"A heart attack followed by a stroke"

After having a mild heart attack and then a few days later having a mild stroke I found out I was being supported by two brilliant nurses from Nottinghams West Community stroke team. One of the nurses was Margaret who is a Speech and Language therapist and the other was Jasmine who is one of their Occupational Therapist's.

Between them they helped me tremendously with some language processing difficulties I had as I couldn't always understand everything I was told. They helped me explain to people what I had been through and got people to give me information in small chunks which would help me in responding to the conversation. My memory was poor but the nurse's provided me with a strategy to help me with this problem. They got me to write down the things that I had been told to help my memory and I will carry a note book around with me at all times so I could check on what I had written down to help me if needed to respond to people. I also had a check sheet in my kitchen where my wife would write things down that she wanted me to do because at first she would leave me a few jobs to do and I would nearly always forget one of them. The nurses then said to me to help me ask my wife to write down all the jobs that she wanted me to do and by doing this I would check the jobs she wanted me to do and I never forgot any more jobs. I would do the jobs through the day and cross them off that they were complete.

Another thing Jasmine got me to do was that if I had a letter or email I would cover up part of the letter which helped me take on what was being said in segments instead of trying to take all of the letter/email in at once.

Later on in my treatment I was helped by Tracey a rehabilitation support nurse who was helping me with my memory and although things improved the work she was doing proved that I was having the odd forgetfull moment which proved I was only taking in about 90% of the things that she was asking me to remember and write down.

After chatting with Margaret and Tracey about this Margaret said that the work that they had done with me proved that I was still forgetting things and that by me writing down things in my note book and in my diary would help me in the future.