WALK OF LIFE

BY SARAH WARD reporters@dailyrecord.co.uk A MUM who suffered a stroke after giving birth recovered to walk down the aisle for her wedding.

Nicola Kenny, 34, damaged an artery during childbirth and was left unable to walk and talk two weeks later.

She refused to give up and instead focused on marrying her partner Walter on her terms.

The couple did just that at Broomhall Castle in Menstrie, Clackmannanshire, in February.

Looking back, Nicola said: “It has been a hard road to keep going. It is easier to just sit down and accept what has happened.

“I worked really hard with my physio to walk unaided down the aisle, so I wouldn’t need sticks.

“Walter and I have been together 18 years, we were engaged but we had our first child, then we bought a house, then we had another child, and it just never happened.

“But this brought it into reality that anything can happen, at any time. The biggest fear with stroke is that it will happen again.”

Nicola felt that something was wrong after giving birth to her third child, Jake, at Forth Valley General Hospital in December 2016.

After two weeks, she began feeling light-headed when she stood up and collapsed while getting out of a car.

Four days later, an MRI scan showed she’d had a rare kind of stroke. It turned out that the artery in her neck had been damaged during childbirth. Nicola, of Alloa, said: “The doctors thought it was something else, that’s why it wasn’t detected. “It’s possible it could have been prevented. If the artery tear had been detected, I might not have had a stroke. “I had hiccups for five days as a side effect of the stroke.” She was kept in hospital until February last year and had physiotherapy to learn how to walk again and speech therapy to learn how to talk. Nicola’s road to recovery was helped by the Stroke Association, who run an exercise course called Moving Forward After a Stroke. Nicola said: “Having a baby is a nice thing, a happy thing – you don’t think of the complications that could happen.”