‘I’ve never felt sorry for myself’: Tom Park-Paul, with his dog Binks, near his home in West Yorkshire. Photograph: Rebecca Lupton/The Guardian View image in fullscreen ‘I’ve never felt sorry for myself’: Tom Park-Paul, with his dog Binks, near his home in West Yorkshire. Photograph: Rebecca Lupton/The Guardian Experience Life and style Experience: a brain surgeon dropped part of my skull on the floor I was a healthy 34-year-old when a mass of blood vessels ruptured close to my brain. It took three neurosurgeons and a risky 16-hour operation to fix me
Prefer the Guardian on Google O n a Sunday in May 2017, I was at the gym and using a chest press when there was this pop. It wasn’t a sound – it was more like a sigh in my body. There was no pain, but I went limp. I shuffled along the wall to some mats. I thought I was having a stroke, but I wasn’t slurring and my eyes and arms seemed fine. But my left leg felt numb – it was the weirdest feeling. Lying on my back with my legs bent, both knees stayed upright when I looked at them. When I looked away, the left one fell to the side.
I ended up in A&E for hours at nearby St Thomas’ hospital in London. I was 34, healthy and had started regaining feeling in my leg, so they theorised it was a bruised spine and thought it was safe to discharge me. Overworked staff and shift changes meant that when MRI images of my brain went missing, nobody tracked them down.
At a follow-up appointment days later, my partner, Luke, argued with the consultant. I was still struggling to walk, and assuming I’d had a stroke caused by a blood clot, the consultant wanted to prescribe a high-dose blood thinner. However, Luke – an ICU nurse at the time – demanded a scan.
He saved my life. I returned from a CT scan to find the consultant looking pale: they had found a massive bleed on my brain and were sending me to specialists at King’s College hospital. Blood thinners might have killed me.
Tests confirmed an arteriovenous malformation (AVM) – a mass of tangled blood vessels – had ruptured close to the part of the brain that controls motor function in my limbs, causing a stroke. The consultant neurosurgeon and AVM expert rated it 4 out of 6 on the Spetzler-Martin grading system, which measures complexity, location and size.
The surgeons considered 3D-printing a replacement and putting the skull back in months later, but instead cleaned it Grade 4 is typically considered too risky to remove. But I was young; he said if I was game, he was, too. Without surgery, there was the risk of another serious bleed.
The operation required three neurosurgeons plus supporting teams of anaesthetists and nurses, so it couldn’t happen until July. Those weeks of waiting were hard. My limp disappeared, but knowing the AVM could pop again was terrifying.
The surgery lasted more than 16 hours, and afterwards Luke was called and told it had gone well. However, the doctor sheepishly added: “There’s something we have to declare. We’re really sorry, but we dropped his skull.”
Right at the end, the piece they had taken out got knocked to the floor. Infection was the concern, so they considered 3D-printing a replacement and putting it in months later, but instead cleaned it and dosed me up with extra antibiotics.
View image in fullscreen ‘I love to imagine them picking up the bit of skull, dusting it off, and saying, “Five-second rule!”’ Photograph: Rebecca Lupton/The Guardian I found out days later, when I was woken from my induced coma.…