The Long and Winding Road

 Tuesday, 10 September

Sitting across from me at the table is my breakfast companion. 

Jade* is barely 15 years old. We can't have a conversation, because she can't speak, neither can she express her thoughts on paper because she cannot use her hands. Jade is being fed by her mother.

Yet I get a sense of what she is feeling, because we have both suffered the same fate. We have had a stroke. 

 She is wondering, like I am, what did I do to deserve this and why can't I do the things I used to do? Like walk, use my knife and fork. 

It's a painful reminder that strokes strike the young, the old and the fit. 

Jade and I are both in the Hyper Acute Stroke Unit at Bradford Royal Infirmary. 

I feel like a robot that has been assembled with two unmatched halves and the software hasn't been sorted yet. Finding my mouth is tortuous. Why doesn't my left hand know where it is and why do I keep stabbing the fork instead into my chin? I have to think very hard about where my left foot should be in relation to my right so I can walk. It's bloody frustrating and having to rely on others to move is not in my DNA, I'm a Yorkshireman.

But unlike Jade I can talk and I've lost none of my cognitive powers (I know at this point some of my academic colleagues at Leeds Business School will be saying "What cognitive powers, he didn't have any in the first place?")

Like most blokes I don't want fuss, I don't want sympathy, I just want to get sorted. 

Fortunately, now having been transferred to Airedale General Hospital I've made good progress. This is where they fix people so they can live normal lives and return to work.

The consultants, junior doctors, nurses and support staff are caring, empathetic and simply brilliant. 

Helping me get there is an occupational therapist and two physios. They are just wonderful, no surprise that two of them graduated from Leeds Beckett University.

However, they are hampered. There's insufficient money to buy some of the essentials to make patients' lives more comfortable and to aid them on the road to recovery. 

For example, there's no specialist chair for the severely disabled to use in the shower. Surely it's everyone's basic right to have a shower? 

This is where you can help. Don't feel sorry for me, don't send me gifts, don't visit me. 

Instead, put whatever you were going to give me at my leaving do from Leeds Beckett University, or spend on transport getting to see me, or giving me grapes and flowers to JustGiving (https://www.justgiving.com/Pamela-Beaumont1?utm_source=Sharethis&utm_medium=fundraisingpage&utm_content=Pamela-Beaumont1&utm_campaign=pfp-email&utm_term=bvW2bRAQX.).

The aim is to buy that specialist chair. It cost ￡1500 with the appropriate accessories.

I've told my 'carers' that academic, PR and marketing folk are generous to a fault and you are doers, rather than just consultants. That with your help this target will be met. No problem!

And remember this hospital serves the Yorkshire Dales, the most visited National Park in Britain. So it's not just Yorkshire folk they serve. It could be that tourist, that walker, cyclist or rock climber visiting the Dales who has a stroke and ends up in Airedale to be 'repaired'. Or it could be your son or daughter or it could be you. They work miracles here.

Make it possible for stroke patients to have that shower. Give them their dignity back. Help them recover. Give generously. 

PS I hope to raise awareness of strokes in a column for The Yorkshire Post and 'diarise' my road to recovery. A story of hope and grit - like they do in Yorkshire. 

*Jade is not her proper name.