But, in a very short space of time I had pins and needles going up my left side. Pins and needles in my head and realised that there was something quite serious going on. And worked out that as I didn’t have a pain anywhere. Didn’t have any pain at all, I wasn’t sweating or anything like that. I felt perfectly normal except I had a lot of pins and needles in my head and down my left side and a little bit on my right side. So I thought, Well, I’m probably having a stroke So I thought I’d better get blood to my head and laid down in this chair that switches (to) a recliner. And my face had started to go a bit numb on the left so I had to quite a job calling my husband (even though) he was just in the next room. So I was calling out, [Husband’s name, husband’s name] Stroke, ambulance And he said, Speak up I can’t hear you So I thought this was rather funny and he was still in the other room. So I kept (calling) [Husband’s name] ambulance, stroke And he said, Why do you always wait until I’m in the other room before you call me to do something So I thought, this is not good and yelled at the top of my voice as (best) I could, [Husband’s name] come here And then managed to say, I’m having a stroke, call the ambulance Still stayed horizontal in the armchair and I could feel the pins and needles creeping up heavily on the left side, and to a lesser extent on the right side. No other symptoms whatsoever. My mind was as clear as it ever is. It was purely the pins and needles which I guess meant that the blood wasn’t getting to my brain somehow. It was very similar to when you sit with your legs in a cramped (position) and you don’t move them for a long, long time. And then when you go to move your legs again, they hurt because the blood, wasn’t getting through properly. And they hurt until the blood’s circulating again. That was the nearest likeness I can tell you of what it felt like. It was less on my right side and quite strong on my left side.

And the ambulance couldn’t find us which was quite distressing. Although my husband was on the phone to the 999 person trying to direct them. And then because we’re only half a mile from the doctor’s surgery I thought perhaps I better get him to take me there in the hope that somebody was at the doctor’s surgery. So, I had a little bit of strength left. I had enough strength to either go to the bathroom, which I wanted to do, or get to the front door. And I propped myself up on the wall in the hall and made my way to the front door and called [Husband’s name] to take me to the doctor’s. And the ambulance and the doctor turned up at the same time just as I got to the front door. And I thought, Oh I, I can’t stand up anymore I’d better sit on a step. But because I’ve got arthritic knees I couldn’t sit on the step, my knees wouldn’t bend and I started falling backwards. And I realised I was going to go through my plate glass door so I put my left arm down to deflect myself away from the glass. And I was going quite numb by then, so I didn’t really know I’d hurt it at that stage. I landed on it, it was tucked under me. I landed on it.

And the ambulance crew got me on the ambulance, on the stretcher from there and took me to hospital. But, I could talk in a peculiar way, with one side not working, enough to say my name and answer various other questions.

Well, my stroke was in fact a brain haemorrhage. And, it came upon me without any warning. And I think the most extraordinary thing about it was that it wasn’t as if there was any activity I was doing which was likely, or would have been thought likely, to endanger me. I was working very hard. I was approaching my sixtieth year and I wasn’t working any harder particularly than I had over a long period of time. But one day I travelled to the North West of England and broke my train journey in order to see and old friend.

I was sitting in her kitchen drinking a cup of coffee and suddenly in the middle of drinking this cup of coffee I became aware that I was loosing my ability to articulate. I didn’t know what had happened. In fact I was completely confused and bemused by it. But, the friend of mine who I was sitting with immediately got on her mobile phone to the emergency services and said that, she thought, she was very sorry, but she thought that the person she was just sitting with was having a stroke. And it was at that moment that I thought, ‘My goodness, is this what’s happening to me?’

Anyway her quickness and her general speed and alacrity of response helped me enormously because it got me into, onto an operating table much faster, I think, than is normally the case. But it think what I take away from that myself is that it is possible to be very ill indeed, suddenly without, even looking back on it, without any warning sign. And I suppose the reason is that what I had wrong with me was very high blood pressure which I now realise having examined this many times doesn’t necessarily have any tell tale symptoms. You know, no sort of, no heart flutters, no things like that, no, you know, no obvious precursors to what in the end was a very severe illness.

Well, I got up in the morning and I was feeling OK’ and my daughter phones me every morning of course and she phoned but I’d, I got up, been to the toilet, put my dentures in, came through, put the kettle on and I was fine. And then my daughter phoned, I answered the phone, she said, ‘Are you feeling OK the day, mum?’ I said, ‘Yeah. She said, ‘Your voice isn’t right. I said, ‘Well, I feel OK. She said, ‘Have you got your dentures in?’ I said, ‘Yeah. I said, ‘Yeah. She said, ‘Mum, there is something wrong with you, your voice is just not right at all’ so that was all I knew’ but oh I forgot to tell you this. I have a chain on my door, which I always put on my door. Anyway, my daughter phoned my son and he came right down and on the, his road down, he phoned the ambulance to come and he was only two minutes in but he came to the door and at that time, they didn’t all have keys’ so , he buzzed of course and I let him in, came up and I tried with my left hand to open, I opened the door, the lock with the right hand, tried to get the thing out, the chain off, just couldn’t, couldn’t use this hand at all and by that time, he thought, I started crying and I’m saying, ‘Oh, there is something wrong here, you know, but he said, ‘Mum, can you not open the door?’ I said, ‘No, it’s just the chain. He said, ‘Well, just take your time. I said, ‘OK.

So then of course the door was open but I managed with this hand but no way was I ever going to get the chain off. So, and of course, by the time I came through here, and I felt this was a bitty different and I looked in the mirror and I saw and of course he told me that the ambulance was coming and I said, ‘Well, I’m not going any place. He said, ‘You’re going to the hospital mum, theres something far wrong with you’ and whenever the ambulance man came in, he said what was my name and that, [my son] said, ‘[Mum]’, ken. ‘Mum, [Mum]’ and he said, ‘Well, Mum’ and he said to the other, ‘You’ll have to go down the stair and get a chair. I said, ‘What for?’ I said, ‘I’m not going any place, I’m fine. He said, ‘No you’re not, I think you’ve had a stroke and then of course the tears came and all the rest of it but they were really awfully good, you know. But it was going down the stair, I was like in a push, a push chair like a baby [laughs] but anyway’ I still, in my mind, I felt OK but in the ambulance, I felt there was something here, you know, that just wasn’t, because this side, there was not a thing but then that was because the nurse said, ‘Well, that was because there was nothing here, you know.

Well, actually it was I went to the pub one Saturday afternoon, because we used to go Saturday afternoon to watch the horses, me and my brother and a couple of mates, wed sit and watch the racing on the telly and I was ready to come home, you know, and the, the landlord said, ‘I’ll ring for a taxi’ not taxi, ‘I’ll ring for an ambulance, you’ve had a stroke I think. I said, ‘I don’t think I have. He said, ‘Your mouth has dropped down one side it was this side I think and then somebody said, ‘You look as if you’ve had a stroke. He said, ‘I’ll ring for an ambulance, so they rung for an ambulance and took me to [the hospital] and I was there and I thought they’d say ‘Hes alright send him home because I didn’t feel as if I’d had a stroke.

Well, I woke up about 3 oclock in the morning to go to the toilet, which is just through the door up the stairs and I felt’ dizzy, giddy and I wondered what was wrong’ then I sort of, sort of looked about me and realised there was something wrong. And I went, ‘Right, the best thing I can do is get and lie down’ so I just went back to my bed and apparently that’s the worst thing you could do because you’re supposed to contact the doctor within 2 hours and they’ve got a better chance of managing to do some more for you that way.

And when you went into the hospital, or first your brother arrived?

Yeah.

Did he know what was happening?

Well, hed an, hed an idea I had a stroke, because that’s what I said to my brother, that was at 9 oclock in the morning and he gave me a row because of that. He said, ‘You should have phoned the doctor within 2 hours.

Translated from Punjabi

When you didn’t understand its stroke what did you think was happening?

I did realise it was stroke, doctors wouldn’t believe it they said it’s nothing.

Did you tell them its stroke?

I don’t know English how could I tell them.

Your family?

Family, if someone came with me they could have said.

No one went with you?

My little grandson went with me. The doctor told him her blood pressure is high and well get her checked at the hospital. At the hospital they took blood twice and said it’s nothing then sent me home.

Right. So we must have went by car to the hospital and I think at that point I still couldn’t see a thing. No, I couldn’t see a thing at that point. And we went into Casualty Department and I got took in right away and the hospital’ were asking me things and I just, you know, my husband told him as well, what I’ve just said there and it must been throughout that night, I think I got kept in that night. I think throughout that night they were asking me the story over and over again and I was telling them exactly what had happened. I got up, I wasn’t feeling too well, had a bit of a sore head, and then it got worse and worse and worse until a few hours later, it got really, really bad and I just told them the story and they kept asking me if my husband had hit me over the head. At first, they were asking had I banged my head and I kept saying, ‘No I have not banged my head, I just have a sore head. But then they kept saying, ‘Are you sure you’ve not had a bang to the head?’ ‘No. Then they would ask my husband to leave the, the room, which I thought was a bit strange [laughter], then they said, ‘Did, did your husband leave the room?’ I said, ‘No, is anybody listening to me, I just had a sore head. And that went on for quite some time. So the next again morning I got let out and they said on the letter, it was a migraine.