David Hearnden

How many times have I started to write this, or have I thought about what I would say? In many ways, I think that it is perhaps best to reflect on, and write about what has happened with the benefit of time. It is just over two and a half years since I suffered a haemorrhagic stroke. When I read some of the stories published on the website or in the newsletter; and visit the aunt of a boy in my daughter's class at school, who suffered a brain haemorrhage followed by a stroke in her early 30s, and is now in a permanent vegetative state in a local nursing home, I realise just how lucky I am.

First of all, I am lucky to have survived at all. The day after I had been taken ill, and rushed to intensive care at the Q.E. Hospital in Birmingham, my wife had had to bring my two children into the hospital to say goodbye to me, as the doctors didn't think I would pull through. I had had no prior warning of the stroke. Looking back, I wouldn't have thought that I was at risk; I didn't smoke, drank little alcohol, wasn't overweight and took regular exercise. My father, however, had had a stroke in his late 60s. I didn't know I had high blood pressure until my world suddenly turned upside down.

I remember nothing of those first few weeks as I was kept sedated; my blood pressure had been very volatile, and at one point I'd evidently ripped out the catheter they had to fit! When I came round I was so tired, and when I slept I had weird dreams. I couldn't speak, because the first night I had been given a tracheotomy to stop me choking to death and help me breathe. When the tracheotomy was removed I was able to speak again, with only some slurring; thanks, I subsequently learned, to the fact that I am in the minority of left-handed people whose voice box is on their left not right side.

In the weeks after I came round, I started down the long road to recovery. In early January (2000), I was moved to our local hospital. I had daily physiotherapy to strengthen my right side and enable me to walk again. Five months after the stroke, I was discharged home, continuing to be treated as an outpatient. I started doing some work from home; my mobility had been affected I told people, not, as far as I could make out, my brain. A big step forward came when I was given the ok to start driving again. I could get myself out for short walks, help with the shopping, take and pick my daughter up from school and contribute in other ways.

My next lucky break was to be referred to a rehabilitation hospital in Warwickshire. This had come about as a result of my wife, who at the time worked for the National Health Service Executive, visiting the hospital to give them some advice about funding. The consultant whom she spoke to was as interested in what had happened to me as this advice, and said that if my GP would refer me he would treat me. At the outset, he told me that he thought they could get me back about 80% of my functional ability; I've subsequently told him I'm aiming for more, and continue to pursue this.

The month of inpatient treatment culminated in a course of Botulinum Toxin injections in my foot, hand and arm. This primarily allowed me to place my foot more safely, and bear more weight on my right side when walking. I continue to attend the hospital infrequently on an outpatient basis, and have had two more courses of injections.

I started back to work in January of last year, doing two days a week and building up from there. It felt good to be back; to have this discipline, the challenge of the work I did and to be contributing to the household income. And then, out of the blue, I was told this February that I was being made redundant. Re-organisation and downsizing were the reasons given; though, I suspect that it had something to do with the fact my disability prevented me being less in evidence than I would otherwise have been. I had worked hard for the organisation, before I had the stroke and after it; and was angry about how I had been treated. I thought the stroke and the disabilities caused would make it difficult for me to get something similar. As it has turned out, I left that job, and walked straight into another, with more responsibility and better paid. I'm back to working full-time.

So what does the future hold? It's uncertain, especially after what has happened. But rather than dwelling on this uncertainty, I know I have to get on, and do all I can to move on in a positive way. I keep telling myself that it could have been me in that nursing home, or I might not even be here at all. We've each got a life, and we've got to live it. After all, I owe it to my wife and children, who have been there for me at all times; and without whose help it would have been that much more difficult.

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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