Johnathan Henton
Jonathan Henton - I was aged 41 when I had my stroke in Sept 2005
My name is Jonathan Henton and I live in Barnes, West London with my wife Helen, and our two sons Barney, 6 and Elliot 2; and up until 26th September 2005 I was feeling pretty smug about my health. I was 41 years old, had never had any health problems and had recently lost some weight and had been doing more running and going to the gym about 3 times a week, and whilst not particularly quick I had good stamina and had enjoyed running a number of half marathons and 10K road races. On the 25th September I had entered the Windsor half marathon with the personal aim of running under 1 hr 50 minutes which would have been a personal best by a couple of minutes or so. The race went OK although it was a bit warm, but I kept drinking at the drinking stations and I finished in about 1:56 which was a bit disappointing but not a big deal. I drank some more after the race, ate the mars bar that you get on completion and also had a sudden craving for some sugar, so I ate a small handful of chocolate peanuts.
My wife had been watching the race with our two sons and she drove us all home and I felt a bit tired but otherwise OK. In the evening, after dinner, I was bathing the two boys to get them ready for bed and needed to stand up to lift one of them out of the bath - I slipped on my left hand and banged by forehead on the edge of the bath and found I could not stand up at all, in fact I could not move my left arm properly - it just felt very weird, as if I had been sleeping on it and it had gone numb. Helen, my wife, came in and realised pretty quickly that something was wrong as by now I was just floundering around on the floor unable to stand up. Helen called an ambulance on 999 and two rather large and reassuring ambulance men came within 10 minutes, and they took my wife and I to Charing cross hospital in Hammersmith. Helen had quickly managed to leave the children with one of our neighbours. At the hospital they realized pretty quickly that I had probably had a stroke and I had a brain scan that evening which confirmed there was a clot in the right hand side of my brain (MCA infarct). I ended up spending the next two weeks in hospital recovering fairly quickly at first and then more slowly. The principal symptoms that I had in hospital were numbness and loss of feeling in my left hand and arm and initially in left leg. I also had some visual neglect on the left side, a little bit of facial droop on the left and initially I was slurring my words. Cognitive reasoning was affected somewhat, and I had problems telling the time, keeping track of time and that sort of thing. That was a bit frightening. I had lots of tests and scans and there were no anatomical problems and there is no great history of strokes in my family. I was proscribed aspirin and pravastatin (my cholesterol was a bit high but not extremely so). The half marathon might have contributed to the stroke by dehydrating me a bit – but I had been fairly assiduous about drinking before, during and after the race.
I was discharged from hospital after two weeks, just in time for my son's 6th birthday. I had quite a lot of physiotherapy and some occupational therapy in the hospital and that has continued via the local authority rehabilitation unit.
I work as a geologist with BP and my boss and colleagues have been very supportive. During December I did a few odd days in the office and am now following a plan of doing 2-3 days a week during January and if things go well I will try and get back to full time in February. However, nobody is putting me under any great pressure to return and I am concerned that I do not want to rush it.
All my symptoms have improved although the sense of touch is still pretty poor in my left hand and I am now just learning to live with it - but it is a bit frustrating that I can't tell what's in my pocket and so on and it has affected my typing. Dexterity came back pretty quickly and the cognitive issues appear to have largely sorted themselves out. However, I still feel very tired from time to time as if I am jet-lagged. I have also been pretty short-tempered with my wife and children and probably not the easiest person to live with. They also tell me that I have become a bit louder than before.
Overall, and certainly after reading some of the other stories on the website, I realise that I have been pretty lucky in terms of the severity of the stroke. Nevertheless I have got used to the idea that I am now a 'stroke survivor' which although not a label I like, is certainly better than not being a survivor. Every time I pick up a paper there seems to be some other poor soul who has succumbed from a stroke and that certainly now seems a lot closer to home than before.
I have continued on aspirin and pravastatin and have started doing a bit of cycling and swimming in order to recover a little bit of fitness. I am watching what I eat, but more because I want to lose weight rather than anything else. I have no complaints about my medical treatment at all – in fact everyone has acted very professionally in the NHS – although I do wish they could reduce some of the bureaucracy associated with getting appointments etc and they have been a bit slack in passing my notes on from the hospital to my GP.
Thanks to Johnathan 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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