14-hour Thai trip gave Ashley, 23, a stroke
BY VIVIENNE AITKEN v.aitken@dailyrecord.co.uk ASHLEY Macrae was stranded in hospital 6000 miles from home after sitting on a cramped bus for 14 hours brought on a stroke at the age of 22.
The pensions worker was paralysed down her left side during her horrendous ordeal in Thailand.
But now she has battled back to fitness and will run the 5k at the Edinburgh Marathon Festival on Saturday to raise money to help other stroke victims.
Ashley said: “I had spent 14 hours on a bus from Cambodia to Bangkok. I was really squashed and didn’t really move at all during the journey.
“I was just there a few hours and started to feel very dizzy. I hadn’t drunk any alcohol but thought my drink had maybe been spiked or I had eaten something dodgy.
“I couldn’t walk properly and my face had started to droop. My friends said straight away that I needed to get medical help.”
Ashley, now 23, had taken six months off her job as a pensions administrator with Scottish Widows to travel with friends.
But on their first night in the Thai capital Bangkok last April, her friends spotted the signs of a stroke.
Ashley had suffered a blood clot in her leg, similar to the deep vein thrombosis (DVT) reported by some long-haul flight passengers.
The clot travelled through a previously unknown hole in her heart to her brain.
She said: “I had no control over my body and I didn’t understand what was going on. As I had slurred speech, I couldn’t even ask what was happening to me. As soon as I got to hospital they took me for an MRI scan. They said there had been a bleed in the brain and that I’d had a stroke.
“I said, ‘Surely not’. Strokes were something that happened to old people, not people like me. I’m a healthy 22-year-old, I go to the gym, I’m not obese and I don’t smoke.”
Ashley is raising funds for the Stroke Association and wants to raise awareness that a stroke can strike at any age.
She said: “Please be aware of the signs – it could save a life.”
Sponsor Ashley at her JustGiving page, Ashleymacrae1