish to whatever god there is, I never made.

I recall the ambulance scraping its way out, crunching its exterior against the wall of the driveway.

I recall arriving, being wheeled in, and being parked in a corridor full of other people waiting for attention. They parked me right underneath a bright light, which felt like it was burning a focused and unrelenting hole into my head.

I had my phone, and I checked every now and again to see what the time was. I believe I was under the light from hell for 45 minutes before anyone came to see me. The pain is all I can remember in any detail.

I got wheeled in for an MRI, and I asked someone, anyone, for something to help with the pain. The nurse responded by asking who I was before walking out. I felt like crying at this point and had started to get a bit worked up about what was going on.

I was wheeled down to the triage area, where people go when they have broken something or are waiting to go and get fixed up.

Whilst in here I waited, feeling in pain but not sure why, I felt super tired and not sure why. Everything was kind of not sure, and when my wife got there, it was much the same. She looked worried, which made me worried.

Bad news

And then the junior doctor came over with that look on her face. The sort that preempts a conversation she did not want to have, it was a genuine look of sympathy and sadness.

In short, she said they had found a bleed - my heart rushed. I honestly hadn’t felt anything quite like it. I kept my poker face. My wife, however, did not; I could see her face drop.

I tried to play it down as something that boxers and rugby players get all the time, but the doctor shook her head. She told me I would have to go to a specialist hospital in Oxford, and from there, they would find out what and why, and the potential surgery or measures that would need to be taken.

Surgery?

All I could think about was a giant scar down the side of my head.

That just flashed up in my mind. I thought of having this mark on me, one of those people that you see who bear a huge, physical sign of the biggest struggle.

Brain surgery.

Someone putting metal things inside my brain?

What about my kids? The new house. My kids might not want to look at me. I might scare them.

It all came to mind.

My wife overheard a nurse telling someone else that I’d had a ‘massive bleed’, which didn’t help much.

So tired at this point, I simply didn’t know what to think, so I tried not to, but the morphine they had given me started to work its magic, but that was the last time I was allowed that kind of relief.

After an unknown period of time, I was moved to an ambulance. The driver said we’d be going fast. Someone sat in the back with me and let me cover my head. I asked if I could listen to something with my headphones to help block out the noise. I felt tired.

What was going to happen?

My parents both arrived separately at some point. Seeing them standing over you is also a full-circle moment. Sobering. They did not really have the words. My Dad asked, ‘Why is this happening to you?’ - it was emotive, but I had no answer. I just said, “I’ll be ok.”

Put on a brave face. It’s bad enough.

“What’s the worst-case scenario?”

One crumb of comfort came from the way my mind works.

If I were going to die, I would likely have done it by now. Right? …..Right?

The paramedics are not here, and although I’m in an ambulance, it’s not a helicopter. So I thought perhaps I was in the clear… but this wasn’t yet the case.