can you tell us a little bit more about
your experience of tiredness and
having poor concentration, how did that affect you?
tiredness was affecting me very badly
very badly. I'd be talking to somebody and just feel tired all of a sudden
and concentration just went straight out of the window. I couldn't make eye contact with people at first
and 'cos that'd just tire me out
what about when you're in quite busy places, if you were around a lot of people
did that distract you a lot? was your concentration worse?
(erm) if I'm in a group of people having a conversation, you know in a pub or somewhere like that
if 2 people are talking to me at the same time, I'd be switching from one to the other
all the time, trying to concentrate. And talk to the person that's talking to me
instead of just waffling around all the place, wandering around all the place
and how is that affecting you now? have you overcome that?
ah, pretty much yes. I now well, practice and practice
I've learned to concentrate on the 1 person all the time now
making eye contact's getting better
describing things
keeping the same subject going
as opposed to switching one subject from another
which I used to do quite a lot
and the concentration
and the tiredness. Did that affect your ability to do things like driving?
well I'm not allowed to drive, 'cos the concentration would be terrible
eh, dunno if I could concentrate on the road properly. So I just don't drive at all now
uh-huh (Fran)
that's one of the hardest things about the whole situation
'cos I used to love driving
and now I just can't do it at all
'cos of my concentration
aye (quiet)
can you tell me a little bit about how the concentration difficulties
that were affecting your mood. How you were feeling about yourself at that time?
not being able to concentrate really made me low sometimes
because again I wanted to... having a conversation with somebody is very hard
without losing concentration, or on keeping on the same subject sometimes
was very hard
and so I get frustrated with myself
because I couldn't talk to somebody properly
but then I worked on that by talking to people as much as I could
about different subjects all the time
Fran: so you're thinking the concentration. the mood, they were all linked together
yes, definitely, absolutely, definitely
Fran: it was a combination of things for you. Derek: absolutely, yup
what was the most important thing that you've learned from all of this?
concentration
to stop and think before I do something, or say something
Fran: so just slowing yourself down
Derek: that's exactly it. Fran: taking your time
when I'm talking sometimes I just go into rabbit mode
...speed. talk too fast
then I think about it and slow down
Fran: do you still have some times when you feel yourself, your mood is going...
erm... not as good as it should be
and when do you sort of stop yourself... and look back on that?
Derek: it's not as bad as it used to be, it's not as bad as it used to be
'cos now I know I've got a good method to deal with things and when something starts...
...if I start getting annoyed about something, you know one of the kids is something annoying
I stop and think why are they doing that
eh... and then I just think, ah it's just one of those things that kids do
Derek: apart from...
Fran: sorry... it's almost like you've learnt to monitor yourself
Derek: oh definitely aye, definitely
the other thing that was just...
completely terrible was memory, you know remembering just the names of
family members, people...
I was very close to, past... passwords past...
things like that it was just incredibly frustrated
Fran: so all your thoughts were intact, the speech wouldn't come
Neil: yeah, the thoughts weren't intact
I mean putting thoughts together was very difficult, eh... about...
that was just incredibly difficult, just to do any ...lineal thinking
err... was a real challenge and
what would tend to happen is when you tried to talk
and get words out, you get more frustrated
the people you trying to talk to, you can see they're getting more frustrated
so you get more frustrated so you lose more words and so it's a vicious...
vicious circle. And obviously when you've had
brain damage, where you've got cognitive issues
normal people look at you, think you're absolutely fine
but what's going on here, until you try to speak or you try to remember something
then people start to notice that, you know things aren't 100% right
because you've been in hospital for a short time
when did other people notice that you have these cognitive issues?
well, when you would meet them. they said straight away. I mean people knew I'd had
the stroke and so when you
met them, whether they're friends or colleagues that we used to come to the house
that you would know instantly, that Neil really can't speak
at all. properly, a proper sentence
and that was...
but as I said, physically if you saw me walking down the street, absolutely fine
Neil he looks absolutely great
But I was at a service and...
the church we went to for the
Christmas service. They'd put the words of the
songs up in the wall so you could see it. So you didn't have to have the sheet
and I can't honestly remember, I can close my eyes now
I can still remember looking at the words
I was trying to sing. And I couldn't sing. I just couldn't get the stuff out the words
and I remember seeing the speech therapist, I think the next day after that
and explain that. And she says mmm that's doesn't sound right [laughs]
and so she then had a conversation with my GP who...
and she'd obviously picked up there is other issues going on apart from speech
and it was from that I got referred to... eh...
to a neuro-psychologist
...sort of like pen and paper tests
things like that, absolutely yeah and various things
that he did. So we did that for about 6 weeks
and at the end of that, he sat down
and my wife came to that meeting. And basically he said look I've done all these
and this is where you are from a cognitive point of view
and what came out of that
was the two main areas, that I'd been
affected very badly was what's called divided attention
and memory, parts of memory. As well as
and some emotional effects
that were happening (eh) and
that really was kinda huge light coming in, in my mind because then I
could start understand why
II was unable to do the things I used to be able to do
and so divided attention as I'm
was explained to that you can't do more than one things
now what I mean by that is if you were to give me a newspaper
and I had to read it out aloud, I could do that
now previous to the stroke, obviously I could do that. And that...
even though it seems very subtle thing is a real
crucial skill to have
in whatever you do, especially if you run a business as I used to do
and so that was just great to understand while struggling
with those sort of things and the other bit was to do with memory
and again, today I still struggle with...
memory and the only way I can explain how that is
it's like a constantly living in the now
so there's something that could've happened yesterday could have happened five years
ago and vice versa
you were mentioning a little bit about your thinking skills after the stroke
how did that side of it affect you?
my thinking skills were...
if I was in any sort of company, or if people came in and visitors came in
and talking to them I would lose
the words I was looking for. It would just blank
and I used to get quite... I felt quite embarrased
...you know I felt...
I really felt quite ashamed of it in a way. Because I felt stupid
you know, and I didn't know quite how to deal with it
and it was, I suppose it was stupid because
these people all knew I had had a stroke
but I was trying to be normal. And when this happened and I couldn't understand
it annoyed me, it frustrated me. Because I suddenly couldn't
remember... words
so it was a little bit of thinking issues, some memory issues as well
yeah, yeah. My memory, you know quite a lot of it was memory
quite a lot of it was memory as well and then my writing skills
well, I mean they were just a scribble [laughs]
and then even when it started to form
em... words em...
I still felt I couldn't really do what I used to do (good technique)
Fran: how's your memory now?
Marion: memory's quite good. I still have times
when I forget things, but once again I don't panic about it
I'm quite determined and I'll keep thinking
and thinking 'til I get it again you know. And if it's
when I'm speaking to someone I just do the "it'll come back to me"
[laughs] Pass it off. Fran: but then we all do that
yeah, well you see this was another thing that was explained to me, that everyone can do that
but when you've had a stroke and you can't come up with a word
you think automatically it's because of the stroke
and I'm sure you know I was told you've probably said that before to someone
in a conversation, oh it'll come back to me
but you didn't take up this attitude of "oh-dear"
"that's because I can't remember it now"