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The day I had the stroke, I was at work. It was in the afternoon and I was
sitting down and I was talking to a client on the phone, and apparently, I made some
strange noises, and then the young woman who was in the office as well came up and asked
whether I was alright. I wasn't aware that anything had happened, so I sort of said yes,
I was, I was fine, and then she went and got someone else and apparently, they could see
my whole right side had dropped. I felt that everything was right and I couldn't work out
why everyone was fussing about. I got to the hospital and they told me, and then, once
it dawned on me it totally changed and I was extremely, extremely upset, very, crying all
the time and I remember saying to my friend, we're both big bush-walkers, and I remember
saying to her, "I don't think I'll ever walk again", and that was my biggest fear at that
stage. Everybody thought that I made a miraculous recovery, so they weren't... no one was really
aware if there were any serious issues. I went home to Mum and Dad's after the four
days in hospital and I stayed there for three weeks. Mum could notice that I was really
going downhill in the sense of my mobility wasn't very good. I could tell as well that
it was like all my nerve ends were switched on all the time. I was very tight on the right
side and I could also tell that my memory was not good. Everything that I did, the amount
of effort that it took in the brain to work out, I was getting so... I was probably frustrated
and unable to deal with my emotions. My sister-in-law came up one Sunday afternoon. She actually
was the one that really picked up that I wasn't working very well, and that I was very teary,
and she said to me that she felt that I was going through a bit of a depression, and what
we did then she was great what we did then was she wrote down what we needed to do. Tomorrow
morning, ring my doctor, make an appointment, also ring the counsellor that I had known
prior, many years before, to see if I could make an appointment. Oh, hi Max, it's Tracey.
How're you going? And then, I think I started feeling a bit more relieved that things were
starting to... I was feeling a bit more in control. When I saw my own doctor, he diagnosed
me that I did have... I was having effects of a depression which was after the stroke
and he really just sort of said to me that most people that go through something like
that will have some type of an effect. But he obviously, when you think of it, if he
put me on antidepressants straight-away, he obviously felt that that was needed. He was
good in saying that he felt that I was handling the stroke, having a stroke, very well and
felt that most people would be going through what I would be going through. We sat down
and again we wrote down what I needed to do, just to protect myself. I had to get up early
in the morning, make sure that I got dressed, make sure that I had breakfast and my little
cat had breakfast, and pretty much for the next six months, that was pretty much all
I did. I lost everything and so I knew that that had happened and I knew that it was going
to be very difficult to get out of it. Also, at that stage, with having the stroke, it
was like my mind was in a bit of a fog. It dictated what I could say, how I could talk.
It also told me when I'd had enough. What was very important, I guess, with the depression,
was to actually do these sensible, practical things that could help. There is a grieving
process and I think it happens in multi-levels. You go through different emotions. You go
through the denial, through the frustration, the anger, and then all of a sudden it hits
you. You go through all these different emotions and those things I really feel someone who's
had a stroke needs to go through, with the depression, to actually come out on top of
it. Would have been middle of last year, that was when I stopped fighting it. It's not a
matter of going back to my normal self 'cause that just won't happen, but once you accept
it, you're much happier and you can then make a new life for your own.