I was just 28 when I had my first stroke
New support network for young survivors of stroke
KAREN Donohue was 28 when she woke up with what she thought was a bad hangover.
‘I’d been out the night before with friends,’ says Karen, from Whitehall in Dublin. ‘I hadn’t had that many drinks but I felt like a train had run over my head.’
Over the course of the day, her left arm went numb, something she laughed off. It was another day before she went to her GP, who sent her to hospital where they ran tests.
‘They told me I’d had a stroke and I started crying,’ Karen, now 35, recalls. ‘I thought they only happened to older people.’
However, according to the Irish Heart Foundation, there has been an upsurge in the number of younger people suffering stroke in Ireland.
Last year’s National Stroke Audit found a 26% increase in the proportion of people aged under 65 suffering stroke since 2009. Now the Irish Heart Foundation has launched Life After Stroke, a support network aimed at helping younger survivors.
Chris Macey, of the Irish Heart Foundation, said there is ‘a severe dearth of community services and supports’ for people who have suffered stroke.
‘Younger stroke survivors are particularly poorly served,’ he said. ‘Up to now there has been virtually no access for them to peer support and we know that many are suffering in isolation.’
Meanwhile, the existing services are pitched at elderly survivors. Mr Macey pointed out, ‘For example, if you suffer a stroke in your 30s, from day one you will receive a home-care package designed to meet the needs of an older person, even though you could live with the effects for more than half a century.’
What is driving the increase in strokes in younger people is not clear. A spokeswoman for the Irish Heart Foundation said it may be due to lifestyle choices and the increase in obesity.
She said: ‘A big cause of stroke is high blood pressure. Lifestyle factors have a big impact on high blood pressure. The other factors leading to high blood pressure are alcohol consumption and smoking but a big factor is increasing obesity levels.
‘Obesity puts so much pressure on the heart and we feel that you can’t pinpoint one thing, but lifestyle factors absolutely impact your high blood pressure.’
Environment Minister Denis Naughten launched the support network on Wednesday at Facebook’s International headquarters in Dublin. The initiative kicked off with a Facebook live broadcast, hosted by Newstalk’s
‘I just wanted to talk to someone’
Dr Ciara Kelly. It will be followed up by a series of regular regional gatherings. The first gathering will take place on Monday, with 200 young stroke survivors meeting in Croke Park.
For accountant Karen, the support group is something she would have used when she first fell ill.
Within a couple of weeks of her first stroke, she had a second episode. ‘I was unable to speak, swallow, the left side of my face had drooped and I couldn’t move any of my left side,’ she says. ‘I was in a bad way.
‘It took me a long time to recover. I spent five months in hospital. I then went to a rehabilitation hospital for three months and I was in a wheelchair for most of that time. It was really lonely and I just wanted to talk to someone. My friends and my parents were great but they didn’t really understand.
‘I had to wait six months for counselling. Now [Irish Heart Foundation] are starting up this support group, it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s a great idea to get people to talk. There can be long waiting lists for counselling, and in this sort of situation you need some form of support. I’m really looking forward to trying to connect with other people like myself that are alone and want to chat to someone.’