Wheels for Sale

June 15th 2004. Time seemed to twist itself in those vital minutes when awaiting the ambulance’s arrival. After an initial assessment, they carried Mavis to the ambulance and I watched as they tried to find a vein for an injection. Unfortunately, the body had already started to close down and so reluctantly, after about 10 minutes, they gave up and said they were taking Mavis to the Accident and Emergency department at Sunderland Royal City Hospital and that I should follow by car. Wednesday 16th June 2004. 00:30 I received a call from the doctor and I was taken to a small room. He asked me to sit down. My stomach churned as I waited for him to begin. Mavis had had her scan and was now on the assessment ward. It was not good news. She had had a very serious stroke. It was a clot, not a bleed, so they were not going to move her to Newcastle for more specialist treatment. Unfortunately by the time they had managed to do the scan it had become too late to inject her with the clot busting drugs we have all read about. The doctor even went so far as to say that they did not believe in using them anyway, as the side effects were considerable. Therefore, nearly six hours after it had happened, the truth was eventually dawning. Mavis was lying in a ward still unconscious and there did not seem to be anything the hospital or I could do about it. I summoned up the courage to ask what the prognosis was. “Not good”, he replied and suggested that I ought to contact the family to decide what we wanted to do with Mavis’s organs. At 01:00 I left the hospital and walked back to the lonely car parked in the street. My head was whirling with all this information because I needed to know, but somehow did not want to.