Okay, girlfriends, picture the scene. You park the car and go for a walk one day, taking pictures as you go. You're 35. A hill-walker. Pretty fit. You're working full time in a job you enjoy and you've not long moved to your first ever 'bought' house in an island village. All is well with your life.
About an hour into the walk, you realise you're quite tired. Your eyesight feels a bit odd but you've had migraines for years and 'visual disturbance' is common in some migraines. You have a bit of a headache as well. In fact, the pain runs from the top of your head down into the right side of your neck. You head back to the car and drive home quite slowly. Over the next few weeks, you feel worse and worse. You lose control over your right eye for a while. Your right hand starts to curl in. Your right knee buckles. Both hands and legs tingle. Your speech becomes slurred. And the pain in your head gets worse and worse and runs from your head down into your back and your right elbow. You'll be a bit worried about your control over your bladder because for a while you can't tell when you need to 'go' - so you go all the time - just in case.
You won't find out for quite a while but you've just had a stroke. This happened to me 31 years ago. My GP didn't diagnose it but sent me to the wrong hospital, the Victoria in Glasgow, where I was lucky enough to find myself in a consultation with a young doctor who immediately referred me to the right place: the Southern General Neurological Institute. From the moment I got there, I knew I was in good hands. Their experience and expertise were crucial to my recovery, although I have to say that I put my survival before that down to the physiotherapist who regularly carried out what I believe is called 'inter-costal drainage', a technique that eased the pain in my back and helped me to relax.
Stroke is more likely to kill women than breast cancer but we don't hear much about it, do we? Yes, there have been posters around for a while:
I don't really find these helpful. For one thing, every stroke is different and you don't always get visual indicators that other people can identify. (I got little sympathy from my immediate boss because I didn't 'look' ill most of the time.) And these posters can be quite alarming unless you know that you have up to two years after a stroke to recover, so the weakness and disability may not always be as severe as they were at the start. But at least these posters and the current ads by the Stroke Association emphasise the need for early diagnosis and also that a stroke can happen to anyone at any age and for lots of reasons - and survival is not just possible but likely. And to be brutal: the younger you are the more likely it is you'll get better and the more of your powers you'll recover.
When I started to feel better, I took out a covenant with Oxfam. Just by way of a thank you. I reckon I've donated over £30,000 to them since then. I didn't know about the Stroke Association. But I'm glad they're around and glad to urge you to take part in their current campaign directed at women:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5L-r2puKZs&feature=youtu.be
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