"A year on from my stroke and I am able to travel to work by public transport"
To mark World Stroke Day on 29 October, Collin a stroke survivor who received care at The Royal London and Whipps Cross Hospitals, shares his experience and raise awareness about stroke.
"It’s World Stroke Day tomorrow and I’m keen to celebrate my own recovery - a year after my stroke in October 2021.
I had lived a standard sedentary office-based life with no sickness until, aged 58, one morning I collapsed on the floor while getting ready to start my day working from home in the post- pandemic world) – it was a Friday like no other. I felt like I was having a migraine but when my son (now in his early 20s) found me he recognised my stroke symptoms right away and called an ambulance. This meant that I got an ambulance to hospital within a couple of hours of the stroke. After a fairly fast procedure to remove the offending blood clot I was taken to a stroke recovery ward in the Royal London Hospital to begin my recovery and then to Peace Ward at Whipps Cross Hospital. My stroke had weakened my left side, but I could still walk and talk although stairs were tough, and I had lost sensory perception on my left side. I lost some visual field on the left side too meaning not much vision on the left and certainly no driving. I can’t remember feeling much else at that time, but my left arm felt like it wasn’t mine! I knew getting help fast would be important to reduce the effect of stroke on my brain.
My first top tip to others with a stroke and their families would be don’t Google anything about strokes in the early days after having had one; just ask your health professional if you have concerns. However, do watch YouTube musicians documenting their recovery following stroke as I found them to be really motivational. My sincere thanks to the NHS clinical team and especially the physios and OT's – they were so innovative - using new methods and even incorporating guitar practice into my recovery programme and trying new digital games to help get me back to where I wanted to be. So six months after my stroke I returned to work full time as I felt ready and the money was useful, let’s be honest and I had to make use of my free disability bus and tube pass!
In those early days just after the stroke I was in a bad way with paralysis on one side and shocking fatigue. It was an effort to sit upright in a chair for the first few weeks, but I remember thinking I would recover - so when the medical team get you out of bed it’s really not to irritate you – it is to get you to start pushing yourself. And ten months on and a fair amount of physio …. I’m rocking again. That’s me in the photo, 10 months after my stroke playing bass guitar at a gig on the right of the picture in a pub in Greenwich. I’m feeling good and feeling stronger and happy to be world’s ok-est bass player and I’m delighted that some visual field has returned too and following a Spec-Savers eye test the DVLA insist on; I am currently waiting to hear from DVLA to find out if I have enough peripheral vision to be able to drive safely again – I know it’s not that important, but it would be nice to drive again.
A year on from my stroke and I am able to travel to work by public transport but still use a walking stick for balance and to let others see I need a little space. and I can rehearse and play gigs with my band standing up, but some things are still hard – the fatigue/ tiredness is still there but not as much now and anything fiddly like tying shoe laces is still difficult – but you just keep trying, don’t you? I find that you can do more than you think you can! Never too old to rock n roll it seems – although I’m 60 next birthday _ouch!"