Tim Musgrave
I was 24 when I had my stroke. May 28th, 2000, in the middle of the night after a bit of 'how's your father' something just didn't feel right. My leg was itching, my arm too, like I'd developed pins and needles in an instant. I stood up in order to shake the feeling off, a smile of enjoyment still on my face. The smile didn't last that long, in fact that was going to be the last time I smiled for a long while. I fell to the floor in a crippled heap, a look of astonishment on my face. My girlfriend rushed to my side and propped me up by the bed as my attempts to sit up had ended in failure. "Is this the end?" I asked myself.
At first the doctors were suspicious. "What drugs had he taken? How much had he drunk?" It wasn't until an angioplasty was carried out that alternative suspicions were raised. In fact my stroke had been caused by natural factors. Born with a thinning of the artery around the heart (a co-arctation) I should have been a statistic before I had reached six months. Somehow I survived.
The stroke had already left me with limited movement in my right arm, no extension in the fingers of my right hand, instability in my walking and a lack of muscle definition throughout the right side of my body (after 10weeks rehab at 4 different hospitals!), now I had to face open heart surgery with only a 50:50 chance of survival. Great! Still, what else was I to do? Leading up to the op, with only a week to go, everything suddenly changed. Not to go over the top, but my saviour (Mr/Dr Gaines) suggested an alternative. On October 18th I had a stent inserted into my artery. From then on it was full steam ahead.
Tim Musgrave
Age 30
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