Ordeal of student who had stroke on the operating table
A STUDENT has revealed the horrifying moment she had a stroke as she was given an anaesthetic for an operation – but was unable to tell the doctors.
Hollie Simpson, 23, who suffers from cystic fibrosis, was about to have surgery to stop bleeding on her lungs.
Just before the anaesthetic Hollie had blacked out.
When she came around she knew something was seriously wrong, but was unable to tell anyone what had happened.
So the anaesthetic was administered and the operation went ahead as planned.
Hollie recalled: “I move my right side.
“I started wriggling and trying to move my head. I couldn’t communicate something was wrong, so they did the surgery anyway.”
Concerns were raised when Hollie, from Forres, Moray, took an unusually long time to come around from the four-hour operation. couldn’t Medics at the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh rushed her to a CT scan where they discovered she had suffered a stroke.
Hollie, then 21, was numb down her right side, could not move and was unable to speak.
After 10 days of hospital treatment she was moved to a stroke unit in Inverness, where she was by far the youngest person on the ward.
Slow
For the past two years the Open University student has been learning to speak and walk again. Hollie said: “The doctors said it was uncommon for someone to have a stroke so young. “I was just sitting there, the youngest person on the ward by about 20 years. “I had to learn to speak again by watching people talk and relearn to move my mouth in the correct way. Within a few months I was talking a lot more, but I was still slow to speak and learn new words.”
As she began the long road to recovery Hollie found herself facing crippling anxiety about her speech – and was terrified of leaving the house.
Despite the operation she continued to suffer from bleeding on her lungs and was frightened to leave the house alone in case she was taken ill.
But with help from a rehabilitation co-ordinator from Chest Heart & Stroke Scotland, Hollie began to regain her confidence.
She said: “I still have anxiety and when I get really tired or ill my speech can be affected. But I’m getting a lot more confident and can do things on my own.”
Now in her second year of a Creative Writing and Classics degree, Hollie credits her mother Julie and father Allan with helping her to move forward.
She said: “Mum was good.
“When I didn’t want to talk to the nurses she made me talk to them, or attempt to.” really