The Day After the Red Fox

Alan Rose

It started as just a fairly ordinary day. I woke up in the caravan we'd rented for a few days in a place called Cannich, near Glen Affric. Nice wee site surrounded by ancient Scots pine and midges and not much else. The previous day we'd spent walking in the glen, some very ancient Scots pine (still have a bit on the mantelpiece at home), a wood ant colony and an encounter with a red fox. We'd woken late-ish, made love and were sitting up in bed having a coffee and lazily discussing what to do with the coming day.

I have a vague memory of a sudden blinding headache but the next thing I really remember is waking up alone in bed and wondering where Mary had gone. Its funny but almost the clearest memory I have of the whole day is getting out of bed and getting dressed and just assuming that Mary had got up and gone out for some unknown but perfectly logical reason.

The door of the caravan opened just as I was tying my shoelaces and Mary came in accompanied by the guy who owned the caravan site. This didn't seem odd at the time, neither did explaining to the guy that I'd fallen asleep, but was fine now apart from a bad headache; not something I suffer from but that didn't seem that odd either. Mary was explaining to him that I'd seemed to have had some sort of fit as I passed out and although I listened fairly intently to this, this too didn't strike me as odd either.

There was something slightly odd and disconnected about hearing him tell Mary that it sounded like I'd had an epileptic fit; he suffered from a mild form of epilepsy himself and seemed to be saying that he recognised the symptoms. As for me I just kind of went along with all this! Finally they decided that he would take me to see his GP in nearby Beauly.

The journey just passed. I've driven down the same roads since and the first time I did there was a feeling of clear but faint recognition. Quiet roads with hedgerows or drystane walls of varying heights edging fields, mainly holding sheep or cattle, but the odd one with hay or silage grass and the odd patch of woodland. I know we passed through a couple of villages but nothing really registered about those, yet I could describe some of the old stone-walled bridges we crossed in detail.

I could probably still take you to the street with the doctor's surgery on it.

She seemed nice. I don't remember much of the conversation but do remember that I struggled at times to find words to describe how I was feeling. This was when I first came to the realisation that maybe something serious had happened to me. When I say that I couldn't find the words I mean that literally and the feelings I'm talking about weren't emotions but physical sensations.

I think I'm reasonably literate and the realisation that I just didn't know the word for something fairly routine, and that I know I should know, struck me forcibly; I couldn't understand how I'd forgotten some of the words and yet was lucid enough to be able to think, **** I've had a stroke or something.

(That's one of the other clearest memories of the whole day, the sudden fear that I might have suffered some lasting damage to my brain! As a student I'd worked as a Ward Orderly in a Geriatric unit and can still clearly remember the frustration displayed by stroke patients at not being able to communicate while obviously knowing what they wanted to say)

The upshot was that the doctor's recommendation was that the campsite guy (never did get his name although I've been back to thank him) take me to Raigmore in Inverness. That part of the journey I really don't remember at all. I suppose the realisation that there really was something wrong and the effects of the headache combined to make it a blur... All I really remember is a journey with my head against the window of a car, Mary sitting beside me looking and sounding worried.

Raigmore itself is even more of a blur. Don't remember getting admitted at all and although I know that they did various tests, I don't remember them either. All I do remember is being in a bed in a kind of holding area and at some point being told that I'd had a subarachnoid (I always think that sounds like some sort of spider thing) haemorrhage; also known as a brain haemorrhage or an aneurism.

Once diagnosed I could finally be given some painkillers and felt well enough to argue for being transferred to the Southern General in Glasgow, near where I lived and worked and close enough to where my family lived for them to visit easily, as opposed to Aberdeen Royal which was the designated specialist centre for my condition.

That was five years ago and I know I was one of the lucky ones. I came to. I've been told that that makes all the difference. During my recovery I kept meeting people who had known someone who had died from this; almost everyone seems to. I've got some platinum coils in my head and not even any after effects. I still remember the fox walking unconcerned along the path ahead of us in Glen Affric.