The 4th of March 2020 began like every other day. I woke up at 5.30am, washed, dressed and headed out the door ready to start my day, not knowing that when I came home later that evening life would never be the same again.
I arrived at work, a local Primary School, at 7am and set up the hall ready to welcome the children that would be attending Breakfast Club that day. The session was busy as always, but uneventful, no drama, no issues, no angry parents or children having issues with each other. Nothing out of the ordinary at all. That was until 8.45 rolled around and I lost all feeling in my right side.
Initially, I thought my foot had gone numb because my boots were new and, to be frank, I've got fat feet, so my plan of action was to get to my classroom and remove my boots. I would have to work with bare feet and deal with it later. However, by the time I had walked the short distance from the hall to the classroom, my whole right side had gone numb, I couldn't hold my handbag properly, I began to panic. I explained to the other member of staff in the room that I needed to leave and went into a small office nearby.
The first aider in me kicked in and I raised my legs, got water and something with sugar in, in this case a bar of dark chocolate because I was trying to 'be good'. To this day I still think about how savage I would have been if that was the last thing to ever pass my lips, because I genuinely dislike it. 😂
After around half an hour had passed I sent a message to my boss to let her know where I was and that I wasn't feeling very well. I ignored numerous people telling me to go to a&e and get checked out 'just in case' because I was convinced it was something silly like blood sugar or a trapped nerve.
At 11.00 I asked my close friend at work if she would take me to hospital, I had got no better in the time that had passed and was starting to worry about how I would get home later.
Before I succumbed to the fact that something could genuinely be wrong with me, I actually gave a child his snack, toast (which I had made one handed) and made sure he had been given his meds. Ever the professional. Ha!
In A&E it became very apparent very quickly that something serious was wrong. I was put into a wheelchair and rushed in for a CT scan, which showed nothing unusual. I had bloods done and eventually I got to see a consultant who said he was '100% confident I had not had a stroke and had hemiplegic migraines,' despite the fact I didn't have the slightest bit of a headache, I accepted this willingly, and made the (very silly) decision to discharge myself due to being terrified of hospitals, needles and pretty much anything related to them, and forced my boyfriend to take me home.
Two days later I went to my GP to ask if they could refer me for an MRI and explained the situation. At this point I still couldn't walk/move properly and needed help with everything. My doctor was horrified that I had come home in the state I was in and refused to refer me, instead insisting that I go back to a&e and demand an MRI. So off I went again, accepting my fate thinking I would have to spend the night in hospital after all, but to my surprise the person I spoke to in a&e said I couldn't just walk in and have an MRI I needed an appointment. He also said he didn't think it was a stroke either, because 'I'd know if I had had a stroke.'
After lots of back and forth between my GP and the hospital I eventually, two days before my 30th birthday, got to go for an MRI. By this point lockdown had kicked in and I had waited around 6 weeks I believe. The day after my birthday I got a text from my GP saying my results were back and he wasn't happy so was sending them to a neurologist to look at. It was June before that neurologist called me to tell me I had brain damage on the left side of my brain which had been caused by a stroke.
In that moment my world fell apart.
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