"Your eyes are looking out but you can't speak. It's terrifying"

Your outlook changes when, within minutes, you go from healthy, sporty woman of 46 to stroke victim

It was extremely sudden, that was the difficulty. It was April 2008; I was 46 and a councillor in Kilkenny County Council. We were meeting the president, Mary McAleese, that day and I remember feeling really cold all day and I wasn’t hungry.

I was big into horseriding then and that evening, as usual, I went off to my riding school. I didn’t feel very well and the people at the riding school told me my co-ordination was off too.

I said to the instructor, “I have to get down off the horse, I don’t feel very well.” Then this sort of explosion happened in my head. I could hear something like electricity in my ears. My sight disappeared and there were little black spots in front of my eyes.

When I got down, I just stumbled and couldn’t get back up again. I kept thinking at some stage pain was going to set in. I knew there was something wrong but I had no idea what it was. I just kept waiting for the pain to come. We got in the car and went straight to Waterford Regional Hospital.

It’s just amazing when you have a stroke because you lose everything, absolutely everything, but you can hear what everybody is saying. I could hear what the doctors were saying about me but I couldn’t speak. Terrifying is the only way I could describe it. All this power is leaving your body, you have no idea why, and it’s the very same as if you are drowning and there is nobody there.

Your eyes are looking out but you can’t speak. You are a human being, used to communicating, but all of a sudden you can’t communicate.

To go from being able to be fully understood to not being able to communicate is heartbreaking. I remember seeing the doctor at the bottom of the bed and thinking, I’m drowning here and nobody even knows.

My husband and my daughter were with me by then, they were terrified too. When the doctor asked me to describe what happened, I couldn’t speak. I kept trying to say something but nothing came out except gibberish.

Losing power

When the consultant came to speak to me the next morning, she said, “We think you’ve had a stroke.”

Because stroke happens as the brain swells, you are losing your power very slowly so you are lying there in the bed, you can feel yourself losing the power, but there is no pain so you can’t judge how bad you are.

I was three weeks in intensive care and then a further three weeks in the hospital. It was like winning a medical lottery getting into Dún Laoghaire .

I asked the doctor about my prognosis: can I get better, what does it depend on? She said it depended on me. I knew I could depend on myself to get better.

I had to learn to walk again, to wash again – all the things a toddler learns, you have to really learn them again because your brain is now trying to find pathways to link with your muscles.

They give you things to do, like pick up little beads and string them together, to develop finer movement. Everything you do with a toddler you have to do with somebody who has a stroke.

I remember holding the facecloth in my hand and it was just a tonne weight. I couldn’t hold it. It just slipped through my hands. That’s all very hard on your mind.

The student speech and language therapists really helped me. Their intervention was almost immediate. Nobody should ever give out about students.

I was in Dún Laoghaire for 12 weeks. I had set myself a goal to be out by June 30th as a fellow Labour councillor was taking over as chairperson of the council. I had to be there for that.

Smoking

You never actually recover to 100 per cent because there is muscle damage. You lose the finesse of movement. I am left with a slight limp and there are a number of things I can’t do, like run or dance.

The doctors told me the fact I was a smoker played a big part in my getting a stroke. I’d been smoking well over 25 years.

I used patches while I was in the hospital and the doctor said to me, “If you smoke, you will die.” You very, very quickly figure out what’s important. I had such a good life I did not want to die; I wanted to come back to my life.

The doctor explained that when you smoke, your blood gets sticky, so a clot forms more easily around any strain you have in an artery and it eventually breaks loose and goes to your brain.

My outlook has radically changed since this happened.

I suppose a person sometimes has to go through this kind of experience to see how awful cigarettes are and how detrimental they are to your health.

It’s is a high price to pay. I haven’t smoked since.