I came to lying on the kitchen floor, wondering what on earth (apart from the earth!) had hit me. I know now that I had suffered a Trans Ischaemic Attack (*). My wife was away but friends who came to see me in hospital said that I spoke total gibberish. But over the next two days, I appeared to make a speedy recovery.
Unfortunately neither the GP nor heart or brain specialist ever hinted at the possibility of a mini-stroke; nor were either Asprin or Warfarin prescribed.
Two years later the consequences of that diagnostic failure became crystal clear.
I was on a small, idyllic island in the Aegean. The weather was glorious, the company invigorating. I was enjoying myself, sleeping well, and generally for the first time in five years, feeling at peace with myself. As the saying goes - little did I suspect....
Every stroke survivor can recite the exact date of their accident. Mine struck at two in the afternoon of Sunday, 5th June 2005. I was talking to a lady from Preston when The Clot reached its final destination. Immediately I regained consciousness I realised what had happened: a stroke had rendered me hemiplegic and speechless. I can now understand why a stroke is called a stoke: one minute you’re as able as the next man and the next, your life - and that of those around you - is changed forever.
But it is not only my life that has changed. For my wife, too, her life was changed at a stroke and I owe her enormous gratitude. When, in 1985, Katy promised the vicar she would look after me “for better, for worse; in sickness and in health”, little could either of us have known what cardio-vascular ambush lay in wait just five short months of our twentieth wedding anniversary.
Charles Spencer
( * A momentary interruption of the blood supply to the brain)
