FEATURE: Different Strokes

Mark McLaughlin
Edinburgh Evening News
September 23, 2009

IT seemed like any other Saturday morning to Angie MacLeod as she lived out her dream of working in Australia.

The 29-year-old PR executive was looking forward to meeting a friend for syrup and pancakes on Sydney's harbour front.

She was surprised to find she felt quite queasy. She had not drunk that much wine the night before as she watched football in a bar with friends. But that was not going to stop her getting up and launching herself into the day. Only no sooner had she stepped out of bed in her shared flat than she collapsed.

"I got out of bed and fell over, hitting my head on the table on the way down.

"I remember lying on the floor thinking how strange it was that I couldn't move my left side, so I managed to reach my phone with my good arm and phone my boyfriend for help," she recalls.

"He could barely understand me because I was slurring my speech so much, but he figured out what was going on and phoned my flatmate, who obviously hadn't heard me falling out of bed.

"I could hear my flatmate's phone ringing, and ringing away in the next room for what seemed like a very long time.

"Eventually my flatmate came running through and managed to get me back into bed, with a great deal of effort because it's not easy to lift an adult with half a dead weight down one side. I fell out of bed again and my flatmate called the ambulance."

The former Mary Erskine's pupil had recently moved out to Australia, having switched her London PR job for one in Sydney.

She was an active and sporty 29-year-old - who had just started learning to surf - and neither she nor her parents, Calum and Beth, back home in Edinburgh, had any worries about her health.

No-one - least of all Angie - thought for a second she might have suffered a stroke.

"I was only 29, the thought just didn't enter our heads," she says.

"When we found out what happened my flatmate felt really guilty for not phoning the ambulance sooner, because I now know that every second is vital in the diagnosis and treatment of stroke, but at the time we didn't know what was going on so she had no reason to feel guilty."

As she was being taken to hospital, Angie remembers asking for her contraceptive pill. "It's strange the things that go through your mind.

"Ironically, the pill may have had something to do with the stroke. Every woman knows that the pill has the potential to cause deep vein thrombosis, but the risk of stroke is so minute that they don't even put it on the side-effects. However, combined with my congenital condition that narrowed my arteries I ended up getting a thrombosis in my brain and that's what caused the stroke."

At hospital, Angie was surprised to be asked by the doctor whether she had seen her face that day - one side had drooped dramatically, a telltale sign of a stroke.

Even then, thinking strokes only happened to older people, she didn't guess she may have had one.

After being treated with morphine for the pain, doctors broke the news to her that not only had she suffered a stroke, but she might never walk again.

Angie, who is able to smile now as she looks back, adds: "The doctors also thought the stroke had affected my eyesight until they realised that I didn't have my glasses on, which I thought was quite funny at the time."

Her parents flew out to Sydney to be with her until she was transferred back to the Astley Ainslie hospital. The physios in Australia had started some work, but the real slog began when she returned home to Edinburgh.

She had to face it without her boyfriend, as the couple split shortly after her stroke, unable to cope with their changed circumstances.

"Despite being told I would never walk again I managed to get back on my feet.

"The trouble with strokes is you just never know how it will affect you, and being on my feet for the first time after a stroke was just a bizarre experience.

"Once I regained some of my mobility I was taken to the adapted ski slopes in Aviemore, which was tremendous, but also strange because of the complete contrast with the experience with the life I had before staring at the ceiling or sitting in a wheelchair.

"Standing at the top of a mountain after such a huge injury was so emotional."

Angie is now able to walk again, although with a pronounced limp, and without the use of her left arm she has difficulty with everyday tasks such as getting dressed.

It has not stopped her attacking life with the same relish she once did.

Confounding doctors' predictions, she has returned to her old work in communications, this time with the Stroke Association.

She has completed a one-mile swim, ploughing through the water with the use of her one good arm, raising GBP 1,100 for disability charity L'Arche, in the process.

"Cheers from onlookers helped to keep up my motivation.

"I felt a huge sense of achievement touching the finishing line especially as my money raised could go towards such a wonderful charity.

"The Tannoy made many special announcements for me and it was great to feel such tremendous support.

"I'm really glad now to have done it. It was a huge personal achievement and absolutely worthwhile."

To donate money to L'Arche through Angie's fundraising page visit http://www.justgiving. com/Angela-Macleod

STRUCK DOWN

AROUND 600 Scots suffer a stroke in the prime of their life every year.

This number includes former Aberdeen and Scotland midfielder Eoin Jess, who is currently recovering from a stroke he suffered in April aged just 38.

Oscar-nominated British actress Samantha Morton also suffered a stroke at the age of 29, and spent six months learning how to walk again in 2006. Hip-hop star Nate Dogg and The Long Blondes' guitarist Dorian Cox also suffered strokes in their 20s.

Around 6,000 Scots under the age of 44 have suffered strokes over the last decade, more than 800 of them in the Lothians. In around a fifth of these cases, the stroke has been fatal.

Strokes are "cerebrovascular accidents" that occur when a part of the brain is deprived of oxygen.

There are two kinds of stroke: an ischaemic stroke is caused by a blockage of the blood supply to the brain, usually by a clot, while a haemorrhagic stroke is caused by bleeding in or around the brain.

The length of time it takes to treat a stroke victim is vital - a few minutes can mean the difference between a full recovery and paralysis.