I thought it would be just a short surgery of the left ear – implanting a stapes prosthesis to allow better hearing – when I entered our local hospital mid-October. The surgery went well the doctor said when I returned back to consciousness. Everything is fine.
I came back home two days later but I did not feel stable – there was a constant feeling of vertigo. It increased over the next days. The surgeon had a look at the ear and decided to send me to the university clinics of Berne. The computed tomography did not show anything special but they decided to open the ear again. It turned out to be a second surgery, where I got a new stapes prosthesis, a smaller one, and three days later I came home.
The constant feeling of vertigo continued or became even worse. I hardly could eat and felt like vomiting. I could not leave the bed alone and the control of my legs went from bad to worse.
After four days, my wife called the ambulance. Two ambulance persons carried me down and and drove me to the emergency room of the university clinic of Berne, the Inselspital. There were ENT specialists but they could not identify the reason of my collapse. A lady doctor from the Neurology department supposed that there might be blood in the brain and initiated doing a lumbar puncture. It showed that there was blood in the brain.
Next morning they did a CAT with contrast agent. It showed the blood in the brain. They inserted a tube into the back to reduce the perssure in the brain. Within a few hours, this brought a significant improvement. For the next 8-12 days I was under constant observation – I had to lie constantly in bed. Slowly the situation seemed to become more stable, and so I came into the neuro-chirurgical department. Though I was far from moving myself, the doctor was very optimistical and said that the health progress is going on well.
One week later, I entered the rehabilitation clinic Schönberg at the lake Thun.