Ms Fiona Bardon:

The Deputy's first question was about the care I received in hospital versus nothing and highlighting the lack of care when one is discharged from hospital. First, we did not quite realise what was wrong with me. When you are in hospital people use medical terms and you are not fully with it either, which is another issue. When you are discharged you think, "Oh, I must be better; this is fine". You are discharged home into an environment you are familiar with but might not really remember how to use. Basically, you have to relearn an awful lot of things. When you are discharged you think that the reason for being discharged is that you are better. It is probably a lot to do with the lack of funding, beds and the like but it is also, I imagine, that the hospital has got the person's medication under control and there is not that much more it is possible to do in hospital versus somebody who is coming in from a road traffic accident or is to have an operation and needs the bed more.

Nobody in the nursing community or whatever it is knew that I had been discharged. I do not understand why there is no social worker or overall community team that would get a notification from the hospital saying, "Fiona is 33 years old and has been discharged with a stroke. Can you call to the house in three days' time and see how she is getting on and what needs to be done?".

I was discharged into my mum's care. My mother has no medical background and she has her own medical issues. She did not realise what needed to be done and she was still getting over the trauma of having found me having a seizure on the floor. She was dealing with all of that and then sitting beside me for the next ten days in hospital and the worry of having to get over that. On discharge, the only real guidance that she was given was how to use the pen so that if I was to have another seizure it would stop me having a seizure. That was it. There was no recognition that perhaps she might not be able to do this, along with all those other little things. People working in the medical field are used to dealing with these issues every day and can forget that once a person leaves the hospital he or she are lost. Yes, medical staff will say to give them a call any time, but then you ask yourself if it is a stupid question or perhaps they are so busy I might be bothering them. A person does not want to take up the time of nursing staff.

I believe that everyone should get assessed when they leave hospital. They do a physical assessment and a speech and language assessment. For example, they made me walk up a set of stairs, and checked that I could swallow and so on. It was three months later, however, when I was beginning to get better that I realised that while I thought I was 100% I was completely doolally in that I was not making any sense, but in my head I was making sense. It shows how it can be six months later, as a person gets better, the deficits come out a little bit more. The person has dealt with the stuff that has come up straightaway such as not remembering how to have a cup of tea, and then he or she must relearn how to boil the kettle and remember where the cups are. As we go from relearning to things becoming automatic again, other things can start to show up as issues. For instance, my inability to read would not have shown up for a long time because I was so tired having to do all of the normal things such as getting dressed and getting showered, brushing my teeth, and going for a five-minute walk. This all took so long out of my day that I was exhausted, so I did not know that I could not read. Those kinds of things might not show up initially. Ms Farrell also mentioned it earlier. For her situation with her son, things crop up over the years. People need to have check ins every now and again. I am aware that in an ideal world it would be great for everyone to get checked up every six month. It is highly unlikely but something has to be put in place. The things that are cropping up for me now are completely different from what I needed initially. I am still with the National Rehabilitation Hospital, which is good. As Ms Farrell said, I might go in and do a course for six weeks and then be let off again for a few months until they might call me back in again. I did a course on what happens when a person has a brain injury, how the person is learning how to redo stuff and about the neurons are finding different pathways. Another course was helping me with my organisational skills. Back in April I also did a course on reading and how, when I am reading, to make a spider diagram of the main characters to include information such as this person works as a teacher, and the mum is called whatever and the sister is called whatever, so that if I want to know what the person is called I could look at the diagram to get a quick reminder and then continue with the story. It is about trying to put those things into practice.

If I am ready to go back to work, they must figure out my deficits to get me back to work and what needs to be put in place for that. Those places cannot really do everything for everybody. Ms Farrell also mentioned other charities such as Acquired Brain Injury Ireland, Headway, but each organisation may have its own niche and a person may have to go to different places. As was said earlier, we do not know about this until we find Facebook pages or get onto these groups. I did not realise that the Irish Heart Foundation dealt with heart and stroke. Why would I? There had been no strokes in our family and it had never been an event before. None of us would have known. We would have known more about the Irish Cancer Society than the Irish Heart Foundation. I typed the word "stroke" into Facebook and this came up. I thought it was amazing. I logged on and typed in words, and found all of these people who, while they do not have the exact same injury, had the exact same experiences where they had been pushed aside and they had not known what to do. It was little things. I had been able to get my driver's licence back a year after. Because I had a seizure it had been taken from me. People must go through the Irish Wheelchair Association to get assessed and then through the doctor or the consultant. Then, a few weeks later someone will come up online and ask "How do I go about getting my driver's licence back?" I was able to tell them. This kind of information is not given to people. I do not understand it. If I am being discharged from a ward and surrounded by stroke patients, why can someone not say: "The Irish Heart Foundation does this; Headway does this; Acquired Brain Injury Ireland does this; this person will be a social worker; we are going to get a carer for you for two mornings a week for the next six weeks; and the carer will see if you need physio, or whatever it is." It does not make sense to me why people are not given leaflets or information. It is overwhelming. It should be the case that we are told that someone would call in a week's time when the person has settled and perhaps figured out what he or she needs, and be able to go things then. Another lady pointed out to me that if you can speak they think you are fine. Being able to speak and being able to live and fend for yourself are all very different things.

The Senator also asked about my returning to work. My school is a very big school with 600 or 700 pupils. To me that would be overwhelming, with so much noise and coming and going all of the time. Ideally I would love to go to a smaller school but my permanency is with my school, so I have to go back to my school. That will be a big thing for me. When we were in college and in our first teaching practice we are brought out. I have had many teaching practice students in my classroom and for their first time out they would come out to me. I would teach in front of them for one week and then they would come up and teach three lessons per day. That would be brilliant for me because I would be able to go in and be reminded of how to teach. I would then be able to take over a lesson or two per day. It would not have to be the case that I am in straight away and in charge and responsible. It is 35 students and there is no point pretending that we do not have 35 students in our classes because we do. The responsibility of that would be a bit too much for me at the beginning. If there was a lead teacher and I just had to deliver the class and do the assessments and teach, and if there was also a backup there for me, it would be good.

Learning support and resource teaching, and teaching English as an additional language, are all special education teachers that have grouped together recently. If one is a special education teacher one can co-teach or take smaller groups out to do more individualised learning. That would be more ideal. With year groups that I have taught already, because I have had to relearn so much, I have my plans done and my resources made for year groups that I have taught. It would be a lot easier for me to teach in a year group I have had the experience of teaching.

Some schools are entitled to half a teacher because of children with special educational needs, where perhaps more students are entitled to half a teacher, or a teacher for two and half days per week. This kind of situation would be ideal for me where I would not have to go in for a full day, or perhaps I might go in for five mornings or one full day and one half day. There just does not seem to be any wriggle room. It makes no sense to me because there is a massive shortage of teachers at the moment. There is also a massive subbing crisis. Teachers from Ireland are teaching in Dubai and are getting way better pay, and there are teachers who are retired coming back into sub. It is just a mess at the moment but that is a different issue.

In saying that, for me to get back to teaching one or two days a week it would have a massive impact on my illness benefit, and it would also have an impact on my salary protection. They say that if I am able to work then they do not need to pay me anymore. They do not see the bigger picture that I am only able to work one or two days a week. I still need to live and I still have bills to pay. It would be silly of me to agree to work for one or two days a week knowing that all of that would be taken away from me.

The last question was about the type of services we need and I believe I touched on those already.