One hundred and fourteen - Stroke

It was from a murky, fog and pain filled world that Stacey fought her way free from. The light streaming in through the windows blinded her eyes. She heard the beeping of hospital machines, the sharp pain of the familiar line in her arm and the busy clatter out in the corridor. Then the smell hit her and she knew. She was back in the hospital.

The sharp pain of the line in her arm throbbed and jabbed far more painfully than usual. Even keeping her arm still didn't help. Stacey couldn't handle it. With a clumsy arm and fingers, she pulled the line out, resulting in the little machine by her bed wailing a tiny alarm.

Ignoring the blood dribbling out of the needle hole, Stacey frowned at her arm. Why did it feel so heavy and difficult to move? Uncoordinated. She raised both hands and found they looked normal, just weaker and thinner than usual. However, they felt different. Her right hand was more numb and difficult to move. She was right handed. Not being able to move her right hand properly was going to be a problem.

She was seized by a sudden fear. If her right arm wasn't working properly, what about her legs? Stacey used her left hand to fling her blanket open. Or, well, she tried. The blanket seemed unusually heavy. In fact, her left hand felt just that little bit more clumsy too. And weak.

Using her left arm to help, Stacey tried and tried to sit up. Rolling into her side, Stacey tried again. She shifted her legs to hang off the bed. This time, she was able to use her left arm with a bit of her right to heave herself up into sitting.

Immediately, the room whirled and spun around her and her vision went dark. She felt a strange fatigue tug at her chest, head and limbs. Stacey fell back onto the bed. That hurt. The fall from sitting hurt far more than she had expected, taking her breath away. Stacey lay still and caught her breath. All the symptoms she had just experienced went away within a few seconds. What was that? What had just happened? Why had she nearly passed out after sitting up?

After a moment, Stacey pushed herself back into sitting. The room whirled and her vision spotted with dark flaring wings, but it wasn't as bad as before. She could handle this.

Stacey swung her legs. They felt weak and heavy. Both of them, but her right leg had numbed sensation compared to her left. It felt clumsy and uncoordinated too, when she tried to roll her ankles. Nevermind, she'd know for sure when she stood up and went looking for help and for someone to explain what was wrong with her.

Shoving herself up off the bed, the room once more spun around her and went dark. Stacey felt herself falling but there was nothing she could do about it.

In her dream, that old dream of being chased, Stacey tripped. Her enemy caught her and Stacey was unable to fight herself free. Her heart leapt to her mouth and she felt dizzy with panic.

Stacey sat up.

Or to be more accurate, she flopped in the bed like a fish. Two pairs of hands held her down.

"My lady?" queried a familiar voice.

Stacey gasped and calmed herself down, allowing the nightmare to fade away. It wasn't real. It wasn't real. It was just a dream. Not real. Not real at all.

It was then that she realised that her entire body ached. It hurt. It really hurt. It felt like she'd fallen from a height and hit her head. Her head hurt, her arms hurt. Her ribs hurt. Her legs hurt. Her neck hurt. Her back hurt. Everything hurt so much. Why was it so painful?

"My lady," Anna wiped away the tears dribbling down Stacey's face. "Are you in pain?"

Stacey jerked her head up and down, feeling that even this movement felt wrong. This was so frustrating.

"Shall I ask the nurse to get you some painkillers?"

Stacey nodded again.

"Yes, please," she attempted to say only for a garble of sound to come out her mouth. Stacey frowned. "What?" she tried to say but it also turned out as just a noise.

"My lady," Elsa looked concerned. "I'll go and find a doctor."

Stacey nodded, feeling the dribble of tears flowing from her eyes turn into a stream.

"Don't worry, Stacey," Anna said, wiping her face. There seemed to be tears in her own eyes. "Perhaps it's only a temporary thing. Maybe it will come back with practice."

Maybe she was right, but it was so frustrating. And embarrassing.

Stacey covered her face and tried to say as much but it was all unintelligible. It was as if her mouth muscles were refusing to coordinate with what she wanted to say. Is this what it was like to be a baby again?

Banging her fists on the bed, Stacey managed to thumps and then found it to painful to repeat. Instead, she shook her fists and blew on them. Somehow she couldn't help crying even harder, but the sobbing made her ribcage and abdomen hurt. And then she didn't know what to do with herself because everything hurt which only made her cry harder.

The doctors and nurses rushed in upon hearing the noise. Stacey was given some tablets to swallow but she choked. No matter how she tried to calm down and swallow, it just made her choke, resulting in her crying again. Now her eyes and tear glands were sore. She couldn't even articulate what was wrong. Everything turned into a game of charades.

Some smart person put a pen and paper in front of Stacey. She tried but she could only use her left arm, although she was right handed. Her writing was like chicken scratchings. Illegible. By the time she was done, she was exhausted.

She lay in the bed with half closed eyes, strangely too tired to respond. A nurse took her vital signs and then there was a fluster over her high blood pressure. There was something about checking her intracranial pressure and then properly leaving a hole in her skull so that they could check.

A painful needle went into her arm. Stacey flailed and yelled with the pain to try and stop them from putting the line in. Elsa and Anna held her limbs down, trying to reassure her but Stacey was beyond listening. All she knew was that it hurt. Badly.

It was like an age had passed before a gradual numbness crept in to take away the pain and Stacey was able to breathe normally and relax. Thank goodness for painkillers.

***NB***

This is not explicitly explained, so for those who don't understand what is going on and can't recognise the hints or symptoms described here, the state of hyperalgesia (increased sensitivity to pain or normal stimuli being felt and processed by the brain as pain) and stress caused an arteriovenous formation in Stacey's brain to burst, resulting in a right sided haemmorhagic stroke (basically there were some weirdly formed blood vessels in Stacey's brain that burst and caused a lot of bleeding in the brain, which put pressure on certain areas of the brain and damaged/injured important centres in the brain that are related to muscle coordination and movement, language expression and comprehension, spatial awareness, etc).