Categories: uncategorized
Date: 14 July 2013 12:34:27
I realise now that the last time I blogged was when they were planning to glue my brother.
This week he comes down to visit again for his final angiogram, six months after the gluing took place. He is driving down. He was declared fit to drive and, more to the point, fully fit to return to sea should he so choose, without any of the restrictions he was expecting. He's been declared no more likely to suffer a further stroke than any other member of the general population of his age.
The gluing was a success - all the blood vessels that were tangled and malformed in his brain have been blocked off with superglue and the blood has found alternative healthier routes to circulate through. Only one minor problem. You know how careful you have to be with superglue? You know how, if you squeeze the tube too hard, it squirts out and attaches itself to things it should attach itself to? Well, that's what happened. The glue squirted out just a tiny bit too fast and got on the catheter which was delivering it to its target - the gluegun. So for the rest of his life, my brother will have a catheter glued in, running right from his groin to his brain cell. Apparently it will be absorbed into the wall of the arteries and won't cause him any problems. SO there you go! He just has to stick with it!
The only after effects of it all are a slight slowness in his speech when he's tired or stressed, an awareness that he has to take things slightly more easy and not get overtired, and......... miracle of miracles...... his resolve to reduce his alcohol intake has been heftily influenced by the fact that his sense of taste has been completely altered. He no longer actually like the taste of the stuff. He craves sweet foods, which is really unusual for him (and not actually awfully helpful to me when he comes a-visiting and brings chocolate and expensive biscuits to share - well, it would be unsisterly to refuse, wouldn't it?)