It could happen to anybody but it’s up to you to fight it when it comes because if you don’t, if it comes and you don’t decide, because I had a chap who was my friend in the hospital, I didn’t know him until we met in hospital and because he was ill, he didn’t even want to go to the loo or he want the nurses to help ever time ‘Nurse nurse things like that, you’re not helping yourself. So when hes shouting nurse, I said, ‘Why don’t you?’ he said, ‘I can’t, [name], I can’t. I said, ‘Try. You’re like me but when you try to go, want to use the loo’ and he say, ‘But you fall down. You see. But if you don’t help yourself, I don’t think you, whatever medication they give you, they can’t help you. Only self believe that because he can’t do this, he can’t do that, don’t have to bring tea to him all the time. You understand what I mean? So you have to fight it yourself. That’s what I meant over there. It helped me a lot.

We ask people to give advice to other people that have had a stroke. What’s been important for you in recovering from stroke? And what would you advise other people to do?

The difficult’ sorry, it’s diff, the

It comes from yourself?

Yes.

So’

Yes.

You have to be motivated

Yes.

‘to continue?

Yes.

Yeah. And what does that mean to, in terms of

Anything.

‘doing things?

Anything.

Mmm.

Good

Driving, painting?

Drive. Yes.

You have to find other things’

Yes.

‘to occupy your life

Yeah. Yeah.

‘and give you purpose?

Yes.

Well, to try and do as much for yourself as you can and not rely on other people all the time and I think a lot of people just, you know… I think they just sit back and let other people help them too much and I think that way, you lose your independence. Maybe I’m wrong but it’s the way I think, I feel about it.

Yes. It is, I think it is important to have something to look forward to because when we come out of hospital, rehab, whatever, you’re in this little world of your own. You’ve got to get yourself back into the real world and so you’ve got to set yourself goals and projects and things that happen out there that you haven’t been part of. You’ve been, you’ve been away from all that for a long time, so you’ve got to get yourself back into that and the only way to do it, I think, is to set yourself goals. Maybe little things to start with, you know, small things and then work up to bigger things, even if it’s only perhaps, I don’t know, just something that you can’t do in the house, maybe like hovering or whatever, that you haven’t been able to do. Set yourself a goal that you can actually do the hovering downstairs and upstairs all in the same day, things like that. Start off with little simple things and then work up to bigger things, you know. Maybe something that you want to do in the garden anything at all that seems complicated to you and that you think you can’t do. Set yourself a goal and work towards that, even if it’s very, very slowly. I think important to, to gradually work towards it and when you’ve done it, you’ll feel very proud of yourself and you’ll be able to set yourself another goal. Maybe a bigger one the next time but you’ll go on and that pushes you forward and it also, when it happens after, just after stroke, I think it gets you back into the real world and that’s very important. So I think goals, yes, I would say. Really, really important.

Well take the tablets you’re told to take and do as you’re told. That’s all I can say is that, you know, they wouldn’t be telling you if it wasn’t worth telling you, would they?

But it’s important that people who’ve had strokes and brain haemorrahages don’t work too hard at it. That sounds like a bit of a contradiction, but you can get yourself very exhausted to the point where it then makes you incapacitated the next day.

Like for example, if I spent a few hours on my allotment doing something quite physical, which would be very difficult, I would be wiped out and I’d have to have a long sleep when I got home. And when I woke up after the sleep I would still feel pretty awful and probably the next day too. So it’s a bit of a juggling act to push yourself but not too hard.

And I’d love to try and help people, other people to achieve that balance in order to maximise their stroke recovery if I could.

Right, that’s really interesting.

So…

So finding a balance between trying to recover but not…

Hmm.

… over…

Yeah.

… over doing it.

And I think one thing that’s quite useful to mention, a thing that’s been preying on my mind quite a lot for the last two and half years is there’s one group of people on, on the one hand that say you can get better, you’ve got to be determined, you can do it, you can walk better, you can do, everything, your eyesight will come back if you, if you in your mind you will it to happen. And then there’s another people on the other hand saying, part of your psychological and physical recover is acceptance, accept your condition, accept that your eyesight won’t come back, accept that you’ll probably always walk with a stick or in a wheelchair. And once you’ve accepted that, the acceptance facilitates greater happiness and it’s, you know, once you can accept it, that’s part of the process of rehab. So the two conflicting arguments are accept it and don’t accept it. It, don’t accept it means work hard and fight against it. Accepting it just means let it in, accept that you’re now Gavin that can’t see properly, can’t walk properly.

Do you think that you can do both?

Whooo.

Just listening to your story it sounds like…

Now there you’ve nailed the…

Yeah,

You’ve hit the nail right on the head. Can you do both? Yes. A bit of both. Sit on the fence.

Listening to your story…

God.

… you know it really sounds obviously you’ve been very determined in your recovery but I also hear that you’ve accepted what’s happened. Did I get that right?

Well, have I accepted it? I have days when I don’t feel I’ve accepted it. I have days when I just think, Damn, Damn, Why? Why did you do this to me? Why me? Why me I know that I just think, Oh. I’ll worry about that later, I’ve got to get up and escort the kids to school

Live life and smile a lot’ and be happy.

The first words that come to my mind is never give up. Never give up. And keep, make sure that you keep in contact with as many people as you can and that you keep a close network around you, of friends. But also, I think it’s important to try and add some new, interests into your life. I’ve done some, quite a few different things. I’ve gone to art classes, I’ve done various different things. So it’s like explore new areas that you wouldn’t have explored in the past. That’s what I would say.

Oh the message is to don’t give in, to really fight it because it will get better. If as long as you’re prepared to fight the thing and say to yourself, I’m going to get better, it will do. But if you, if you give way, I think it’s not good. It’s, theres, theres only one way for a stroke I think is to, you know, really fight to get better and you will get better. Perhaps you won’t get 100% better but you will get better and you can have a decent living after that. In fact, I’m sure of it.