The Long & Winding Road To Recovery

When I suffered a stroke in September 2019, I began writing a blog to raise money for essential equipment for the stroke ward of the hospital that saved my life and rehabilitated me.

After raising sufficient funds, I stopped writing the blog from my bed on Stroke Ward 5 at Airedale General Hospital, Steeton, West Yorkshire, England. I just thought I was getting boring and repeating myself.

However, I then started getting emails via LinkedIn and Facebook urging me to continue with the blogs. People told me that knew of someone, either in their close or wider family, or friends or business colleagues who had suffered a stroke. They saw in my blogs comfort and understanding of what it was like to go through the experience of a stroke.

So I have decided to re-start the blogs - from the time the stroke hit me to when I left hospital and beyond.

My mental scars are deeper than the physical ones and I want to explore that experience and how I try and cope with the depression (my black dog) to help others. I also hope the blogs will help stroke survivors and the people who care for them or live with them that they are not alone in their suffering.

Many of the books that are written about strokes are published in the USA. The five books I have read (more like scanned through) are generally fine, but several of their chapters don't strike a chord with people living in the UK. Asking you to remember to bring a credit card with you to pay the ambulance and advice on which is the most cost effective hospital to use if you have suffered a stroke is something that fortunately we don't have to worry about in the UK. Our state run hospitals are thankfully free at the point of service.

Also American textbooks on stroke tend to be - well how shall I put it - a bit evangelical and effusive in their guidance. They don’t quite fit with the stoicism of the British or have the understated calm and black sense of humour that Yorkshire folk have.