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Men talking ...
Pat Keane reflects on the hidden blessings that he discovered as a result of a stroke that kept him in hospital for five months.
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Most of us will remember 7th July 2005 probably because of the awful bombings that took place in central London. By the time the first bomb went off I was in West Middlesex hospital, Isleworth, waiting to be transferred to the High Dependency Unit at Charring Cross. I’d woken up that morning to find my left side wasn’t working. It turned out I’d had a stroke or more correctly a haemorrhagic stroke, a brain haemorrhage. As the consultant said later I was very lucky to be alive. I spent almost five months in hospital. I am now back at work, driving etc. There’s still a way to go to get full use of the arm and leg and if I ever will I don’t know. It was strangely enough a very blessed time. I met some incredibly brave people, including one lad who lost both legs and an eye in the bomb blasts. I got to spend more time with my wife Angie than I had done for a long time and had an opportunity to look at my life very critically. Did it make a difference? I’m not sure. I know it did at the time. What I do know is that I could not have got through it without faith and prayer, other people’s more than mine I suspect. It’s all a bit of a blur now but I kept a diary and when I get too tied up in the world I try and find time to read a few pages to try and get things in perspective. Get well cards and God’s love One of the first things that happened was that we started to receive Get Well cards from all sorts of people, friends, family, work colleagues and parishioners. I remember being amazed by this and not feeling worthy. It gave me a small insight into the Father’s love. It doesn’t matter whether you feel worthy or not the response is unconditional. It’s nothing you have done or can do. The other thing was the amount of prayer we were receiving. It was harder for Angie and my three children, Susannah, Andrew and Richard, than it was for me. I was being well cared for, looked after etc. They had to get on with life and deal with my being in hospital. Up until the last two weeks we really didn’t know how long that would be. Prayer and reading got me through the days. A good friend, Gavin, gave me a small book of daily Celtic prayers which became very important to me. The other thing that was amazing was the number of people who put themselves out and came visiting. I can’t imagine what it would have been like without those people. Why not me? I don’t actually remember thinking “ Why Me?”, in fact why not me, but at some point Angie said that the whole thing may not be about me at all and I may never know what the fruits were. There was one small miracle, if any miracle can be small, that has stuck with me. The morning that I had the stroke one of our neighbours saw the ambulance carting me off. She put a card through our door saying that she didn’t know what had happened but that we were in her prayers. A couple of weeks later Angie popped over to let her know and say thanks. She was out and her husband answered the door. Angie told him what had happened and got talking. We’d been telling anyone who would listen that if they were feeling unwell to get checked out! As it happened Pete had been feeling tired, low on energy and generally under the weather for a few weeks and following Angie’s chat took himself off to the doctors. Within 2 weeks he had been admitted to hospital and had a stent inserted in one of his coronary arteries as it was becoming blocked!! When I met him a few weeks later he was very grateful for Angie’s knock on the door. Walked out of hospital The other miracle was that when I was admitted to Queen Mary’s Roehampton for rehabilitation medical wisdom said that it was rehabilitation in a wheelchair. I didn’t realise this at the time. In the end I walked out of the hospital and haven’t used a wheelchair for over a year. Looking back on my time in hospital and while recovering the thing that strikes me about it most was that it was a time of immense peace. I’m sure that was down to the fact that I had time to pray and think. Unfortunately since rejoining the world my prayer life has returned to “normal”, a snatched moment here and there, trying to say the rosary on the way to work etc. Having sat down to write this note it’s helped me put things in perspective.. I’ve realised the importance of regaining that sense of peace and finding the time to pray that got me and my family through probably one of the most difficult periods of our lives.
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