I called out to my partner for help, but given my size (6ft2 and 15 stone), she couldn’t lift me. I insisted that she leave me on the floor, thinking I would be fine in a minute. Unfortunately, I fell asleep while my partner was attending to our son in the next room. I was asleep for about an hour, which I now realise was a mistake.

When my partner woke me up, I was disoriented and still had no movement in my left side. I felt a tingling sensation throughout my entire left side, similar to the feeling when you’ve been lying on your arm for too long. I knew something was wrong, but I wasn’t entirely sure what it was, since I was fully conscious and aware of what was happening. As time passed, my partner called 111 because I didn’t want to waste an ambulance’s time if they were just going to tell me I had fainted or something similar. The operator at 111 immediately said I needed an ambulance because I was having a stroke.

The ambulance arrived within fifteen minutes. By then, my face was drooping, and my speech was slurred. I was rushed to my local hospital, Queen Alexandra in Portsmouth, where they quickly performed a CT scan and a lumbar puncture to see if I had meningitis because they were unsure of what was happening. They confirmed that I had a large blood clot in my brain and meningitis, which was causing inflammation in my arteries and required immediate attention. I was just within the window for a thrombectomy, so they contacted Southampton General for an emergency operation.

I was rushed to Southampton, where they operated on me and removed a 7cm blood clot. I was in complete shock because everything happened so quickly. Unfortunately, I didn’t regain any movement in my left side from the operation. I stayed in Southampton for three days before being transferred back to Portsmouth, where I spent four months as an inpatient in the rehab ward.

The first question I asked was whether I would ever walk again. The doctor’s response was straightforward: the chances were slim because I had a motor cortex stroke, which completely wiped out the control system for movement. I was devastated and cried for about seven days straight! I was in a ward full of elderly people with serious health issues, and there I was, all alone, with no health issues, wondering why this had happened to me. I’m fit, healthy, never smoked or done drugs, and worked hard in the gym almost daily. I felt completely lost in what seemed like a nightmare.

After I had calmed down and processed what had actually happened, I made a decision while sitting in my hospital bed. I could either pull myself together and prove to myself and the doctors that I would walk again, or I could just cry and do nothing about it. From that moment, I chose to fight!! So, from that day on, I gave 100% to my inpatient rehab every single day.

When I was discharged from the hospital, I still had practically no movement in my left side, which upset me. However, I was fortunate to have an NHS support team come to my house daily for physiotherapy. It seemed pointless at the time because nothing was working at all, and after three months, they had to discharge me. I regained a little movement during this period, enough to take myself to the toilet, etc. I felt completely lost. It was now up to me to work on myself using what the physio team had taught me. Simple exercises like sit-to-stand, weight-bearing, etc. – all the “boring stuff,” but yet again, I chose to continue my daily exercises.