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Saturday 6th November 2010 is a date firmly imprinted in my mind. At the age of 46 just about the last thing I expected to have was a stroke, but have one I did.
Sure I was overweight with high blood pressure, but this was controlled with medication and my cholesterol was at a reasonable level, I wad given up smoking and drinking some years before, I thought I was doing everything right, but obviously I wasn’t!
I spent 7 weeks in hospital, and now 9 months later I am I guess about 50% recovered overall.
Yes I do think I’ve been lucky, because the lasting effects have been purely physical, plus a bit of anxiety, things could have been a lot worse, I still have pretty much everything that makes me, me.
I have decided to write my story in the hope that it might give other stroke survivors and their families and carers an insight from someone who has “been there”. Plus maybe some people may look at their lifestyle and try to change it to reduce the risk of stroke.
This book is of necessity somewhat vulgar in places, a stroke can strip you of your dignity and control of even the most basic bodily functions.
My one single message is I guess, “Don’t ever have a stroke, they’re rubbish!”
Saturday 6th November about 6:30am:
I was working on call from home, so a lie in even on a Saturday was out of the question, I decided just to have a bit longer in bed, so I turned over from my back to my stomach. Not sure if at this point I felt a pain in the right side of my neck but shortly after my left hand felt funny, kind of numb, but not a numbness that I had ever felt before. I thought that I must have laid on my arm or something so I rolled over onto my back again. Hand still felt strange and I felt a bit fluey, I had had a cold for a few days. I remember thinking “I hope I’m not having a stroke”. Slightly worried I got up and went to the bathroom, looked and myself in the mirror, smiled, face looked OK, I spoke out loud to myself, speech sounded OK, I raised both arms above my head they were OK, so I dispelled the fears of a stroke from my mind. Left hand still felt strange, also ring and little fingers on this hand did not seem to move properly. I put this down to having been lying on my arm, I then noticed the flickering colours of a migraine aura, an increasingly common occurrence for me. I put it all down to the fact I had a touch of flu coming on.
I continued about my daily business of housework, and online checks for work, hand seemed to have mostly returned to normal, but still felt a bit odd. Then sometime after lunch, when sat on the sofa, I leant forward and collapsed onto the floor for some unknown reason. I struggled to pull myself back onto the sofa, I felt weak. Eventually I managed to pull myself back to my seat, a bit panicky again, I then managed to stand up and walk around the flat a bit, again I checked myself in the mirror, all was still normal.
I then walked round to my parents for a pre arranged “afternoon tea”, a distance of around a hundred meters, all seemed well again now apart from the fluey feeling.
I told my parents I was feeling a bit fluey, and had found it a bit hard to get going earlier, I didn’t want to worry them with the full story. We checked my blood pressure this was a bit higher than normal, which is again consistent with a heavy cold or flu.
I sat on their sofa for about half an hour, had a cup of coffee and a mince pie, all seemed normal again now.
Then when I tried to get up to go home, I struggled again, and as I stood up I collapsed back onto the sofa. By now we were all worried and my mother called NHS direct, at this point my I found I couldn’t move my left arm or leg at all, my speech had become slurred and the left side of my face felt numb. At this point I was panicking, I thought “God, I am having a stroke!”. My heart was pounding and I felt quite a state of panic coming on.
