Hannah Derwent never expected to wake up from brain surgery having experienced a new medical issue to recover from aside from her benign brain tumor – a stroke. Read about how she is facing recovery head on with strength and courage.
How to put a brain injury in succinct form? There’s so much to say. Well, I had a craniotomy on 23rd May, 2017. It was for a meningioma, a benign brain tumor. They said considering the size, surgery was the only option. So I had surgery, that I was actually quite relaxed about. It was my first ever surgery and I was quite excited. It was a 12 hour operation and at the 7 hour mark, I had a bleed. An intraoperative bleed. A bleed caused by someone being in there. And it was on my brain stem, making the effect quite massive. Basically the scalpel gave me a brain stem stroke.
So I woke, totally unable to move, talk and swallow. And with double vision and totally incontinent. How your life can change in 12 hours. I was working at parliament house just before the operation. Yes, with headaches and extreme fatigue, but I was otherwise functioning fine. On waking, not so much. So, what was supposed to be 10 days in hospital became three months!
So after a stint in the ICU and the neurosurgery ward, I was sent to the rehab ward to be ‘fixed’. I was in rehab for 2 months. On being discharged, rehab continued and still does. I’m still in rehab 4 days a week. I understand my recovery so far has been quite remarkable. I can now talk and swallow, albeit with some deficits. I pretty much walk everywhere, though have to work on my endurance. And I limp because my foot has dropped so I can’t run. Not sure if those muscles will come back. Oh yeah, and I’m no longer incontinent! I’m still not back at work and it’s been almost a year. But there’s still much work to be done. Thing about the brain stem is that no cognition is done there, but it controls your automatic functions so physically, I was kind of wrecked. Now, not AS wrecked. My shoulder has also slightly subluxed, which reduces how much I can move it, but I’m increasingly doing things two handed. Though as I say to my surgeon, when he asks about my hand, I think my surgical career is over! Ha!
So it’s been a ride. It’s very interesting having a physical disability, but no cognitive deficits. Which I’m grateful for, but everyone treats you like your stupid! Which I’m actually quite far from. So being treated like an idiot constantly is pretty hard. But I’ve realised that we all constantly make assumptions. If they want to know, they can ask and if they want to assume, let them do it.
And the monotony that is rehab continues. Oh, so monotonous…but so necessary. There’s no other way to get better. I’m yet to have a setback, that’ll be interesting when it comes. I’ve got the kind of personality that takes setbacks very hard, so we shall see how that pans out.
Having a brain injury at 35 is not really how I planned things. But that’s life, full of unplanned things. And tragedy is actually everywhere. People are just generally not talking about it. And considering how things could have been, I actually got off pretty lucky. Guess it could have been much better too. Anyway, the order of things has been set, no one can change the past, so we just aim to make the future better.
To continue to follow Hannah’s journey, follow her at @hanny_span on Instagram and check out her blog at www.hannahderwent.com. Connect with more stroke and brain injury survivors on the YouSoRock Facebook Support Group at https://www.facebook.com/groups/yousorock.
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