David Hargreaves

Back in March 2009, three weeks after my fiftieth birthday, I had a stroke. Not a tiny one, either. I was, and am, a modest drinker, I don't smoke, and back then I was running thirty miles a week. I enjoy my work, and my family and friends enveloped my life. One way and another, it was a bit of a surprise.

I was walking down a London street, with one of my pupils when I suddenly had the kind of head rush you get when you stand up too quickly. It was uncomfortable, perplexing, but I wasn't alarmed. Instinctively I stooped and closed my eyes only to discover when I opened them again that I couldn't see normally: everything was double and space had become distorted.

'I'm not frightfully well, Lorenzo' I said, parking myself on the pavement. I was vaguely aware of other pupils eyeing me curiously, and wanted instinctively to tell them that, however it looked, I wasn't drunk.

Willing hands (I'm not sure whose) helped me into our Music School. I was aware of muttered discussions about Matron and ambulances and the memsahib tones of Victoria, our Music Secretary ('Not an Ambulance! A cab!') whose cutglass vowels have been for me a source of joy and parody years. With understated emotional intelligence, she held my hand (unbelievably comforting) and got me inside a taxi. As I sat down, I suddenly felt the left hand of face go completely numb, but I still didn't go into a funk. Dimly aware that I was beginning to slur my words, I said - rather like a bolshy toddler - 'I jutht want to go to thleep' but she was having none of it ('no, no, no!').

A few minutes later we arrived at St Thomas's where, after some black comedy concerning the automatic doors at A&E which didn't open, things happened very fast indeed. I was curious rather than affronted when I heard Victoria mutter, stage whisper, 'stroke'. It felt a bit hyperbolic, but it certainly provoked a rapid response. I was wheeled (probably a good idea, since by now I was stumbling rather than walking) into a curtained-off area.

Friendly nurses in pressed pale blue uniforms gently asked me for my personal details, and clever looking young men with stethescopes dangling around their chests tapped my knees and feet to test my reflexes. They looked gratified when I protested at something sharp being run down the soles of my feet, and impressed by my repeated successes when I was afforded several opportunities to say 'red lorry, yellow lorry'.

Yes, they told me, it looked like a stroke. More tests were needed but the imperative was to get a clot-busting drug into me fast. Problem was - it could lead to serious bleeding, and so and my consent was required. I hadn't much basis for any decision that wasn't instinctive, and I saw one of the doctors arching his eyebrows in surprise when, ever the smart arse, I replied that it sounded like a no-brainer. Two noticeably stinging injections of some miracle anti-coagulant called NPA followed, with a canula in each arm, and I was wheeled up to Mark Ward, the specialised stroke unit, on the ninth floor. 'Fantastic view' somebody volunteered, as they lifted me on to a bed by the window. It was too - a sensational sweep of the Thames from Westminster up to Lambeth bridge right in front of my eyes. But it passed me by. Way, way too tired.

The rest of the day stays in my mind only hazily. I was strapped up to heart monitors and blood pressure kit which suddenly whirred and inflated every quarter of an hour. Periodically, people came in and invited me to grip their hands, at which point I became aware of the sting from the two canulae. They also wanted me to push them away with my legs and to lift my left and right legs in their air. I was back in PE lessons at prep school ('Legs six inches raise! Hargreaves, you lazy little slacker, SIX inches!'). At that stage, my left arm and left leg weren't moving and the left hand side of my face was drooping.

I was whizzed off for tests including a CTC scan. 'Are you claustrophobic?' I was asked as I was wheeled into the cigar shaped space of an MRI scanner, and a perspex helmet that put me in mind of NASA was placed over my head. The answer was - very. But somehow my brain suggested there were greater priorities today, and the experience passed off without me feeling even a scintilla of anxiety.

I was also very thirsty, but was only allowed a few sips of water in the company of somebody ready to see that I wasn't choking. The capacity to swallow is an early casualty among stroke victims, but - pretty highly strung on a good day - I was still rolling with the punches. I have no memory of being sedated, and suspect that my own endorphines were rising to the challenge.

Thanks to the latitude of the hospital, I was allowed to cling to my mobile, punching numbers (with limited dexterity) all afternoon, and it was a huge asset to my security. Even in extremis, I computed appreciatively an unrepeatably wonderful excuse to enjoy the full attention of family and friends.

More soberly, I vehemently sought to protect all those for whom I cared most from the caprices of the rumour mill. I rang my brothers and sister and asked for one of them to tell my 80 year old widowed mother. She arrived, back ramrod straight, in the early evening - exuding both imperturbable calm and deep maternal love. Some events are too big for words, and at no point then or afterwards did she indulge herself with even a hint of self-reference, panic or lamentation. That gave me my first pointer, that first long Friday, as to how I might properly respond to an irrevocably altered present.

The hospital's large-heartedness in the matter of visitors also mitigated against any unhealthy introspection. My first dealt with that difficult opening moment by enquiring as to whether I had changed my underwear that morning ('Not being unpleasant, 'Greaves. Just need to know whether you've shamed yourself in public'.) Two pupils turned up - an act of exceptional generosity on the first day of the holiday, though I sensed a certain clenching of their jaws as they approached the bedside. Poor devils, I thought, faced with their bald fifty-year-old housemaster stripped to the waist. Poor me, for that matter, struggling to calibrate expression and voice to achieve the right emotional tempo, and still convey that their visit was inexpressibly important.

Then came supper, fortunately out of sight. Some sort of chicken and pasta, and quite tasty . But I could only use my right hand and couldn't judge distance so it was all a bit messy and humiliating. Nor would they let me stand up afterwards, and so I had to pee in one of those cardboard bottles which didn't thrill me. There was an array of buttons on a panel by my bedside and deciding which one to press in order to bring in a nurse to remove the offending item it was a whole lot worse. I've never been Harry Hi-tech but that bit of my brain had gone, I sensed, on a long, long vacation.

I expected no sleep that night: nurses were coming in with great regularity to test my blood pressure (which was, unusually, all over the place) and, I suppose, to ensure I hadn't died. In fact, I slept long and deeply and awoke feeling refreshed. When I woke up at about 8.30am, I was disappointed but not surprised to find I was still seeing double.

Douchan, my jolly and endlessly patient nurse, gave me a cheerful good morning.

'Now David', he said, very matter-of-fact, ' lift your left arm and left leg'. And, blow me, I did.

That wasn't the end of the story, of course. Thrombolysis indicated the need for a PFO closure, which took place three months later. For many months (eighteen at least) my fatigue was overwhelming. Although I was back at work within six months, I was tired for the next eighteen. Today, however, my eyes are the only daily reminder of the stroke: the diplopia has improved, but without glasses I still see double all the time. For the first few months, I relied on my existing glasses and a plastic prism over the lens - the world looked grimy and blurred, but it was vastly better than nothing. When, after about five months, I took possession of new glasses in which prisms were cleverly integrated within the lens, I saw the world anew for the first time in five months. And, for the first time as well, I wept. .

The stroke was deemed 'medium severity' but when I read and hear of how other stories, I'm almost ashamed of my own good fortune. Eyes apart, I feel normal and lead a normal life. I work, I read, I drive - I'm even running again, though nothing like so much or so fast. Continuity, most undeservedly, has been preserved.

It is a good luck story, but I hope I have not been spoiled by it. My sense of the transience of life has been much reinforced, as has my sense of powerlessness in the face of nature and biology. I feel well enough to make plans, but I don't take them too seriously. If it happens to me again - and if this time my luck runs out - I hope I can summon even a fraction of the dignity and courage shown by so many of the people who use this website.

Thanks to David for sending in his profile. Anyone else who would like to share their story can send it along with a photograph (if you're not shy!)

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