From 23rd May 1964 to Saturday 18th August 2001 I was (I think) a normal 37 year old man living with his wife (Donna 31) of 9 years. I felt well, although overweight, and for the previous 3 years we had been working on renovating our house.
In the early hours of Sunday 19th August 2001 our lives changed forever. I got up in the middle of the night to do the usual thing I would get up in the middle of the night to do. The next thing I know I am laying on the bathroom floor and I am holding my right leg. I don’t know how long I was lying there for, but eventually I got up and went back to bed. I then woke up (it must have been a more normal time to get up on this occasion) and I went down stairs. I thought I was dressed but I was not and I can remember leaning on the arm of the sofa feeling like a steam train and hit me head on. I also had in the back of my mind that I had to finish my Open University assignment that weekend. The overriding desire I had was to go to hospital. Something I never concede in doing unless my life depends on it. On this occasion, it did!
I can then vaguely recollect being driving to hospital. I thought I was having conversations with Donna, but later she told me I could not talk properly and I was difficult to understand. I remember walking into the A&E and the Royal Surrey County Hospital in Guildford and sitting down. The next moment I remember was me sitting in bed (two weeks later) in a neuro-care ward with Donna telling me I had had a stroke, a Haemorrhagic Stroke, as it happened. I seemed to accept this as though Donna had told me it was someone’s birthday or any other point of conversation that is not ground breaking. Everything was very very fuzzy. I tried getting up to use the toilet and remember it being like trying to climb Mount Everest, very heavy legs and no oxygen!
Right from this point onwards I had an in-built desire to get better and this determination helped me through the coming weeks and months ahead. My speech was slurred, I was very unstable on my feet, could not eat or drink properly and also I could not write. Donna away got me some learning to write for 7 year olds books and sat in hospital working through these. Thank God, she gave me these and other exercises to do in the early stages as I am not sure where I would be now if I had not worked through them.
I stayed in hospital for almost 7 weeks working with various Nurses with respect to Speech, Motor Skills and Physical ability. After leaving hospital I attended Unsted Park, Godalming, Surrey for two weeks so that medical experts could assess my condition. I was hoping it would prove that I could go back to my job as an IT Project Manager, which in the end it did. After that I attended St George’s Hospital in Wimbledon to have an Angiogram to check the stroke area of my brain and if this could happen again. A month later I received a letter from St George’s hospital saying that everything looked OK. I returned to work in April 2002 and since then I have been working for the same company but in a more consultative role, which I have enjoyed. It is now 5 years hence and emotionally this event still has an effect on both of us, but on a positive note we have had two fantastic children since, I do not need to wear glasses any more and I do not bite my mails anymore. (Two weird by-products of the stroke, but nevertheless good ones).