MY HEALTH EXPERIENCE: ANNETTE BUCKLEY:Brain haemorrhage has changed singer's outlook on life
I NEVER thought about my health before. I did yoga and exercised and, okay, as a singer/songwriter working in the arts you might be out late on an occasional night after a gig, but I wouldn’t have done it a lot.
This year, on January 27th, I was in the studio finishing recording a single and I was getting into my car when I just got the most severe headache. I went back into the studio and said to the sound engineer, Cormac O’Connor, “I hope I’m not having a brain haemorrhage.”
The pain was just so different that I knew there was something severely wrong. The pressure between the skull and brain was telling me I needed to get help. He put me in his car to go to hospital and it was the most horrific journey I’ve ever taken.
Every time we went into a pothole, I got sick. If an oncoming car passed, I had to cover my head with a blanket, as the light was too much for me. It was as if there were people standing on my head and hitting it with a hurley. It was that intense.
I went to A&E and I was screaming with pain on my sister’s lap. I had to sing at a funeral the following day, so I was trying to get in contact with the lady to say I couldn’t do it. All I kept thinking was that I couldn’t let this woman down.
When the doctors saw me, they asked, “Out of 10 what is the pain threshold?”
I just said it was, “Ten, 10, 10.”
The doctor gave me morphine for the pain, and then they did a CT scan an hour later. Then they came back and said they hadn’t got great news. “We found a bleed and you have a subarachnoid haemorrhage.”
I was in shock and asked them straight out: “Does this mean I am going to die?”
The doctor said: “I can’t answer that, but it is a good sign that you are talking to me now.”
A neurosurgeon came and spoke to me about what they would do. That night I took a swelling drug for the brain and then they left me on a trolley.
The individuals were great, but they did leave me on a trolley that night with elderly people all around me.
The following day I got an angiogram. This is when they put a blue dye into your system and light it up and it allows them figure out where the aneurysm was.
I was to have a coil procedure, which meant I didn’t need open brain surgery, but they would put a platinum coil through my leg and into my neck and brain and coil off the aneurysm.
There was constantly a “what if?”. I kept thinking I needed to get this done and then move on from it. I was focused but very anxious before going in for surgery.
I remember being very scared and feeling that my life was out of my control. What was so scary was that I didn’t know if I would see my family again. I remember saying goodbye to them and saying this could be the last time I would see them.
When I came out of it, I remember being very cold and then the doctor looking at me and saying all went well. I was relieved that the worst was over and I was alive.
I stayed in hospital for another eight nights and afterwards went to my sister’s house for two months to recover.
I lost all strength in my hands. If I lifted a spoon, it fell out of my hands. I wasn’t able to play piano and so I had to give up teaching and playing which was hard.
Physically, I have full movement back in my hands now and I’m able to do all the things I’ve ever done.
I had severe panic attacks for months after the surgery where I thought that every time I got a pain I was getting another haemorrhage.
I found that hard to deal with, and I’d end up back at the doctor’s thinking there was something wrong. I was very vulnerable and emotional. Although I got the all-clear in June, this is something that will stay with me forever.
My outlook on life is completely changed. Health is top of my priority list. The little simple things are important to me now.
I wrote a list of all the things I wanted to do that I had previously put on hold. So, since my illness, I have gone to Paris, and I did a jazz course in London and other things.
I even made a list of friends I haven’t seen in a long time and visited them all in the past few weeks.
It’s been a complete wake-up call, like God saying to me, now go and do what you are meant to be doing.
In conversation with
Brian O'Connell
