Have you wondered what it would be like to find yourself suddenly in Alice’s shoes? Having fallen down a rabbit-hole or climbed
through a looking glass, you find yourself unexpectedly in a strange dimension. In early 2012 at the age of 57, my wife
Carolie experienced a brain aneurysm. To
be more precise, she had a grade 4
sub-arachnoid haemorrhage, which resulted from a ruptured right anterior
communicating artery aneurysm.*
The propensity to indulge in the odd metaphor, allegory and allusion
becomes a solace at such times. Not only
is the brain an extraordinary labyrinth (the picture above is of a brain that
has experienced a sub-arachnoid haemorrhage), but the places we go to survive
and recover from such events are equally labyrinthine.
My wife has a whimsical love of nursery rhymes and allegorical tales for
children, using them to great effect in their education. At the time of these events she was deputy
principal of a primary school with specialized expertise in early childhood
learning, literacy and remedial education. Lewis Carroll’s magical work of
logical contradictions in altered states of consciousness came to my mind on
day one of these events.
 | |||
| Carolie in tune with the moon |
Mercifully, the ancients left a note or two as a guide for the
perplexed. Carroll seems to have pondered several of these in the making of his
tale of a girl who stumbles out of the ‘norm’ into a journey of discovery,
during which she encounters and befriends strange entities, endures and
overcomes hardships, and in the process changes fundamentally – a kind of human
alchemy. We trust you will forgive the occasional indulgence of metaphor and
allusion as we grapple with our trip down the rabbit hole and through the
looking glass.
From the early poor houses of the Basilian Fathers, through multiple
historical iterations, leading to the modern hospital behemoth, people in
crisis have turned to hospitals. Their
complexity has grown exponentially since the nineteenth century. The following tale is largely made up of
recollections of, and observations on, time spent in a medical labyrinth – we
did it together, from different sides of the experiential equation.
Our tale might provide some insights into the peculiar lot of people
thrust without warning into the unfamiliar world of intensive care units and
allied health professionals, hospital pharmacopeia, and high dependency
neurological and rehabilitation wards.
It is a confronting place, with its own lexicon, hierarchy, protocols,
terrors and revelations. We hope to
bring some comfort as well. The hospital
labyrinth is daunting for the uninitiated, with strange loops and byways, but
it is a navigable space that can promote healing with the help of a true
compass, sympathetic inhabitants, determination and doughty friends.
Initially, we will limit ourselves to memories of the period spent surviving stroke
in two major public hospitals. Our
subsequent adventures in the world of out-patient rehabilitation and in private
hospitals to manage ongoing cranial infection and eventual cranioplasty will be explored later in this space.
Mark
Thomson & Carolie Wilson
Canberra
2015
* The word aneurysm comes from the Latin word aneurysma,
which means dilatation. Aneurysm is an abnormal local dilatation in the wall of
a blood vessel, usually an artery, due to a defect, disease, or injury. Sub arachnoid hemorrhage or SAH is a form of
stroke and comprises 7% of all strokes. It is a medical emergency and can lead
to death or severe disability - even when recognized and treated at an early
stage. Up to half of all cases of SAH are fatal and 10–15% of casualties die
before reaching a hospital, and those who survive often have neurological or
cognitive impairment.
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