Chapter 3 - A warped state of mind

My state of mind immediately after I returned from my 10 hour - state of unconsciousness was rather warped. Though I could remember all my loved ones and was able to learn and remember the names of all the medical staff that were attending to me (bless their souls), something bizarre was happening to my mind.

I am told that on the second day of my rehabilitation in ICU I could not speak vernacular. In fact, I am reliably informed I was speaking English with a British accent. No, I have never lived in Bri'in bruv! "mkushi accents". I vividly recall reciting biographies of Martin Luther King Jr, Barack Obama, Nelson Mandela, and Trevor Noah. These are books I had read long before my ordeal but apparently, all that I read was running through my head and I was vocalizing. Quite brilliantly I should add. Charmaine says that it was as though the brain was rebooting, more like a computer. She has read these materials with me and is familiar with the content, so she found it quite intriguing that I was reciting the content, almost word for word.

My dreams were traumatic to say the least and my heart still goes out to my wife and relatives who spent nights with me while I was in hospital. One night a friend of ours came to see me in hospital. She relayed a story of some political violence she suffered while conducting a live programme on television. My mind soaked it all in and reinterpreted it. That night I dreamed that I was part of the political violence. In one scene, we got ambushed and some of the people I was with were hacked to death. In this dream, I went into hiding under a pile of dead bodies pretending to be dead too. I remember waking up and whispering to my wife, 

"How many are we here?"

"Just the two of us", she responded.

"Ok, do not worry. Let me go and check if they have gone", I said.

At this point I got out of bed. Next thing I knew, I was stumbling over a coffee table because remember, I was paralyzed on the left side of my body. I landed on the floor, all manner of tubes disconnected from my body, with blood oozing out.

My poor wife helpless and confused at the scene tried to help me up but I was too heavy for her. She called out for the nurse on duty. Actually, there was a bell for it, so she rang for help. Within a short space of time, the nurses came to our aid. Together they bundled me back in to my bed and administered some drugs to knock me out. I suspect the nurse reported the ordeal because the next day I was visited by a high delegation team comprising of the outgoing nurses, incoming nurses, sister-in-charge, a physician, and a psychiatrist. All so concerned about my mental state. They did their assessments and concluded that I would be placed on some neuro-drugs which would help stabilise my mind.

Before they started administering the neuro-drugs, I continued having the bizarre dreams which were so real to me. Another dream that comes to mind involved I being somewhere in the Caribbeans with people who looked like characters from the Moana movie. In the dream, I needed to go to a party. But in order to get out of where I was living, I had to use some sort of catapult. In the dream, Charmaine was the one controlling the catapult but for some reason, she did not want to propel me out. So I kept telling her, that I needed to go because Rihanna was waiting for me. Do not ask! I do not want to know what was going on in my wife’s mind on hearing my incessant request. She must have been saying dangerous prayers at this point.

Yet another bizarre dream that comes to mind happened when Mpotola, our family friend offered to spend the night by my bedside in a bid to relieve my fatigued wife. What an entertaining night it must have been for him. I kept talking in my sleep. And then when I woke up I asked him to hand me something “quickly before they come for it”.

"Who is coming", he asked

I pointed at something. In real life, it was a blank wall. Not even a picture. It must have freaked him out some kind of way because I remember he started praying in tongues.

Thankfully, the bizarre dreams stopped when my doctors started administering neuro-drugs as they would completely knock me out and I would sleep soundly at night.

Away from bizarre dreams, I was also overly emotional. While I do wear my heart on my sleeves, my emotions were heightened than ever before. I was an emotional wreck. I was crying at each and every visitor that came to see me. I cried so much at the sight of my children. I cried in the presence of my entire household. This persisted even after my discharge from the hospital, that my wife even contemplated taking me back to the hospital on grounds that I was not in the right state of mind. She had never seen me like that before.

#mwamuna_ama_lila.

Over time, my emotions stabilized and I am pretty much back to my ‘happy go lucky’ self.

I have taken time to share my experience so as to highlight the mental and emotional state I was in right after the stroke. I am not sure if all stroke survivors go through such mental trauma but to those such as myself, who have had such experiences, it would be beneficial to get a medical explanation. This is something we will address in the next article when I interview a psychiatrist to try and understand the effects of strokes on the brain.

Thank you for reading. If you would like to leave a comment below, please indicate your name. And if you wish to forward for the psychiatrist, please drop a message on messenger.

#NeverGiveUp