Understanding Cerebral Infarction: A Comprehensive Guide
Introduction
Cerebral infarction, commonly known as a stroke, is a critical medical condition that demands immediate attention. In this comprehensive guide, we delve into the intricacies of cerebral infarction, providing essential insights into its causes, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment.
Causes of Cerebral Infarction
Unraveling the Factors
Cerebral infarction occurs when blood flow to a part of the brain is obstructed, leading to oxygen deprivation and subsequent damage. The primary causes encompass:
1. Atherosclerosis: The buildup of plaque in arteries restricts blood flow.
2. Embolic Stroke: Blood clots or debris travel to the brain, causing a blockage.
3. Small Vessel Disease: Microscopic blood vessel damage hinders proper circulation.
Symptoms: Recognizing the Signs
Vigilance Matters
Recognizing the symptoms of cerebral infarction is crucial for prompt intervention. Common signs include:
– Sudden Weakness or Numbness: Particularly on one side of the body.
– Difficulty Speaking or Understanding Speech: Aphasia can manifest during a stroke.
– Vision Disturbances: Blurred or loss of vision in one or both eyes.
Diagnosis: Precision in Assessment
Advanced Diagnostic Procedures
Accurate diagnosis is pivotal in devising an effective treatment plan. Medical professionals employ various diagnostic tools, including:
– MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging): Detailed images of the brain help identify infarctions.
– CT (Computed Tomography) Scan: Rapid imaging to detect bleeding or blockages.
– Cerebral Angiography: Visualizing blood vessels to pinpoint obstructions.
Treatment Approaches
Swift and Effective Measures
Timely intervention is paramount in minimizing the impact of cerebral infarction. Treatment modalities involve:
- Clot-Busting Medications: Intravenous drugs to dissolve blood clots.
- Antiplatelet Medications: Reducing the risk of further clot formation.
- Rehabilitation Therapy: Physiotherapy aids in recovery and prevents complications.
Prevention Strategies
Proactive Measures
Preventing cerebral infarction involves adopting a proactive approach:
– Maintain a Healthy Lifestyle: Regular exercise and a balanced diet promote cardiovascular health.
– Control Hypertension: Keeping blood pressure in check reduces stroke risk.
– Smoking Cessation: Quitting smoking significantly diminishes the likelihood of stroke.
Conclusion
Understanding cerebral infarction is paramount for early detection and effective management. By adopting preventative measures and recognizing the signs, individuals can mitigate the risk of stroke. This comprehensive guide serves as a valuable resource, empowering readers with the knowledge needed to navigate the complexities of cerebral infarction.
The Interview
Discover the inspiring journey of Bobbie-Anne Hutchinson, a mom who faced trauma, lost a child to a brain tumor, and battled cerebral infarctions. Her strength shines through.
Highlights:
00:49 Introduction
01:48 The first cerebral infarction symptoms
13:57 Undiagnosed stroke and grief
22:57 Cerebral Infarction Recovery for a 41-year-old woman
31:59 Stroke recovery and its impact on daily life
36:51 Unexpected kindness and support during a difficult time
41:13 Managing brain injury recovery and mental health
48:57 Therapy and its benefits for personal growth
53:59 Therapy and family dynamics
1:06:27 Life after stroke with aphasia and balance issues
1:19:57 Lessons from the stroke
1:23:05 A message to others
1:34:47 The benefits of listening to the podcast
Transcript:
Bill 0:00
My new book about stroke recovery is called The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened and is now available for purchase on Amazon. In the book, you will learn about mindset. The second brain in your gut, the little brain in your heart, you will learn about the benefits and downsides to Neuroplasticity how to get better sleep the food you should avoid after stroke, and the amazing benefits you get from the smallest amount of exercise.
Bill 0:29
What happens when you follow your heart’s desires, the amazing positive benefits you get from surrounding yourself with the right people, and how to discover your life’s purpose to get a copy? To learn more go to recoveryafterstroke.com/book Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the Recovery after Stroke podcast.
Introduction – Bobbie-Anne Hutchinson
Bill 0:49
This is episode 288. My guest today is a lady who has had her fair share of challenging life events to overcome including abuse, child loss, and multiple strokes, and all before the age of 38. Her approach to life and recovery is to be commended. And we can all learn a thing or two about how to carry on with life. Bobby Anne Hutchinson, welcome to the podcast.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:15
Thank you for having me.
Bill 1:16
Do you reckon the kids will be quiet and they won’t come in and start causing trouble and asking for mum?
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:23
Well, they’ve got a big sister who told him anything that needs to go to her. So that the
Bill 1:30
Big sister’s responsible, how old is Big sister?
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:34
16
Bill 1:36
She should be able to handle everything. Chocolate just before bed, that’d be a good idea.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:46
Yeah.
The first cerebral infarction symptoms
Bill 1:48
Hey, tell me a little bit about what happened to you.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:53
Well, it all started in 2020 which was a bit of a crazy year for everybody. I’d had a few health problems before it which is strange because looking back I probably was one of the early COVID cases I had a lot of breathing problems and things like that. I was set to do the Edinburgh marathon but then obviously everything shut down and things were canceled. And then it was by the July the end of third like the end of June into July.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 2:35
I started to develop really bad ear pain like an excruciating bit like an ice pick or mouse. So rang the GPS nobody was allowed to see a GP It was fun. I explained my situation and I was given some airdrops for a suspected ear infection. Come A few days later I was ringing again because, by this time, all the left side of my face was like felt like it was crawling within sex and norm.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 3:20
What I found interesting listening to your podcast podcasts and others is the number of migraines cannot explain the suffering that also went on to experience a stroke because I was a big migraine sufferer right from my back 11 You know when a girl starts to start having periods and things like that all that when all that started to just before that was when I first had my first migraine and dropped a mug.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 4:02
You know I had old a bit and I looked to my mom and I said my hands went funny and dropped to Morgan that was my first ever migraine. So no missing things like that were quite common when I had a migraine it was all those symptoms of stroke kind of thing. But then with this numbness in my face, it was something different you know, it just wouldn’t go away.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 4:28
Whereas migraine if you have them you know you’ve got like 50 minutes anomalous and you can do it by the clock once you’ve got used to MCAT so then I did bring the GP again and explain that now I add facial numbness still add all this pain in my and they gave me an appointment to go in to see them which was sending a few days into July. And she treated me for a cosa.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 5:06
When you look back, you know, you just think, what did she try a call so I had a healing holster on my lip? So I was she asked if anything else had been wrong. And I said I’ve had a cold sore. So she treated me with some Acyclovir for a course or tablet form. And I took them because you trust them and you think, Okay, well, we’ll go with that. And to be honest, when I went, I was back at Dr. Google and Dr. Google did say that.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 5:41
The nerve in your face is where the coastal virus can lay dormant. So I went with it. Finished the Acyclovir Lange back, maybe a week, 10 days later, still know. bumping into things nauseous. And desperate to be well, because I’m a mom, and mom’s cat before. So they say don’t then it’s true. So I rang back, I think by then she was with me. And she told me I could see her nurse practitioner. So I went to see him.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 6:28
And I was in floods of tears by them, because all added these breathing issues and with my chest. And then I like numbness now in my fingertips and my left foot would my toes, they felt almost like they were bound together. You know, like if you put a rubber band around your fingers, and they feel like that, that sort of sensation. And he was lovely. And he referred me to rheumatology and gave me some codeine.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 7:06
He was lovely, but it wasn’t the right the right thing. And this went on for a few months. And then by October, nothing was getting any better. I did put a complaint to my GP and just said to them, I think this I had so I listed my neurological symptoms within my, my, in my email, I had a daughter that at age five died of a brain tumor.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 7:41
So I was fully aware of suffering migraine, so I knew what was with my head and what was you know, like a normal nickel. And I moved up because I couldn’t go on like that. My new GP sent me MRIs of my head and neck. But it’s because it was COVID These scans didn’t take place till January 21. So by then, I’d been six months. With all the symptoms, and I, we’re coming up to like three years of me getting my diagnosis.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 8:35
I had these scams. And I didn’t get the results back for a couple of weeks. And it was just by chance really because I had gone to the doctor to do some physio for my chest, you know for the pains and our suffering. And he did a neurological assessment, the physio and he asked if they’d scan to the whole of my spine or just my neck and I was like no just my neck. But the results of the scan went on file for him to look for them.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 9:16
So his response was he was going to chase up my scans that afternoon. I came home that morning and dropped my husband off for whatever knee surgery I was going about my life with normal driving, cooking, or everything all those things would go wrong.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 9:39
didn’t crash her out but you know like I was blaming a medication that had been given thinking now the poor goblins made making me feel a bit dizzy or you just I knew there was something and part of me was thinking I had MS because Dr. Google was convinced and that were just driven. So I got to go home.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 10:10
After my appointment, the kids compared made tea. And I got a phone call from my GP with Lisa’s words, do you want me to go through everything, I just want to get straight to the point. I was like, I want to just want to know. And he hit me with your scan show. You’ve had multiple strokes in your cerebellum. You can’t drive from this moment. He was like, My life just got switched off. And I’m listening to all this. And I think it’s all good this year.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 10:49
And then this, I’m thinking, what am I going to do? How do I get my daughter to preschool and everything? Because I live in a village. So I don’t live in the nearest supermarket like 810 miles. There’s no shop in the village, you know, like everything that you need is, is a drive away. So I was like, Okay.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 11:18
And he explained that they didn’t know, they didn’t know what was causing it. So then my head feels like a ticking time bomb because these things are happening. And I’ve not got any idea why or how to prevent it. So the following day, when I was meant to pick Dean up I couldn’t. He was brought home by my parents, and then I received a phone call from a stroke consultant, telling me I needed to ring No, no, no.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 11:54
And after six months of feeling like you’re a pain in someone’s backside, I went, I can get somebody to drive me and I can get a lift. He was like this is a medical emergency. mean no, no nine for an ambulance, though I did. But before that I was like, oh gosh, I didn’t want to frighten my children because their dad had just come home with his knee bound up. We were already in the middle of a pandemic.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 12:28
And I saw my now 16-year-old I was trying to bake she was making cookies. My little ones were just watching Saturday, Peppa Pig, or something like that. Why did I make this phone call? And then paramedics came but I wasn’t your typical laid on the floor. Stroke. That’s wrong. 999 I was I answered the door. Like coming in. they were a bit hesitant then to take me because I looked like I was normal.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 13:07
And my doctor rang while they were there and was like, No, this lady needs to take him. So off I went. And I spent nine days in hospital. That was strange because we were in a winter lockdown here in the UK. And everybody was old. And I don’t mean that in a horrible way. They were just older.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 13:36
And they look poorly and I didn’t. And it wouldn’t be I didn’t want to be an inconvenience, you know, like, and I’d felt like an inconvenience for six months. So that’s why I felt that way. And I felt like almost like a floor.
Undiagnosed stroke and grief
Bill 13:57
Yeah, I do. Because when I went to hospital the first time I couldn’t feel my left side. But that wasn’t visible to anybody. And then I was walking around. I was meeting people in a cafe who were coming to visit me. I was completely functional. And they’ve got scans that show a bleed on the brain. And that doesn’t match the person.
Bill 14:26
And then it’s like, something weird is going on here. And this guy shouldn’t be up and about and though constantly calling me back to my ward to my bed. And people were visiting me and though kind of brushing it off as you know, he’ll be right. Everything’s fine.
Bill 14:47
Yeah, yeah, no problem. And it is a little difficult because even the most trained usually the statistics for people like you and me are working against us. After all, The way the most well-trained have seen a lot of stroke patients, and they all or the majority of them look a certain way. Yeah.
Bill 15:08
And they’ve got to overcome their bias of what a stroke patient looks like, and they’ve got to go. This would also look like a stroke patient and we have to do something about it. But I get the whole children thing. And I’ve got to get to work thing and all that because they’re the stories that I played. I played the while, you know, I’ve got to go to work. And I’ve got all my employees.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 15:37
Yeah, all of it in a flash. Yeah.
Bill 15:41
And I feel like I’m on the edge of death. I just feel like, I’m a little bit unwell. Yeah. Because when I measure the level of unwell feelings, they’re not. My feelings weren’t worse than a headache and didn’t have symptoms that were worse than a headache. Or that made me feel like I couldn’t breathe. Or I couldn’t walk or I didn’t have energy. I had none of that stuff. I just had numbness left side, strange numbness.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 16:17
So mine was my left side. Yeah.
Bill 16:21
So I was like, Oh, okay. I suppose it’s serious. There is a bleeding there. Something is going on. But I’m also looking in the mirror going, Hey, you look great. Don’t worry.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 16:34
You comparing what you as on eBay with like six of the ladies and they were all the ladies next to me was wonderful. The story she could tell she was in her 80s. But I couldn’t visit there was no visiting allowed because it was locked down. And you it was just really to take it all into. There was scan after scan.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 17:02
And then there were they’re asking questions that Eva, I think they must have been a bit shocked that I’ve been walking around for six months like this. And after when do you know what it is? You replay it again thinking I’ve driven my car well, my children in it. I could have killed myself could have killed you know, we’re all of those things.
Bill 17:28
Everything. I did the same. But you’re the record holder, six months undiagnosed after a stroke is the record. I’ve never heard of anyone that went that long. And it’s so good. That we’re still without trying it. Yeah. It’s so good that we’re still talking about it. And what what I wanted to touch on was what you mentioned a little earlier, you said you had a daughter who died of a brain tumor. How long ago was that?
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 17:58
That was back in 2005. So her name was Yasmin and that just came out of the blue as well. So we went strawberry picking. And she was a bit stumbling on her feet. We were a week back from holiday. And she was complaining of a Mecca in a bit. So I’ve made an update. This was the Sunday. It was a week after we got back on Monday.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 18:28
I took it to see my GP and it was instant. Things seem so much slower now. My GP back then retired. But she was there minutes. He was like close your eyes and she started swaying. And that was it was on the phone. So we were he was like this is our head it’s it’s serious. It’s you know, we need to get to the hospital. Yeah, and it was it turned out to be the tumor was wrapped around a brainstem it’s nobody’s ever survived it. It’s rare.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 19:06
And it was that was nearly six months of you chase a miracle cos you do because you’re if you’re a parent, it’s your child. But then, you know, you had the trips to Disneyland and all of that. That was where the mirror from finding out about stroke and her illness and I’ve got older children so my older children back when she was poorly were like seven four and two. And I had children at home back then.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 19:44
I mean how old as may take so long ago, three years so she would have been 13 as me, and then the younger girls would have been six 3246 and four, so like where I’m video like now, they were video calling me in hospital. But you know that that part of you that’s thinking, I need to get home What if I don’t get home? How can I watch my older children grieve? And I say that’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 20:28
The grave this sister, yeah grieving child that I can see it from a perspective of a parent losing a child, but when, when you were a child in your sister’s garden, they can figure out why you’re, you have to relive that over and over. Why what’s happened, why she’s not here? But yeah, it was complete. Although it was me this time, it was like a mirror of that. I kept my children kept grieving me. I didn’t want that that was. But yeah, it was awful to join.
Bill 21:08
But you also had a brain issue
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 21:12
that my eldest children I’ve got, Lydia was at home that she’s in Yoona. Now, but she was she was 16 at the time. And for her, and as maybe it was now, who was their teen? I knew that they would be Google. And
Intro 21:30
If you’ve had a stroke, and you’re in recovery, you’ll know what a scary and confusing time it can be, you’re likely to have a lot of questions going through your mind. Like, how long will it take to recover? Will I recover? What things should I avoid? In case I make matters worse, doctors will explain things that, you’ve never had a stroke before, and you probably don’t know what questions to ask.
Intro 21:55
If this is you, you may be missing out on doing things that could help speed up your recovery. If you’re finding yourself in that situation, stop worrying, and head to recoveryafterstroke.com where you can download a guide that will help you it’s called Seven Questions to Ask Your Doctor about your Stroke.
Intro 22:14
These seven questions are the ones Bill wished he’d asked when he was recovering from a stroke, they’ll not only help you better understand your condition, they’ll help you take a more active role in your recovery. Head to the website. Now, recoverafterstroke.com and download the guide. It’s free.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 22:33
Even though I’ve not gotten to all those six months of Google, I didn’t come to it being a stroke. And even getting that diagnosis, it was like, Oh, we know what it is. Now we can fix it. oblivious to the journey that was to come.
Cerebral Infarction Recovery for a 41-year-old woman
Bill 22:57
Right? Yeah, there Yeah. Because they can fix the underlying cause. Or they can put you decrease the risk of another one happening through medication intervention, whatever. But they can’t tell you how to live with a stroke brain.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 23:16
And that’s still part of life three years later. So my strokes were caused by my right vertebral artery dissection in it, even that, right, so they come and they tell you or you’ve got a tear in your artery and you think okay, so you’re Googling again because they don’t tell you enough. Do they just tell you a little snippet? Yeah.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 23:41
And I thought, Oh, it’s just a little one, only be little and they said, I’ll give you some medication usually takes six months to heal. I had a scam 12 months after I was diagnosed, and my shots like a slight improvement. The next tear is from vertebrae see five, two must go. So it’s the neurologist was like, yeah, it’s a big one. So near enough to the length of my neck.
Bill 24:16
That’s huge. I’ve never heard of it that long before.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 24:23
But I didn’t know that for a year. So I’m on medication for the rest of my life now. So I was like, Oh, well we do we scan it again that you’ll make no difference. Okay, so we just go with it.
Bill 24:42
Okay, because of the length of it. They come probably with a toilette.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 24:47
Now and I think when you’re younger, they try not to if they can put something in there, don’t they? Because they risk causing more harm. stroke. So the damage
Bill 25:03
How old are you?
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 25:06
41 now, okay. So they said, that when I got my scans, my scans were taken on the 11th of January 21. And Eat said I had sorry, a recent stroke, meaning that would have been in the last four weeks. And then there was evidence of other strokes, but they can’t tell me when they took place, if it was all at once, so like lots of little clots going off, or they just kept popping in
Bill 25:55
the blood flow in your artery would be slightly altered just enough so that instead of the blood running beautifully through the tube of the artery, it just changes the flow a little and that flow change just causes clots, and then they go up, as the blood flows up, they go up, and the blood thinners would help minimize the possibility that a clot will a occur and they will get lodged somewhere.
Bill 26:34
Right. So it seems like a decent intervention and then hopefully time over at the same time the blood vessel starts to sort of retract and heal and then become recovered and recover from its tear.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 26:52
You wouldn’t I wonder if because it was left so long. That’s why it’s taking longer to feel to heal back. That’s
Bill 27:04
a decent thing to wonder. I think that’s a decent thing to wonder what’s interesting is that you’re very appear you’re appearing very functional. What has left you with are the deficits that are visible and tell me about the ones that are not visible.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 27:25
So when I went if we go back to those six months, and I was noticing things like dizziness ease to run that back then I was active. You rush it, you know rushing around like a normal mom does that. I had four girls at home at the time. I forgot what the question was about deficits. Yeah, I Yeah. I always got bruises on my legs. I bump into things a lot.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 28:07
So I would then concentrate on what I was bumping on my right side to try and avoid. I used to get lots of bruises on my arms here like cutting my forearms that you just wouldn’t normally get yourself there. I later figured out that when I was concentrating on why it was door handles, I would have bumped my arm a lot on door handles.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 28:34
So when I started to focus on this side, I started fumbling this side. I fell I still fall now I had a fall two days ago down the stairs. I fell just after Christmas. I don’t cook alone, because it’s not safe, I set the things, melt things in the cooker. Not a lot of it can be a tension as well as a lot is going on.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 29:11
So when they do these little cognitive tests that are lots of those when you’re in a room on your own with just one person asking you to do a task. You can give it your full attention. Providing it not for to eat. But put me in the kitchen with kids coming in and asking when the tea is ready or anything else. And the task of making sure everything is getting cooked. It just goes to Yeah. I don’t leave the house alone.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 29:46
The thermostat goal was to put my younger children on a school bus just outside the house and then back in because I suffer badly from Visual vertigo. So anything moving makes me feel like I move in the wind is the worst. Because it’s not just, it’s not just trees and everything. It’s the noise. It disorientated me. So when it was back before I’d been diagnosed and things were full on my life felt a bit like I was in a simulator.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 30:25
You know, you don’t know everything. There’s just a screen, but you feel like you’re on that roller coaster and you’re not. Yeah, that is how it is a lot. And fatigue makes that worse. school holidays are difficult because there’s not enough time for me to have a nap kind of thing. And that first year, I tried my hardest because now I knew what was wrong.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 30:56
And I’m a positive person. After Yasmin had died and things. I’ve always seen the gratitude in the fact that I had, had the opportunity to be her mom. And I was battling. Every month, there were more tests, and there were more appointments. And I kept crashing, every time I was trying to do what juggle all those balls that I used to juggle.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 31:32
Down, I would go. And it was awful. It was like the worst hangover while you’re still awake, and you’re not even allowed to drink. And then you’re totally, it’s learning that self-compassion and learning to adjust to who you are now. It’s
Stroke recovery and its impact on daily life
Bill 31:59
it’s where you have to everything gets challenged all your beliefs, or your thoughts or your ideas, or your preconceived ideas, all your expectations, everything gets challenged because this stroke is making you feel I call it out of this world spaced out the biggest trip I’ve ever had. I don’t know how to explain it to people.
Bill 32:27
But those days of being in another in another universe, I don’t know why I don’t know what it was, I couldn’t explain it like being that tripped out and spaced out. And then not and trying to bring myself back to reality. It challenged every single belief thought and idea that I ever had in my life. And while you’re dealing with recovery, and then all these things are being challenged all at the same time.
Bill 32:58
And you’re trying to navigate relationships, and you’re trying to keep all the rest of the family calm. Because we’re a great family. And it’s chaos when you tell a great parent, that there’s something wrong with you. It’s just insane. And then you’re managing them. And then I say, Hang on. I’m supposed to be recovering and healing.
Bill 33:22
I’m not supposed to be doing all this other shit, trying to work out what the fuck is going on in my life, as well as managing all you people, as well as trying to get people to school. There’s trying to get people to work to do work. I’m just supposed to be recovering as people recover from a broken bottle toe.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 33:43
Yeah. Because there’s no physical. I was gone for nine days when I said Dean had just come home but you had an ACL, like, on his knees. I missed all of those nine days. So I was all prepared. There was at the time I was like, couldn’t have been any worse time and because he’d come home and it needed. He needed the attention and, and all of that and I was gone. I was whisked away. But after I thought it was perfect timing.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 34:21
Because we were in lockdown. So there was no school or anything like that. My biggest thing back then was my eldest daughter was only 16 and she was doing what I would do. She had to because because of Deen had been laid off. She had to take on my role and I didn’t know when I was getting out of there.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 34:47
Every day I was asking, can I go home and I saw people who looked poorly leaving there was a lady Ah, that was awful. They put in a, you know, shut the curtains around and you could hear it till the last breath in, in the middle of the night, and with all this commotion, and that made it made it real. This is serious and you have to accept that you’ll go home when you’re ready when they say you’re safe enough.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 35:26
You’re leaving. But today, they have big bandages and yard crutches and everybody could see oh, he’s he looks Blackie is not in a good way. My head’s like, well in around like you said, like even that spaced out. But nobody can see that. The only time they saw things was when I started to make mistakes. Like, this is a really a pod lemonade all over my dinner plate, rather than in my cup.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 36:10
And then I was making mistakes like you in the morning making cereal for the girls pouring hot water on the cereal instead of in my milk. So now everything is like if there’s out on the side moved. And whatever task is going on, if it’s a bowl of cereal? That’s it. That’s the only thing in front of me.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 36:34
But yeah, they Yeah. They look normal, so to speak. But you’re not. And you like you said you do need it when somebody says I’m tired. And you think now you don’t know what time it is.
Unexpected kindness and support during a difficult time
Bill 36:51
Yeah, it’s an interesting thing that people try and do when I would say I’m tired. And then there’s I’m trying to Yeah, yeah, it’s not a competition. I’m not trying to compete with your level of tiredness. I’m just trying to communicate how I cannot do anything at all.
Bill 37:12
Yeah, the switch is off and I cannot move I cannot comprehend I cannot process I cannot think I can hardly speak. It is really difficult to kind of iterate to people, your experience so that they can give you a break, and get off your back or be calm or gentle or whatever. I don’t know, it’s so weird.
Bill 37:39
Your husband, your partners, your husband, your husband, your husband, so he’s got nine days of you at the hospital while his knees getting better. And when you get home is back on his feet. How long does that kind of surgery take to recover?
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 37:59
He was then able to get around on his crutches. So while I was in the hospital, obviously wanted, when he wanted to get a shower and things like that. Or bedtime. Lydia would make sure he was in bed, and then she would turn the light off and shut the door for dinner like you’re just to put your children to bed and there she was putting their dog to bed. Yeah, they were managing though. And you know, when you see people differently.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 38:35
There were people that I’ve met once through somebody else that we’re sending lasagna from, from another tech like from in the town to us. People were offering to do it. And then it was just that that side of things was really beautiful. But there were people that you thought you could rely on and you couldn’t.
Bill 39:02
The blessing of those weirdos that just turn up out of nowhere that you don’t expect is such a brilliant thing. And it’s I thought it was just me, but it’s repeated. Some so many people tell me the same thing. And then, for me, those amazing people that just turned up and did stuff and helped that when I needed them. They all then also kind of just disappeared as well.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 39:27
Yeah, and they didn’t want anything for it.
Bill 39:29
Yeah, you just turned up and you did stuff now you’re gone back to business as usual. That’s what we had and then the other people are kind of still not really back. You know, the ones that you thought were gonna be around. They’re still not back.
Bill 39:45
And that’s a really interesting blessing and it’s unexpected. It’s really lovely that it happens because I’ve had so much and without them on a said that no I don’t know what I’ve done I think they kind of ease the suffering a little bit they are the pain and the challenges and all that sort of stuff. And it just was such a blessing to have them around. It was cool.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 40:18
People from afar were sending there was massive because I didn’t know that big shop ready for Dean with his knee. But they’ve run out of shampoo or something like that. So my friend that lives in St. Helens, sent a package with like, shampoo and conditioner, and lots of other little treats but you know, it was just a really lovely way of seeing those people that care. Even if you don’t know.
Bill 40:50
Yeah, that’s such a good gesture shampoo, like little things. Little things are useful. Oh yeah. Hey, your balance issues and all that kind of stuff? Yeah. Do you do rehab? Are you going through a process of trying to improve that stuff?
Managing cerebral infarction recovery and mental health
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 41:13
I did. So for the time after I was given you all of a sudden have all these different the therapists don’t yesterday you’ve got one like a physio and then you’ve got another one that says you’d like you’re out here you’re not that so they all come in and they were all doing lots of things but they were all very hesitant to go beyond a certain point because of my neck so they and obviously at this time I didn’t know about them how long that tear was or all the repercussions and all of that.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 42:00
So we did things like moving your eyes moving your head they would throw me off and they said oh once we get the go-ahead these things get more intense and can make you sick, but he never got there because they just weren’t willing to take that risk I have to do things like I watch disco balls and the trees from a safe space so sit on a chair and watch the trees move in or I went to the beach.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 42:41
And I didn’t realize until I got to the beach the waves oh God watching the water move it was like I had to sit down before I fell you just don’t You don’t realize how much that balancing can just throw up turn, in turn, in right so in the kitchen my cook has one side and then I lined the plates the other behind me on another worktop forever turn right I don’t get as dizzy but if I go left it’s like it’s almost like I’ve been spun round numerous times rather than just turning like what is it 180.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 43:39
Yeah, so those sort of you learn to have learned to adapt in lots of ways but it was it’s like learning to walk again and I didn’t have to learn to walk again but you know it was easier to turn left because it’s quicker than going right because you go right right they we did lots of things with my hands you know for sensation. little balls were given lots of toys to play with.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 44:11
Which was which made it fun because I could involve the children with things like rolling balls or catching beanbags and things like that. I’d walk up and down the kitchen turning my head and involving them in the garden you know to try and almost like Reese center myself but nothing seems to the if I’ve been a bit the busier I have been the busier I am.
Bill 44:50
Yeah. Okay, that makes sense to me. The more tired you are and your brain is the more obvious that deficits are. Yeah.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 45:04
And it’s learning to go from that busy for a long person to because to begin with I felt lazy. Lazy. Did you feel lazy to have a nap?
Bill 45:18
Yeah, yeah.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 45:21
You put your baby down for a nap you don’t go for a nap yourself. Yeah. Yes. And that took a lot of a lot of self-compassion, and a lot of therapy, to realize that my needs had changed. And if I don’t have that now I’ll pay for it later. Yeah.
Bill 45:46
I went through that for a lot a long time as well and then felt bad about going and napping. And then at one point, I was working in an office, I, one of those Angel people rocked up and said, there’s a job for you in an office, you don’t have to do anything to get this job you’ve got the job.
Bill 46:06
If you turn up to an interview, a fake interview, you know, we’ll go through the motions, and you’ll have a job. And I was like, great, because I needed one to get me back in the swing of things, and to get my brain retrained or recalibrated to working eight-hour days and traveling and being around people and all that, and it was really difficult at the beginning. So I used to duck out and go to the car, in the car park, and just sleep in the car.
Bill 46:38
And it would help it wouldn’t make a difference to calming things and give me a a little bit of an energy boost. But when I was supposed to be productive doing something so for example, at home, when you’re supposed to be, I don’t know preparing a meal or cutting the grass or vacuuming or mopping or something like it made me feel like oh my god, there’s all these things to do.
Bill 47:12
And I’m looking at me I’m resting and sleeping and doing nothing and that I shouldn’t be doing anything, I should be doing something and I Oh has. But then I need to rest because if I don’t risks, then I’ll be terrible at the end of the day. And then if I’m terrible attend dinner and sleep well.
Bill 47:29
And I used to just go drive myself bonkers trying to get the get myself to just rest just settle down and rest sleep. That was it was such an impossible task to convince myself that less is more. And you have to do less to get more out of the day.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 47:53
Learning that battery thing is a real, real part of who you are now. And if you’ve if you were if you’ve got 60%, you’ve got 60% That day, you’re not gonna gain any more. We’re just going to try and learn that what was difficult that first year was what made that battle hard because you’re trying to you, you look okay, and everybody sees you as okay, and you’re trying to be the person you were before the crashes and all of that.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 48:31
And by the end of that year, that was when it hit my mental health. While I was in the hospital, I was asked, Did I wanted some sort of therapy and I was like, because I’ve been made to feel for those six months. Like I was imaginary, you know, this imagining these things was that there’s nothing you told me to come here. I didn’t.
Therapy and its benefits for personal growth
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 48:59
I didn’t come to waste your time. But it’s several patients. It should have been from the beginning. I know that now. And here in the UK, people don’t have a therapist. And I listen to lots of podcasts, not just your like, just not like about anything, and a lot of Americans and that they’ve all got a therapist and I think we should we as a country, there will be high end.
Bill 49:31
Are you in Wales?
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 49:33
No. And then Lincolnshire. Okay.
Bill 49:37
Well, yeah, you should have everyone should. And why? Because I think if it wasn’t for the therapy that I had before the stroke for about eight or nine years if it wasn’t for that, I think I would have been a terrible stroke survivor. I would have been shocked because what I had done was I had dealt with a lot of my Shit before the strokes.
Bill 50:02
So when I was recovering, I was recovering from the stroke, not from all the other stuff that I dragged with me to stroke recovery. And I took it Oh, yeah, I can. And I understand that people do that because you’re unaware of what you don’t know you don’t know. Right. So when I went to therapy, we had lost my, sister-in-law’s husband had passed away at 31 from a rare cancer.
Bill 50:34
And it was a liver cancer was similar to what you said about your daughter, it had enveloped his liver, and it was untreatable, they couldn’t do anything. It was like a flat, thin layer of something that had enveloped his liver, and it shut it down. And when he passed away, I was really, that was the first person I’d ever known who passed away and I was not well. And I was trying to come to terms with it all.
Bill 51:09
So and, and sort of therapist and I could tell you that for the first year or two, I was the most months, at least once or twice a month. And then, and then it started to settle down, and then I would go intermittently. And then what was cool was when my kids were born, I first was born in 1996.
Bill 51:31
My second was born in 2000. This all happened in around 1999. When my kids were sort of getting older, and I was struggling with being a dad, and the usual stuff, I was 22 years old when I was a dad for the first time, right? So I had no idea what the hell I was doing. I would take the kids with me. And they didn’t know that we were going into therapy. All they knew was we were going to say, Patricia. Yeah. And Patricia was a lady who was my parent’s age.
Bill 52:09
And she was just my, my, she became my confidant, she became my, my, the person I went to, for wisdom, for guidance for counsel for everything, and it had evolved from I’m going there for you to fix me or to tell me what’s wrong with me you had become this whole, like, maternal thing. That was, yeah, that was happening.
Bill 52:37
Even though my mom’s around and my dad’s around, it was good to outsource some of those things, because they don’t have the skills and the resources to support me in certain things. They couldn’t do it and expecting them to do it wasn’t going to work.
Bill 52:53
So also, I don’t like expecting my wife to have all the solutions for me and all the answers to all my, what ails me, you know, like, she can’t play every single role in my life that I need, it’s not possible, you have to outsource some of those tasks to people who are trained in those areas.
Bill 53:19
So we go with the children, and we’ll talk about their little problems, you know, and they will, they would just think they’re chatting, you know, that led to me being able to get them to go to therapy later on in life when they have dramas and problems without it being a problem because now, it’s so used to the process.
Therapy and family dynamics
Bill 53:46
Every time they don’t want to burden us, or they don’t want to discuss something with us at the depth that they don’t want any they need disgust. They go and see a therapist now, my oldest is now 27. And the youngest is 23. And we’ve developed that whole idea that therapy is just part of life. It’s not something you do when things are terrible, or when things get bad or something terrible happens.
Bill 54:15
You just it’s something that you do you just go and that’s how I do it. I just go. And that just going means that nothing ever, not nothing doesn’t ever get acknowledged or dealt with or sorted or worked on. And that’s it releases a whole bunch of burdens and it gets all the burden back and then
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 54:46
it doesn’t grow to a point of where do you begin? It doesn’t snow right away I wish it was like about a year. Yeah,
Bill 54:56
It doesn’t snowball and then you’re not dealing with a massive snow So you’re dealing with little, little bits of snowflakes, and they’re easier to resolve and they go away. So when you get to a serious life, issue like a stroke, all you have to do is deal with a stroke. When I’m coaching stroke survivors, I told one of my stroke survivors who I coached, yesterday, I told this to her yesterday.
Bill 55:21
Most of the people who I’m coaching think that they’re getting stroke recovery coaching, they’re not getting any of that what they’re getting is support to deal with all the shit that’s getting in the way of them dealing with their recovery. That’s all it is. Yeah.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 55:38
It’s so true.
Bill 55:40
You know, and I understand that people get how many kids are there in total with Yasmin 577, right? And it makes sense that mums or dads or parents or people with nine people in the family are going to have less time for that kind of thing.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 56:03
But they were they said, there’s a big gap between so my youngest is, she’s just turned seven. She’s Christmas Day, Baby. The only thing that’s gonna happen was to me that she was born a Christian that she’s seven, and my eldest is nearly 26. So there’s a big, but you put them all together, and they’re just not just normal siblings, you know? Yeah.
Bill 56:31
I thought I started with.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 56:33
Yeah, well, I was a teen mom. But because they, the older ones had gone through what they’ve gone through Yasmin. It was never not not spoken about. So although we didn’t have a therapist, and I didn’t take them to therapy, Callum BLDC, did speak to somebody within a school setting. As a family, it’s so open. she’s not, she’s spoken about nearly every day. On birthdays, we have a birthday cake.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 57:10
And they all make a wish, you know? Because I didn’t want it to become something we couldn’t talk about. And now my younger children are beginning to ask questions. They watch a program where it’s like an American thing. And there’s a girl in it that’s got cancer. And they’ve watched it for a while. And as a parent, you know, it’s something you know, it’s safe, and you see little bits of it.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 57:40
And this girl, array kept changing, because she had wigs. So that was when I realized this girl had cancer. So I said, oh, when is this girl poorly? And I was like, yeah, she’s got cancer me. And she asked why she had no hair while she had to wear a wig. So I went through the chemotherapy thing. And then we get questions like, Did Yasmin’s hair or Fallout? And it’s never, they don’t think, Oh, I can’t ask that.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 58:13
Because I’m upset Mommy. They just asked. And I get random questions from all of them. But that’s lovely that they can do that. And with my stroke, there was nothing. Nothing was hidden. And then following after that battle, to regain back to who I was. Speaking about that, we should speak about our mental health. Absolutely. Get me through COVID We’re very lucky because where we live, we’ve got a really big garden.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 58:54
It’s really, we were fortunate in that respect, then. And that’s what we did. We played that it was just like one big summer holiday. They were the younger ones who were oblivious to what was going on. COVID was a big thing because everybody got a snapshot of what my life’s like now.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 59:23
And everybody, everybody knew what it was like to the world shut down. And but when the world reopened I cilia Yeah, that was that was difficult because people then just got on with their lives, and you’re watching it almost through a window. I remember when he asked me what was poorly and I was looking at a hospital window. And people were on the way to work or university and there were bosses.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 59:56
And I was like they’ve got no idea Look at them just going about normal life. Not that they should think, oh, there are proposals out there. But, it just makes you it makes you realize. But what it did for me, was I went from feeling trapped, because it was at home. And through therapy and all of that, now I feel free.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:00:31
I don’t know how I don’t have to be somewhere or fit a million things into my day. You know, like, because in a way that’s trapped, having to fit everything in and running by when you’ve got loads of kids, and you’ve got to be there and everywhere, and tea and, all of that. Not that I felt trapped that and you know.
Bill 1:01:06
What you’ve found now is you’ve found space that you can hang out. Yeah, I found that when the kids were at work at school, and my wife went back to work after I was sick, because I was, for about three years on and off, I was in and out of work and hospital and everything.
Bill 1:01:25
And then I found that when they were up, it was like bliss time, they were at what we’re at work and school, and it’s like I get, I get to be myself and chill out and learn things and discover things and research things and all that kind of stuff. And it was the most time I’ve ever spent in my own space, you know, being productive by doing nothing.
Bill 1:01:53
Or, you know, because I did learn how to do nothing. But it took a while for me to get there. And when I got there, it’s like, wow, like I’ve managed to do nothing all day today. And I feel really good. But it’s but it wasn’t anything. It was it was it was something because I was actively doing nothing.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:02:24
Yeah, I would say like, I watch loads of different podcasts on people, famous people, and things like this. And the knowledge I’ve gained from that is unbelievable. Yeah, the hours, the amount of hours. And I mean, I fall asleep together and wake up to a different one. But that yeah, there are things I’ve learned some of them. I’ll watch them again because I found them interesting.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:02:54
And feel like I didn’t, I didn’t take enough of it in I want to listen again. But there’s nothing there’s silence. Not have it because I get overwhelmed by someone’s I’m on a game on the phone. And then there’s TV on Mommy, mommy, mommy. Light in, it’s all too much. And I will say I cannot go. And I really, that situation sometimes is just too much. So a Monday is my favorite because everybody goes back to school and to work. And I get to just have no noise. The noise that I choose is that’s it.
Bill 1:03:42
Early on in the podcast. I interviewed Antonio Iannella. And I think it was before Episode 30 Somewhere there. Antonio had a massive stroke while he was overseas, it was due to an AVM similar condition to me. And he was away from home in Vietnam, I think. When he had the stroke, they came back as being treated, but his relationship broke, broke down.
Bill 1:04:14
And it was on the way to being broken down. But the stroke kind of ended up quicker. And then when they were working on custody of the children. You know, you’d think that as a father, what the instinct is, you’re gonna have your kids as often as possible. And the same with the mum, right? Make sense. But he had this little, strange little blessing that came out of not having custody of the kids for half the week, which was that he could recharge his batteries.
Bill 1:04:51
And he said that when he was then with them, he could be with them even though he was messed up because of the stroke right And that was a real cool thing that he discovered that was a benefit to the separation that he didn’t X, he didn’t think that would be the case. You know, it’s been a long time since his strokes and he’s much better than he was. But it was time that he needed to himself. And if he was still married, if he was still married to them later on, yeah, the kids would have been in his space all the time, which would have been normal because they were little at the time.
Life after stroke with aphasia and balance issues
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:05:41
You need that self-time. Yeah. And before I think I was I was finding things to do all the time that I didn’t need to do. Just to get it just because I could, because I could drive to do a bit of shopping or, and now I don’t, there’s no desire to dive and think. Not that I can’t be bothered account. There have been situations where I’ve ended up in the shopping center, not on my own with somebody. And it’s too much because I wasn’t prepared for it. You know, you’re thrown into all that. Hustle, bustle noise that overwhelms. I just think I just want to be at home. I don’t have to deal with this anymore.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:06:52
Just rushing around grumpy.
Bill 1:06:54
Yeah. Yeah, I know. It’s too much. I remember, first being out of the hospital, I think it would have been maybe a couple of weeks or months after my brain surgery. And I felt like everyone was bumping into me. And I never noticed that before. And it’s like, why is everyone bumping into me? Now, it could have been because I was bumping into them too, right? Because I couldn’t feel my left side. My balance is a little bit out of whack. And I wasn’t judging. I wasn’t judging them properly.
Bill 1:07:26
And, you know, I was leaning into them or something. I don’t know what, and that was a little bit disconcerting. The last thing I need is to fall over and hit myself now, you know, stop bumping into me. So that made it difficult for me to be at the local shopping center or shopping mall. And then I went one time, and I parked the car. And then I forgot where I parked the car. And I couldn’t find the car. And I just kept walking around. Now to try and find the car had no idea.
Bill 1:07:57
And you know, when you can tell when you forget something and then you you say, Ah I’ll think of it in a minute. There was no thinking of it in a minute. I knew I couldn’t think of it in a minute. I knew it was gonna come back, I just had to keep walking around until I walked through all the particular car spaces, and then came across my car. Now there it’s not a massive place.
Bill 1:08:27
There wasn’t panicking. And I knew that I eventually would find it and I would be able to walk home worst-case scenario. It wasn’t that far away. It’s about two or three kilometers away. And then I just couldn’t find the car. I had no 00 memory or storage of that. And it’s like, this is all too hard. I think I’d rather just be at home.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:08:57
You know, when you do things like that, where people will go to me? Oh, I forget things all the time. You don’t understand.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:09:10
Do you like the tired thing or do they go to me? I can feel like that. I think I’ll wish you I wish you could just have a day of it. I’m just saying that these people are lovely.
Bill 1:09:24
They’re oblivious and they should be. They should be and it’s okay. It’s okay that they are but it is a bit. I don’t know. It’s annoying. I remember tripping over and walking up the stairs one day with my cousin nearby. And she said oh, don’t worry about our trip I have all the time. I know but my leg didn’t know that those that it wasn’t high enough to step on the step.
Bill 1:09:50
That’s why I tripped. It’s not because I was being you know my mind was elsewhere or wasn’t paying attention or whatever. It’s because my leg wouldn’t lift itself far enough to get to the next step. That’s why I’ve fallen. And it’s, I know you’re trying to make it better. But it’s because of my stroke brain that it happened. And it’s okay that it happened. It doesn’t matter what happened. And you don’t have to make it better. But I appreciate you’re trying to make it better for me. So don’t feel bad about falling over or embarrassed or something. I’m not embarrassed.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:10:28
You get used to it. We’re used to it now, aren’t we? And it becomes like, something comical. You just stop it. You giggle it off. Yeah, even my girls now just giggle off when I do something silly. Yeah.
Bill 1:10:44
I woke up. I woke up last night thirsty, and I needed to get a drink. So getting out of bed. I have to focus on walking properly in the middle of the night when I’m half asleep.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:10:58
It is a nightmare.
Bill 1:10:59
It’s weird. And to know, it happens every single day. When I wake up in the morning, my leg takes a bit longer to get up in the night than I have. And in the middle of the night when I am half asleep and I’m just thirsty. And I need to just get a drink of water and I can hardly see in front of me. I’ve got to make sure that I’m not falling over. Yeah, just Yeah. It’s okay.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:11:28
Yeah, it’s okay. Don’t worry. Yeah. That was what we had to do. That’s what I think a lot. We are the lucky ones that we got to we get to tell our stories because we made it through.
Bill 1:11:46
I think so. In Episode 200, I interviewed Cheryl Schultz. I don’t know if you’ve been through my back catalog too far. But yeah, Cheryl is not a stroke survivor, but she had her inner ear damaged because of some medication when she was unwell many years ago. And, and she wasn’t able to walk or move or do anything. For many years, she had constant vertigo. No matter what she was doing. Her world was spinning. Anyhow, she got to the point where she bumped into this amazing neuroscientist who developed a device that they put on her tongue. And with a gyroscope on her head.
Bill 1:12:40
Every time she moved, the gyroscope would measure the movement backward, forwards, left and right. And it was zap her tongue. And if she was standing straight, it would not zap her tongue. And then if she moved back it would zap her tongue to the back, if she moved it forward, it would zap it forward left and right. With that device, she learned how to get her balance back and her vertigo went away. So what I would suggest is go back to the back catalogue recoveryafterstroke.com/episodes.
Bill 1:13:22
And then just scroll down the numbers you’ll see 200 Have a listen to that. Because people who have balance issues, and cerebellar balance issues may benefit from the device that’s still available, you can still purchase a device like that, from some guys in America that Cheryl worked with 20 years ago to develop this prototype. She’s a Neuroplasticity sensation lady because they knowingly retrained her tongue to take over the task of her inner ear.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:14:03
That’s so clever.
Bill 1:14:06
So maybe a little bit of hope is there for people who have balance issues after a stroke, my balance issues are related to me not being able to feel my leg. So that’s a bit different. But when the cerebellum has been injured, or the inner ear has been injured, that’s different to sensory, I have sensory issues. And that’s not related to my inner ear or the balance in my cerebellum. It’s related to my sense of feeling my foot properly and it tells the Mother Brain that it is on the ground. That’s the challenge that I have. But for some others that episode might be interesting worth checking out a listening to and if it does not apply to you. It’s a bloody amazing story.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:14:57
I had the time when Before I’d been diagnosed, I’d get to the stairs, ready to walk up the stairs. And I was just done there. Because they didn’t know what they were doing next, you know, all those instinctive things that you learn from being a tiny top. And you’ve just done your whole life? And I would be like, Why can’t I? Why won’t my leg just that’s something you you get to the set, you have a look about you and I just could not from here to there was not having any of it.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:15:37
And if there was another issue that I still have now you know, that urge to go to the toilet for a way, and then I’ll get there is irrelevant. I’ve met those people that also have this, then I sit there, I just come away, you know, when it’s like my brain is just not going to suck it up again. Wait, because it’s not gonna work until it wants to weird. One little thing was puzzling. Whereas bumping into the door or feeling dizzy and sick, and I could find a reason for what they were.
Bill 1:16:28
Yeah, now, you know, you have a kind of have a reason, but you don’t have an explanation. Maybe? No. Yeah. Do you know why it’s not working? Because but I can’t explain. Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. Hey, what’s the hardest thing about stroke?
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:16:54
That’s a tough one. But I think for me, the hardest part was the long road to getting a diagnosis which was my biggest battle. And then the decline in my mental health. However, I do believe I had to fall apart to find myself and then go from that. Then, the most difficult bit was that it was as a post-Yasmin Dion I fought with everything I had to become strong and independent and rebuild a life. I always say that with hair, I it was like, two, I lost her twice because she lost the tour illness, then I lost it today.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:18:01
And it’s like having two lives. Because of my older children to somebody else. So I’ve moved here we’ve built I built a new life and all of that, and then this happened. And it was like a crash, it was like 15 years gone back in time. But finding yourself in other ways to be the freedom of silence, of not having to do all those millions of things wasn’t really, the hardest part probably for me as a person.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:18:47
I like to micromanage things. That’s like, yeah, like having like having as my making the cookies while the ambulance has come in to do strapped here. I’m constantly thinking of other people’s impact it’s gonna have on other people before I’m thinking of myself. But from that difficult bit of it, I’ve learned that I’m just as important as them. And moms are allowed to be born there.
Bill 1:19:19
And you are important. Just because and also, you need to be well, because you’ve got other people that need you to be well.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:19:33
Definitely,
Bill 1:19:34
Your husband needs you to be well. The rest of the kids need you to be well. Your husband needs you to be well. And that’s just them. We’re not talking about everyone else. But direct family. That’s one of the things I tried to explain to people who are caring for stroke survivors is you have to look after yourself, because we can’t have two people unwell at the same time.
Lessons from the cerebral infarction
Bill 1:19:57
There’s no point in that. You’ve got it’d be well, so look after yourself, take the timeout, leave the show survivor in the corner, curled over bawling their eyes out whatever the hell they have to do just leave him in the corner. Well, notion. Yeah, yeah, it won’t harm them more than the stroke has just gone now, do you think for 10 minutes and just get a breather? You know, whatever you have to do, it’s really important. What about what has taught you? Do you think?
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:20:31
It’s taught me that what you’ve taught me that I am, I have to take care of myself a bit more than finding different ways to before a stroke, I would go for a run to relieve some stress or something like that. Now I’m a bit more confined can that can be difficult in that I can’t just go for a walk I’ve had enough. So I find those five-minute pieces in the day. And it’s taught me that life’s precious.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:21:18
And it also taught me you don’t give up the fight. You listen to your body, and you believe in what you know is wrong. And if you need to change the dowser, you’ve changed. And you keep fighting for the answer. Instinct is, it is a big, that gut instinct. You know, I knew there was something wrong. I knew and I didn’t want to. When I sat with that nurse, I said to him, Look, my daughter died from a brain tumor. I’m not saying I’ve got a range tumor. And I was crying. I said, there’s something wrong.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:22:00
And I just want to be well, I don’t want to be ill. I’m not here to be ill and, you know, like, Look at me. I’m Paulie. I want to be well. So don’t give up that fight. Oh, and I say that all the time, even when I took Yasmin. And that morning that I took her. She bumped into the fridge. Now I know from being a migraine sufferer. When I’ve got a migraine, I will admit them bumps.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:22:29
And everyone was saying Oh, she’ll just have an ear infection. You’ve been on the plane. And my gut instinct then was like, there’s so much more to this or even in like that death of the child stroke. You’ve got to choose happy and yeah. Even getting older is a privilege. I’m so privileged and so grateful to still be here.
A message to others from Bobbie Anne Hutchinson
Bill 1:23:05
Yeah. What, do you want to tell other people who are listening, going through a similar thing that you’re going through?
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:23:14
Not to give up, never give up, and never. I got to the point where I was. I was feeling suicidal because I felt like a burden. I felt like I couldn’t leave my house and cook tea for my children. But they’re cooking it with me because they’re watching me cook their tea, that sort of thing. Therapy. Huge what you said about who you went to talk to Emily became like that friend, that two years of therapy, and we talked about everything.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:23:56
Once once I’d hit the end of that first year, it felt like this box just burst open. And it was like I could not shove anything more down. The tears were uncontrollable. That again, just ask for help. You know, I laid in bed that Christmas Eve, and I said to Dean, what’s the point? It may be an email, right? And I know there was a point and my children are the reason I’m still here obviously. But there’s no shame in that.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:24:33
There’s no shame in feeling that way. And there’s always somebody that would rather you ring them and speak to them than get that call that you’ve hurt yourself. When I left therapy, I finished therapy but it was towards the end of November, and I was ready to leave you in A friend you know like when he feels like you’ve lost a friend in a way because Emily was part of the neuropsychology department so because they were specialists for brain injury and stroke and things.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:25:17
But they don’t get to see the next chapter and I wrote a really lovely card and I was just like, thanks for being that that safe space that safe adult you know but yeah, I do think that I think she doesn’t get to see what happens next and that even then they want to see you go off and live your life don’t know. Yeah, yeah, mental health was I learned that my mental health was really important.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:25:53
I learned that self-compassion was really important. Naps. Take a nap. Why shouldn’t you have a nap? Pajama days? Right? You’re gonna think back and I think you’re not lazy. If you need a rest. You need a rest. Yeah, you will make your baby stay up all day, you are glad to have an app. And if you need an app, this is a power nap. You wake up and you? Yeah, you’ve got a bit more power to crack on and do a bit of tea or stay up an hour later so you can watch something together. And one day at a time.
Bill 1:26:40
I know. It’s late where you are. So I’m going to try and get you off in a little bit. But I love our chat, our chat has been awesome. I want to acknowledge Dean. Tell me about Dean how is he doing? What’s going on with him? Because he’s a busy man. And he’s dealing with all this stuff. And his wife is unwell and lost and all that stuff. He’s dealing with it all at the same time. How’s he doing?
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:27:08
He’s doing good. So post knee surgery which was he decided to change jobs and he went off to be a postman so now he’s walking around on that leg like it’s a brand new funny loaf of bread I can do this great because I could just go back can you pick this? Did you have to go to the shop for bread? Yeah um yeah. We it was teamwork it was teamwork and although siblings bicker and all of that they’re so good in that sort of situation even in happy situations.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:27:56
But in that situation, they all looked after each other then yeah, even that like looked after that put him in bed what the shower room, and everybody seems to be everybody else’s life is going on. And it’s amazing to see them like start university move to college dean get a new job. And I love that they they’re all still and they don’t mind if my iPhone my iPhone and app.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:28:35
Which is lovely. They don’t they do acknowledge now that the biggest thing in my house because of the balance, I have developed this ignorance to look down because looking down can make me well, there’s there’s stuff everywhere. You know, like, shoe, we’ve just put me back there. And if I don’t, if I see it, like when I fell at Christmas, and they had left, I’ve got to step out of my bedroom door. And then she’d left this new toy that was there that I put my foot on.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:29:17
And so I don’t want to what is that? And then I went over and it’s you know, because your brain is not as quick at reacting to stop you falling. You just go down and then you just lay there and they they’re like you’re right up like yeah, just give me fucking they just we don’t learn to see each other’s needs a bit more, and when like when you’ve got a teenager and they want to go sit in the bedroom, and you think oh, I don’t want to sit with me. My kids have been different.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:30:01
Some of them are happy to sit in the room and watch a bit of telly. And then some of them have like, one of the boys would go sit on these games or as they will sit and talk to my friends, which is all fine. We all come together when we need to and share time to get there. But everybody should be allowed to just filter off and do their own little thing.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:30:28
And then we come back and we talk about things and come home and complain about his day in the rain. While I’ve been snuggled up with my electric blanket It’s alright. I mean, I don’t I will say things like being like football. That man just put two men together and they instantly talk about football. Never met each other before. So he’s going to watch football tonight there was a football match and you can slip up I forgot what I was gonna say about football.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:31:09
Oh, so when I listened to podcasts, I mean, I listened to footballers, podcasts, bots, people you know, that have any interest to me. When you listen to people’s lives, they are interesting out there. You’re interested. We’ve got the stories that not a lot of people have. Not a lot of people have gotten out the other side as in they might not have gotten beyond their stroke or mental health took them down, you know, the book shame in it. I lost that. In hospital them old people. Wow, I loved it.
Bill 1:31:57
It is something about sharing. People think I’m not going to tell people what my problem is, or I don’t need to you know, whinge about my family life to people. And it’s true. You don’t need to whine about it. But you do need to talk about it. And if you talk about it in a context where you’re just giving a little bit of you’re giving yourself like a bit of a, like you’re releasing some weight from the shoulders.
Bill 1:32:23
Most people are prepared for you to do that without, you know, looking at you strangely, or whatever, their life isn’t any better or worse. And that’s what I found with the podcast Weed, people will contact me and say, I want to be on your podcast, right? Like you. And then. And then they’ll say, and by the way, I haven’t spoken to anyone about my stroke for 10 years.
Bill 1:32:47
It’s like, what are you on about? How can I be the first person and the rest of the planet? How can we be all the first people to hear about your stroke? And so yeah, I don’t know, I just didn’t talk about it before. And I feel like I need to now. So you know, there’s a there’s a definite to have a platform that enables people to just come on and talk and have an intimate conversation with the whole planet. It’s weird, but it is therapeutic.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:33:15
Even sharing on social media and things like that. Yeah. I don’t know if you did it, but after my stroke, I, when I got home, I was like, that my Instagram before my stroke was there was like slim in then I was getting married, you know, like just normal. You know, body positivity and all of that. And I was desperate then to find other people like me. That could show me what it’s like on the other side. You know, this recovery part of it. What comes next? Do we get cuz I thought I was just gonna miraculously get better? You need that you need if nobody’s sharing it. Yeah. Well, what do you notice?
Bill 1:34:10
We’re stuffed up. Now. I’m going to say something that’s going to sound a bit weird. What I like about you is you’ve had a lot of life experience. Now what I don’t like is the specific life experiences you’ve had. So unfortunately, according to your Instagram, you’re a survivor of two strokes, 37 and 38, child loss, and abuse. At 40 Odd you have come through. You’re talking in a way that feels empowering, and supportive, it feels like there’s a healing journey happening.
The benefits of listening to the podcast
Bill 1:34:47
It feels like you’ve learned, you’ve overcome, you know, you’ve recovered, you’ve done a whole bunch of things and you’re still going through all these challenges at the same time while you’ve done all those things. And it’s like, as if somebody like you wouldn’t be beneficial to others who are going through that and are early on in their recovery, to hear from like, the other people who have been through what you’ve been through, who are very early on.
Bill 1:35:20
They’re going to need more than just their skills to get through abuse, for example, because they’ve never, they never had to, they don’t know how to do that. So it’s bloody hard as well as being in an abusive situation. Getting over it is also hard because you just don’t have the skills you’ve never trained for. Same stroke. And the same with a child loss, you don’t have those skills. And it’s like, I need skills. Where do I get skills from?
Bill 1:35:52
Yeah, hopefully, somebody else will have gained those skills, and they can impart them to me. And that’s kind of what this is about, like this whole, come on my podcast and tell me about what’s happening for you. It’s like, I want you to impart your skills to other people who are listening. And I know for a fact that that’s making it better for you. And I know for a fact that it’s making it better for them.
Bill 1:36:21
And we can do that together on our own, we can’t do that we can’t do anything on our own. We need it, do it together. That’s important, you know. So I appreciate you coming on the podcast and reaching out sharing your story being so open. I’m not. I’m not able to, like completely understand what you’ve been through in your way.
Bill 1:36:50
But I relate to a lot of the things that you said, and that’s something that I appreciate. I you know, this is a therapy session for me as well as that and I hope that it is for other people, too.
Bobbie Anne Hutchinson 1:37:11
Thank you.
Bill 1:37:19
Thank you for joining us on today’s episode to get a copy of my book The Unexpected Way That a Stroke Became the Best Thing That Happened, go to Amazon, and search my name Bill Gasiamis. To learn more about my guests, including links to their social media, and to download a transcript of the entire interview, go to recoveryafterstroke.com/episodes Thank you to everybody who has already left a review about the podcast.
Bill 1:37:54
It means the world to me, podcasts live and thrive because of the reviews. And when you leave a review, you’re also helping others in need of this type of content to find it easier. And that’s making their stroke recovery just that little bit better. If you haven’t left a review or would like to the best way to do that is to go to iTunes and Spotify. Leave a five-star review and a few words about what the show means to you.
Bill 1:38:23
If you’re watching on YouTube comment below the video I respond to all the comments below the YouTube videos like the episode because then of course that also helps YouTube to know that this episode is worth listening to. To get notifications of future episodes, subscribe to the show and hit the notifications Bell. If you’re a stroke survivor with a story to share about your stroke experience. Come and join me on the show. The interviews are not scripted, you do not have to plan for them.
Bill 1:38:54
All you need to do is be a stroke survivor who wants to share their story in the hope that it will help somebody else going through something similar. If you’re a researcher and you’d like to share the findings of a recent study or you’re looking to recruit people into studies, you may also wish to reach out and be a guest on my show. If you have a commercial product that you would like to promote that is related to supporting stroke survivors recovery there is also a path for you to join me on a sponsored episode of the show.
Bill 1:39:23
Just go to recoveryafterstroke.com/contact and fill out the form explaining briefly which category you belong to. And I will respond with more details about how we can connect via Zoom. Thanks again for being here listening and interacting and for sending me amazing emails. I appreciate you all see you on the next episode.
Intro 1:39:51
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Intro 1:40:21
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Intro 1:40:45
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Intro 1:41:10
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