Back on the Bike

9 weeks since brain bleed feeling ok i have done a couple of bike rides and start back to work on monday on light duties and shorter hours but tonight i am daring to go for a bike/bivvy on top of the gorge at cheddar to watch the sun go down over exmoor. Feeling quite scared of being out all night alone along with doing a fairly hard ride but the yearning of being in nices places under the stars actually overcomes the fear.

Hospitals

I could not really believe that i had made it home on my bike and saw my children for what i thought was the last time, i felt as though my last and final wish had been granted. My mother in law phoned for an ambulance while i walked and staggered around the house holding my head and shouting in agony. It seemed only minutes and the ambulance had arrived and after a brief examination and alot of questions i was on my way to the Royal United Hospital in Bath. At the A & E department after what seemed like loads more questions i was given morphine (a couple of doses i think) but this brought no relief from the pain, i can just about remember one nurse being very kind and caring and another one seeming to think that i was perhaps having a slight migrane and i just wanted to load up on morphine. After what seemed like a couple of hours i was taken for a ct scan and then taken back to A & E, fairly soon after a doctor came to see me to tell me the news that i was having a brain hemorrhage, this came as no surprise, it was what i had suspected, but what has stuck in my mind was him saying that i was already doing well because one out of three people don't even make it as far as hospital. I was given drugs to stop my brain going into spasm and then transferred to Frenchay hospital Bristol.

Brain Hemorrhage Cycling from work

Cycling home from work last thursday (19th May) going up langleys lane near midsomer norton at a fair rate of knots, feeling fit and well. reached the turning for clapton and suddenly felt the worst pain i have ever felt in my life, it was like my head was in a vice which was getting tighter and tighter. I rode on for a few hundred yards thinking this has got to pass soon but to no avail so i pulled into a small layby on the left, took off my helmet, got off the bike, sat down, led down, sat up, even put my head between my legs but nothing stopped or eased the pain, if anything it was getting worse. At that moment i had to face my fears and accept that this was serious, i knew that this was the most serious moment of my life. I somehow managed to stay conscious through the ever worsening pain, dizziness and strangeness i was feeling and began to work through my options. I could phone for an ambulance and wait at the roadside but if this was as bad as it felt these next minutes could be my last and my children were 10 minutes ride from me, if i could get home to see them was all that i wanted, i would take whatever was coming if i could just tell them i loved them one more time.
Back on the bike managing to push and pull the pedals round somehow managing to separate the part of my brain controlling my legs from the part suffering the agony and disturbance. On i managed to pedal at times veering across the road but still going. Riding through Chilcompton was very scarey with the busy main road but i made it home. Freya was outside the back of the house when i arrived 'daddy' she called, i got off of the bike and gave her the hug of my life and told her that 'i loved her so so much' and that she was 'the most amazing little girl in the world'. Then little Harris came toddling out calling for me, and i held them both, i had made the first leg of the most difficult journey of my life.
tbc...