This isn't my story, but it's the remarkable story of recovery that my 78
year old grandmother made. 
 
On Wednesday, the 8th September 2004 I awoke late after being out the night before.
Everybody was out of the house except me. I got up and the phone rang. It was my
mother. She said she was ringing me and my grandmother and couldn't get a reply. I
said she must be out doing some jobs about the street. I looked out the window
towards her house and saw that the dog wasn't out which is very strange. 
 
I walked up towards her house which is only a few yards away from my house and
noticed her curtains were closed. Using my mobile I rang and rang her house. No
reply. I tried breaking down the door but there was a bolt in the other side. I let
the dog out to see what she'd do and she went frantic. I threw stones at her bedroom
window and banged on the door. No reply. Then I noticed that her upstair's landing
window was open. I ran down to our house to fetch the ladder and climbed up on top
of the flat skullery roof and peered through the small window. Her bedroom door was
open and her bed was made. This is strange I thought. I stretched a bit more and I
caught a glimps of her legs at the bottom of the stairs. I shouted an obsenity and
pulled myself through the small window and tore my clothes and cut a deep wound into
my belly (which I never felt at the time). I ran to the top of the stairs and
shouted 'NANA!'. All she did was blink and I knew she was alive I ran down the
stairs, jumped over her and called the ambulance. I then called mam and dad to come
home. 
 
After I had done that I kneeled down beside her. There was sick and blood everywhere
and her head was proped up against the door. There was blood coming out of her ear
and nose and mouth. Her eye lids were swollen up like plumbs with blood underneath
them. She didnt reapond to me. She was just mumbling words to herself. Her head was
as big as two. 
 
Mam and Dad arrived home before the ambulance and they freaked out and then I began
to panic. When the ambulance arrived they put the oxygen mask on her and she ripped
it off and said 'get off me'. They put it back on and took her to hospital. She
didn't come around. 
 
At the hospital we waited for the news, what damage is done. Finally at 1am the
doctor said she has sustained serious fractures the whole way around her head, as if
it were an eggshell whacked with a spoon the whole way around, and she has several
clots in her brain and swelling and bruising. They said she'll not survive the
night. A specialist hospital, Beaumont in Dublin, Ireland, would not accept her as
her injuries were to severe. 
 
The next day she remained stable, and all her relations and friends came to see her
before the inevitable. In the  early hours of Friday she awoke. Dad and I were
staying in a room in the hospital beside the ICU ward. The called us. She kicked and
boxed everyone shouting and roaring 'let me up' and 'please me, please me'. During
this time blood started running out of her ear and nose and she got sick. They had
to sedate her. 
 
In the afternoon of Friday, the doctor told us that the swelling went down last
night, and this caused the bleeding to start again in the centre of her brain and
her brain started to swell again. He said due to her age her blood vessels are hard
and every time the swelling goes down, the bleeding will start until she'll
eventually die. He said this will most likely be Saturday or at the latest Sunday.
Her chances of survival was under 5% he said. 
 
We, being country people in rural Ireland, got 7 different cures for the bleeding,
which consist of prayers and blessings, and we got a faith healer in. The bleeding
stopped. 
 
On the Monday the doctor came in laughing saying she is a miracle woman. The
swelling is going down and the bleeding has stopped.  
 
She remained in hospital until late January 2005, where she was transfered to a
convalescent home to regain her strength after four months of lying in the bed.
During this period she contracted various hospital superbugs and survived them. She
had six clots in her brain, which began to dissolve away themselves, and all her
skull fractures healed up themselves. 
 
Today she is currently in the home waiting to come home. At the end of this month
when my sister and I get our holidays were bringing her home. She can do everything
she used be able to do. She dresses herself, walks around un-aided, and has no
effects from her seroius head injuries. She has no recollection of falling and the
first month and a half in hospital. Her recovery is unbelievable, she is exactly as
she was before, except she gets a little confused when she operates the elevator,
considering she never used one in her life before! 
 
No one can believe her recovery. One of the nurses said that from looking at her Cat
Scan, anyone could see that her brain was 'in mush'. She is trully a miracle woman! 
 
Apart from her serious head injuries, the only other physical injury she sustained
was a small chip of the right shoulder! What we think hapened her was in the morning
when she got up, (she was in her night dress when we found her) she had to have
fallen backwards from the top of the stairs, fracturing the back of her skull, got
her head between the railings of the stairs, and hit everyone on the way down to the
bottom of the stairs. 
 
However, when she comes home, there's only going to be one alternation to her life
style...... she'll not be going up those stairs!

 Email  Richard