Draining and surreal. That’s how Louise Duffy describes the experience of watching her mother, 78-year-old Barbara Duffy, slowly become a skeletal figure in her rest home bed.
Barbie was rushed to Christchurch Hospital in October 2021, in the depths of the Covid-19 pandemic, after suffering a major stroke at her home in Methven, Canterbury. As emergency doctors worked to stabilise her, Louise, a marketing executive who lives in Martinborough, Wairarapa, sat nervously by the phone awaiting updates from Barbie’s partner, Peter Harper, a former teacher her mother had met later in life.
The word from the hospital was to wait 24 hours while doctors determined how serious the stroke was. Strokes affect about 9500 New Zealanders every year and are the most common cause of adult disability. Most people survive a stroke, which occurs when blood flowing to a part of the brain is interrupted by a clot or haemorrhage, depriving the brain of oxygen. But survivors can be left with a range of physical and cognitive disabilities.
Barbie feared suffering a major stroke more than any other illness that commonly afflicts the elderly.
“[Having a stroke] is her biggest nightmare,” a senior nurse at Christchurch Hospital wrote in Barbie’s medical notes on the afternoon of October 7, after talking to Duffy and other family members. It was the day after Barbie was admitted.
FORWARD PLANNING
This story is from the February 25-March 3 2023 edition of New Zealand Listener.
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This story is from the February 25-March 3 2023 edition of New Zealand Listener.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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