Paul update - Day 17

Day 17 – Saturday 29 November

We arrived around midday to find Paul sitting up in bed reading the Q magazine that Amy brought in for him the other day. His face lit up when he saw us and he said “You’ve been ages!” which I guess is a good sign because he is starting to get bored!

Today was quite quiet really with nothing much to report. For some reason Paul seemed to be very tired today but even so, he continues to improve. We took him down to the shop after lunch and he bought a mountain bike magazine but he was too tired to go to the coffee shop, so we came back to the ward.

Mark arrived first and after about an hour Paul dozed off, so we nipped down for a cuppa and when we got back Paul was sat on the edge of the bed chatting to Richard and Janie. Although there are still some things that unfortunately we cannot understand, by and large he is now able to speak quite well most of the time. He is extremely patient with us though and will keep trying to explain what he wants to say, and if we still don’t get it he smiles, looks to the ceiling and sighs “it doesn’t matter!”

The consultant warned us that when Paul came to he would probably hate everyone and everything and would spend all of his time swearing at everybody, but I am pleased to say that he has the patience of a saint and nothing seems to get him cross – he is extremely good humoured and very calm and placid.

After Richard had gone Anna and Gavin arrived around 5 o’clock so Pat and I went into the day room so they could all have a chat. Gavin has come all the way back from Durham again and Paul was very pleased to see him. Last time Gavin came back to see Paul he was still unconscious on the mattresses on the floor so it shows how far he has progressed in such a short time.

He watched a little bit of the rugby on TV but it looks as though he is having trouble seeing out of his left eye; whenever he is looking at the TV or a magazine he tends to close his left eye because he says his vision is blurred; it is not clear whether he has double vision or it is just blurred but we will mention it to the neurosurgeon next week and see what he thinks.

His arm is also healing well; for those that aren’t aware when Paul was unconscious he was continually rubbing his left arm on the sheets and despite trying to cover it up with bandages, tubigrip and everything else we could think of, nothing worked. After a while, he managed to get a friction burn on the back of his left hand and arm and then it got infected – if you look at his left arm in some of the pictures below you can see the result. He has been on a course of antibiotics for the infection and we have been putting cream on it and at long last it is starting to heal.

Paul used to watch Strictly Come Dancing every week so now that he has a television at the end of his bed he watched some of it this evening but not as avidly as he used to; we put the rugby on for him as mentioned above but he wasn’t really interested; before the accident he would definitely have watched it so it might be down to his eyesight causing him problems or his attention span – we will have to see.

Unfortunately, he wasn't able to manage with the laptop today so we will have to persevere with trying to work out what he wants to say! He thought it was a good idea though, so we may try again in a few days time.