Stroke of luck?

**Before you read this blog - it has taken me 12 years to publish. I used to think that sharing my disability would make people treat me differently, I hid it from everyone but those close to me. Now I am working with individuals who have overcome massive trauma in their lives, live with physical and mental challenges daily many of them hidden, I feel brave and inspired to share this. Thanks for reading.**

Over the years I’ve often questioned my own mortality. When my auntie passed away from a brain tumour at a young age or when my beloved pet dog Frankie died. But not as much as when I had a stroke at 26 years of age.

That fateful day started out as any other, breakfast with my then boyfriend (who is now my husband btw), trip to town to buy some essentials for an upcoming holiday and an eye test at SpecSavers to see if a change in prescription was the cause of the eye ache I’d been having. Following a visual fields test which I had failed miserably I was referred as an emergency to hospital.

Three hours after sitting down in the ophthalmologists chair I was being told that there was nothing wrong with my eyes, there was obviously something going on in my brain. Obviously? What did that mean? Having lost my auntie less than six months before you can imagine what went through my mind.

Six agonising weeks passed then I experienced the overwhelming discomfort and psychological torture of an MRI scan. Those things are awful – having the ‘You’ve got a brain tumour’ voice screaming in my head whilst been shoved into a tube no further than six inches away from my nose was not an experience I care to repeat ever again! **Although following writing this I have had yearly scans and have learnt to sing at the top of my lungs to drown out the noise - my apologies to all the radiographers who have experienced this**

Two further weeks passed until my GP, a very straight talking, unemotional man, told me I had suffered a cardiac infarct in my occipital lobe. A stroke in Lehman’s terms.

Wow. Stroke. Such a big word with so many negative images attached to it. I wasn’t old, didn’t have any family history, had a relatively clean lifestyle, my face hadn’t fell, I hadn’t lost any motor function, I was more accident prone and had a couple of near misses in the car but they couldn’t be caused by a stroke!! Could they?

Turns out I had lost all of my peripheral vision on the left side of both eyes resulting in a total vision loss of 47%. The DVLA did not like that one bit so I said goodbye to my driver’s licence and hello to public transport. I was now officially classed as severely sight impaired and disabled.

Disabled and stroke survivor – two huge labels that I had thrust upon me in the space of a year.

How do you deal with that? How do I adjust to my new vision? How do I react to having my freedom taken away from me? How do I carry on with my life with these two labels strapped to me like a giant sandwich board?

Luckily I grew up in Merseyside surrounded by strong personalities and had not long had my voyage of discovery to Italy as a fresh faced 18 year old so was full of self-esteem and gumption. I decided not to take these labels lying down, I sought out support from the Stoke Association and local charities, I posted on forums, read hell of a lot, took part in a research study by the University of Liverpool and fought the system to get everything I was due. So now what? I have my guide cane, a huge monitor at work, supportive colleagues and managers, a network of ‘stroke’ buddies and have adapted to my new vision range. What’s next?

Having met a huge amount of people with disabilities I can say with absolute certainty that we are more than just our labels. People with disabilities have courage and fight and resilience and skills that are not defined by our disability. I have a successful career in a job that I love and a very loving family life. I am a best friend, a wife, a mother, an honorary colonel and make sure my daughter is raised to understand that disability is a part of everyday life and those who have this label are equally as fabulous as those who don’t.

‘It’s not who we are underneath, but what we do that defines us.’ Batman Begins