I'm Still Holding the Flannel

Part Two of Give Me a Minute, I’m Fine

There is something profoundly strange about waking up in hospital and discovering that your body has become everybody else’s business. Not in a malicious way, you understand. These people are trying to keep you alive, and I am enormously grateful for that. But somewhere between having your blood pressure taken, your limbs prodded, your veins accessed and your bodily functions discussed, you begin to wonder where the person who actually owns the body has gone.

I had arrived in Bristol following my second stroke, undergone a thrombectomy to remove a clot from my brain, and emerged on the other side remarkably intact. The doctors had done their clever work, the machinery had done its job, and now came the less glamorous business of being a patient.

Being a patient is not something I am naturally good at. I have spent most of my life being independent, making my own decisions and generally getting on with things. I am not particularly keen on being fussed over, and I certainly don’t enjoy having strangers involved in matters I would ordinarily conduct behind a firmly closed door.

And yet, there I was.

Somewhere along the way, a catheter had appeared. I hadn’t exactly been consulted about its arrival, although given the circumstances, I doubt I was in any condition to contribute much to the conversation. It was simply another piece of medical equipment attached to a body that had recently staged a rather spectacular rebellion.

Hospitals are full of these little surprises.

Then came the question of washing.

A bed bath was offered, perfectly kindly and professionally. But the thought of somebody else washing me was a step further than I was prepared to go. I might have had two strokes in seven months, but I still possessed two working hands, a reasonable amount of stubbornness and a fairly traditional sense of modesty.

So I declined.

Instead, I was given disposable flannels and some hot water. Wonderful. I could manage that. A small island of independence in a sea of medical intervention.

And there I was, holding my flannel.

It became rather symbolic, really. Every time another layer of personal privacy seemed about to disappear, I found myself defending that tiny patch of territory. I was still holding the flannel. Still doing something for myself. Still exercising some control over a situation in which nearly everything else had been taken out of my hands.

It wasn’t that anybody was being unkind. Quite the opposite. The staff were doing their jobs, often under tremendous pressure, dealing with people who were frightened, confused, ill or simply unable to manage the most ordinary things.

But there is a peculiar erosion of dignity that can occur when you become a hospital patient. Nobody necessarily intends it. It happens through necessity, routine, efficiency and the endless practical demands of keeping human beings alive.

You become a collection of observations, blood results, medication charts and bodily functions. People need to know whether you have eaten, whether you have passed urine, whether your bowels have moved and whether you can get yourself from the bed to the chair.

All perfectly sensible questions.

Just not necessarily conversations you imagined having with complete strangers.

WARNING TMI>>>>>>And then there was the constipation.

Nobody warns you that surviving a major medical emergency can lead to an entirely separate battle involving your digestive system. Codeine might help with a headache, but your bowels may decide that the entire operation has been suspended until further notice. Codeine does what as a side effect? okay lesson learned, no thank you Hospital food is bad enough to add this to the problem.

Meanwhile, beyond the hospital walls, ordinary life was continuing in its own gloriously ridiculous fashion. My mother had come to Bristol, which introduced the additional adventure of finding somewhere nearby for her to stay. Beds were apparently proving almost as difficult to obtain outside the hospital as they were inside it.

Somewhere among all this, there was chocolate, family, conversations, and the peculiar business of trying to make an utterly abnormal situation feel normal.

And that mattered.

Because a hospital can become a very small universe. The world shrinks to the bed, the ward, the observations, the next medication round, the next visit from somebody who wants you to squeeze their fingers or lift your legs.

Time becomes elastic. Nights stretch out. Days disappear into interruptions. You sleep when you can, wake when somebody needs to check something, and gradually lose track of which day it is.

After the thrombectomy, I moved through the hospital system remarkably quickly. From Bristol to Swindon, from intensive intervention to rehabilitation assessments, from being a woman with a blood clot in her brain to somebody being asked to walk, remember things and demonstrate that the machinery upstairs was still functioning.

Fortunately, it largely was.

I could walk. I could respond. I could remember enough to satisfy the people testing me, even if there were still pieces of the experience missing from my own memory.

But passing a test and feeling like yourself are not quite the same thing.

There is an enormous difference between being medically well enough to go home and feeling entirely comfortable inside your own body again.

I was grateful, certainly. I had survived another stroke, and once again I had escaped with far less physical damage than might have been expected. I knew that. I understood how fortunate I had been.

But gratitude doesn’t magically remove exhaustion, vulnerability or the unsettling experience of having your independence temporarily dismantled.

Nor should it have to.

I think this is something we don’t always talk about when discussing recovery. We celebrate survival, and rightly so. We admire resilience. We encourage people to be positive and get back to normal.

But in between the dramatic rescue and the triumphant return home, there is a human being trying to work out what just happened to them.

A human being who might be frightened, cross, bewildered, exhausted, grateful and desperate for a proper wash, sometimes all within the same ten minutes.

I have nothing but respect for the people who cared for me. Their work is extraordinary, and I owe a great deal to people whose names I may never remember.

But I also came away understanding something about dignity that I hadn’t fully appreciated before.

Independence is not always about being able to do everything yourself. Sometimes it is about being allowed to do the one small thing you still can.

To choose.

To say no.

To wash your own face.

To hold the flannel.

By Saturday, 17 October, I was home again. Back to the boat, back to Jason, Sabre and Merlin, back to the familiar sounds and peculiar comforts of our floating little world.

There was no grand transformation. No sudden enlightenment. No miraculous feeling of being reborn.

Just home.

And after several days of having my body managed by an assortment of exceptionally competent strangers, home was quite enough.

I could close the door. I could decide when to sleep. I could make a cup of tea. I could use my own bathroom.

And, most importantly, I could wash myself without anybody taking an interest in the proceedings.

It is remarkable how luxurious ordinary life becomes when you have temporarily lost control of it.

I still have a long way to go. My body has been through something serious, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. There are adjustments ahead, and a few more battles to fight.

But I came home with something important still intact.

My determination to remain myself.

And yes, I’m still holding the bloody flannel…. I wrote a song about that too…of course I did