Hand in Hand

Preface The idea for this book came about shortly aft er arriving home aft er spending six long and gruelling months in a rehabilitation hospital. Despite having two very young children, one of whom was my newborn son, my husband and our two families had coped extremely well, rallying around in that Irish Catholic way, so even though I was away from home every job had been covered by another family member. Although I would not have chosen for it to be any diff erent, in the days following my discharge, I felt as though I did not have a role any more, despite being a survivor and still having to continue my rehabilitation to achieve the best recovery possible. I was too frail to leave the house without being accompanied, so needed some direction. Technically on maternity leave, but still undergoing a massive rehabilitation, I was therefore subjected to daytime television, and watched lots of real-life accounts of people who had overcome adverse medical conditions. I watched one such programme and thought, I should write my story. My boss had always told me that I wrote excellent business letters, but I also felt compelled to tell my story in case I could in anyway help another young stroke survivor. Although the book has taken just over four years to write, there were long periods during that time when I put it on hold, as I felt there were more important and time-critical issues to deal with, i.e. developing and nurturing my relationship with my son, pursuing my physical recovery, sorting out my crazy mixed-up head, moving house to a new area and gett ing life back to some sort of normality. Why should you read my story over any other? Well, I feel it is an inspirational story, with a diff erent angle involving the children, an extraordinary family, friendship and I guess also a love story. Introduction The woman lay completely flat on the hospital bed. There was no pillow. She was totally paralysed. Her hair was shoulder length back then and instead of being strewn all over her pale drawn face in a tragic way as you may imagine, her relatives thought it was disturbingly neat. She was on a bed on the high-dependency unit aft er suffering a massive stroke that morning, although she herself was still unaware of this. Her relatives did not know if she would survive the night. The medical team ran to and from her bedside; it was a life threatening emergency situation and the woman was indeed fi ghting for her life! The experienced cardiology consultant went home late that evening utterly baffled, and thought about his young patient. She had already been a patient on the high-dependency unit for a few days with a rare heart condition called post-partum cardiomyopathy, which in itself can have a 50 per cent mortality rate. Th e woman had delivered a baby boy ten days before, but what could possibly have caused her to have a major stroke and for her heart to be in such a critical condition? Th at woman was me. Th is is my story…