13TH APRIL 2000 - MY MILLENIUM GIFT
Imagine waking up around 4.30am with an itchy nose and being unable to use the right hand to scratch the nose. The left hand obliges, I can move the right hand but cannot control the movement. I try to get out of bed and realise the left leg is dead as a log. I cannot even wiggle my toes in the left leg. Vision is getting blurred, mouth is going dry and think I am going to throw up. I close my eyes not knowing what hit me.
The entire right side of my face is burning like Hell.
O God, Why me ? What have I done wrong ? Why now I ask ?
My prayers are answered. I remember my wife Mithu is on a flight to Tokyo and my 16 year old son is fast asleep and both our bedroom doors are closed shut and he cannot hear me..
I am slipping away and an inner voice is saying dont fall asleep, phone emergency. I struggle to reach the phone on my wifes side of the bed and dial 000. An angel answers my call and says Don't worry Ram an ambulance will be there at your place in less that five minutes. Just make sure some one opens the door..
After I vomited all over the place it took two strong paramedics and my brother in law and son to bundle me in a doona and carry me down the winding staircase, place me on a stretcher and take me on an ambulance drive that seemed to take for ever. The Maxalon injection started to work and I remember an oxygen mask being strapped round my nose and I am sinking, sinking into a dark abyss...
I hear the paramedics talking to the hospital saying patient is having a stroke and has a paralysed left leg. Nausea has been controlled with Maxalon injections. he is conscious but fading...
Later when I came around I am told that blood supply to my brain was cut off and that I had suffered a rare kind of stroke caused by the dissection of the Right Vertebral Artery..
This is how the nightmare began at 4.30am on 13th April 2000.
I call this nightmare My Millenium Gift
RAM
