Ad Awareness Day

Right, yes, hi, I'm Mandy and I'm one of the many warriors in this room who have survived, so very lucky people to be here, aren't we? So can everybody hear me all right? I'm a bit nervous as you can tell. Right, Sunday 17th of April 2016 I was on a bike ride with my sister. I look pretty fit and healthy there don't I? I was having great fun. That was our first ride in preparation for the London to Brighton bike ride which was happening six months later so we were out having fun, very muddy fun. Then 10 minutes later I collapsed. We were stopped for a break. I said I don't feel very well, I feel a bit weary. And she said, well get off your bike. And so I was trying to get off my bike and I went, I've got a really weird pain in my chest. And with that I just dropped to the floor. No warning, no nothing. She was in complete panic. Luckily a couple were driving by and stopped to help her. So I was unconscious, I was purple, foaming at the mouth, eyes rolling. And yeah, so when the ambulance got to me I was unconscious. They managed to bring me round. I was very confused, very distressed. I don't remember anything from the time I collapsed. I was completely incoherent. They took me to hospital. My other sister joined us, and my family gradually came and joined us. As I say, I don't remember anything. This is me about five days later. Basically, during the A&E stay, the ambulance people were asking, does she suffer with mental health issues, does she have panic attacks, that sort of thing. That was the ambulance. Then when we got into A&E, it was, has she been drinking? Has she taken LSD? They did my troponin levels, that was fine, so I hadn't had a heart attack. They couldn't really understand why I wasn't responding. Come on Mandy, wake up, we need these bays, we've got three emergencies waiting outside. They took my blood pressure, they did chest x-ray, ECG, nothing showed up. Really didn't really know what to do with me. The kind of like way they were going through was, are you sure she hasn't been drinking? My sister said she's teetotal, she's been on a bike ride, I'm a paddle, you know, she's a paddleboarder, she's a fit person. This is not my sister. She's not asleep, she's incoherent, you know, and that's the way it was going. It was the kind of like we're just shrugging their shoulders and rolling the rise and tutting the whole evening really. After about two hours my cuff and my blood pressure was just on the floor going up and down. They really weren't kind of like interested or I think because they were a bit confused by me they weren't really looking outside the box or anything even though I'd collapsed with the pain to the chest there's blood pressure and heart stuff in my history of my family as well. My dad had an aneurysm, my granddad died of an aneurysm, and my uncle had a replacement heart valve. So yeah, that was the kind of like, just was going kind of like, just drifting. My sister was often asking questions. Is this a possibility, is this a possibility? Even went through her mind, she could be like bleeding internally. Partway through the evening, I said to my sister, I can't feel my legs. And I kept saying, I can't breathe, I can't breathe. And that was from the, when I was in the ambulance, I was saying that constantly, I can't breathe, apparently I can't breathe. Then I got terrible pain down my right leg. And since it's kind of like when my leg was dying, I think it was the blood supply going. So yeah, for many hours, it was kind of, there wasn't really much being done apart from along this kind of like way of questioning, I was being sick and then after a few hours I asked, I was indicating I needed to go to the toilet and this was, I went into hospital about quarter to eight, eight o'clock in the evening and we're now going into the early hours of the morning and and apparently I needed to go to the toilet. It wasn't until that point that things changed, and that was around two o'clock in the morning. And they suddenly realized that actually there was a lot of blood in the commode that I'd used. At that point, my legs were all over the place. I couldn't put any pressure through my legs. and I'd obviously suffered my spinal cord injury already. So yes, once they'd done the CT, everything changed. I was into resus, I was in a terrible mess, and if they'd only acted earlier in doing that CT earlier, because I'd actually gone in with a pain to the chest, I think, hopefully, maybe other things would have been different from that point on. So yeah, all of a sudden, panic. I would need to get to a hospital. An hour went by waiting for an ambulance and I was rushed over to Brighton. From Hastings to Brighton, it's about an hour and ten. They got me there in 40 minutes. It's four o'clock in the morning so that was good. As soon as I arrived at Brighton I ran into cardiac arrest. My heart stopped. So then it was kind of like nine and a half hours of surgery, two and a half days on a ventilator and I woke up and this is me and I'm thinking what the hell's gone on? I don't know what's got on, you know, I was on a bike ride last time I remember, I had a bicuspid valve that had actually burst, ruptured on that bike ride and by the time they found it on the CT it had actually gone all the way, the dissection had gone all the way down into my iliac arteries, femoral arteries, I think I'm using the right terminology here, and I was in a terrible state. My family was told, your mum, your sister most probably is not going to make this, you've got to prepare yourselves. So it was a boosty bonus that actually I made it through the surgery. Uday Trivedi in Brighton and his brilliant team saved my life that night and or that morning. So yes, so that's me after coming round, well I was off the ventilator then, there was no photographs taken while I was, you know, in that three day period of is she, isn't she? And yeah, that's that's me in HDU. Reperfusion was terrible. I looked like I'd been battered with a baseball bat. I had black eyes. This is what my family were doing whilst I was in the ventilator. They were in the family room and they found a puzzle and each of us now has a part of that puzzle. My sister went online, found that exact puzzle and the first Christmas afterwards she actually gave us all a piece of that puzzle. I was Humpty Dumpty because they put me back together again because it was a nice, it was a 1970s puzzle. So this is me, my first selfie with my children, I go oh my god I look like that! So this is about a week after. Hair hasn't been washed, you can see I've got two black eyes and yeah still got my lines in my neck and everything and luckily one of the nurses took pity on me and washed my hair for me. That's my birthday bed. So 12 days after my surgery I was 48, so they moved me into the next ward, which was great because it meant I was improving. There was a birthday cake there and all my family there with me that evening, which was brilliant. Coming over was quite tiring obviously, my son there asleep on my bed, bless him, and my daughter FaceTiming with my dog because obviously I have got a dog and a cat at home and yeah so that was FaceTiming with my hiccup. Going out at Brighton for the first time, getting some sunshine and that's when they brought the dog over to me five weeks after they brought Hiccup over for me to have a cuddle with him. This is when I was transferred up to Stoke Mandeville. I was two months in the cardiac unit over at Brighton and then three months in Stoke Mandeville where they got me onto my legs trying to get me going again. I'd lost all the muscle from my waist down basically. I had a T8 spinal cord injury they found at Stoke Mandeville. Obviously at Brighton when I came round they realised that my legs weren't moving and that's okay right as soon as we've worked out what we're doing it's about three weeks after I had an MRI and that's when they found that I actually had a T8 spinal cord injury that obviously that's what was happening in A&E. So this is my physio form at Stoke Mandeville every week you had one of these giving you your kind of like your weekly exercise where you've you've got to be, how you're going to do it. Hydrotherapy, FES, simulation, trying to get the muscles engaging again. On a trike, I said, are you for real? I actually collapsed on a bike ride. Do you want to get me back on a bike? But it was great, the interaction. And then the other one is FES for 3 quarters of an hour, being electrocuted for three quarters of an hour whilst you're cycling, getting everything moving. This is when I was on the one show being interviewed, very embarrassingly, but it was great. It was the week of the Paralympics and everything, and they were doing special shows every day for Paralympics and promoting that. So this is my friend, my dear friend, who I lost last year to pancreatic cancer, bless her heart. She came up and had to try and play badminton in a wheelchair, which is really, really hard, but everybody was included and inclusive when they came up, family and friends were encouraged to get into a wheelchair too to see what it's like. That's me on the, trying to get up on the, what's it called, I can't remember what it's called, sorry, when you walk on a treadmill, I sit on a treadmill, and hydrotherapy. So you're doing everything up there at Stoke Mandeville. My love is paddle boarding. So they asked me what I wanted to do up at Stoke Mandeville that I did before, and I said, can you get me on a paddle board again? And that's what they did. And that was me, three months post-op with a spinal cord injury, back on a paddle board, which was about a split second up like that and then plop. But that was my leaving day for Stoke Mandeville. The day before, actually, I went home the day before the London to Brighton bike ride that we were gonna be doing, that we were training for, so that was quite, arrived home on the 23rd of September, that was a long bike ride. This is me getting back to what I love, My family supporting me, standing on a paddleboard for the first time with a lot of help. And I thank everybody who helped me on this journey, I wouldn't be here without you. Last year I took myself off on a Caribbean cruise on my own. I was 50, I had two friends who died of cancer that year and I thought, sod it, I'm going. And I booked myself, I took my crutches and my wheelchair, and off I went on the cruise. And yeah, cruised around the Caribbean for nine days, so I was pretty brave. And then outings for my 50th as well last year, and that was me. I think that was Martins, I think, in the water. Somebody took a lovely photo of me. And actually, this is the reason why it's good to survive. I was a grandma for the first time, and he's just turned one, so yeah, my little grandson Eli, a fantastic reason to survive a diastolic dissection, and today's a good day. And that was me a couple of weeks ago, standing on a paddle board on the right there, and surfing it in, so it's hard and challenging, but you just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other every day and keep going. Yeah. So that's my story, really. I'm sorry I've kind of been rambling. No. No. Sorry. Thank you very much. Thanks for watching!