Teacher suffers stroke after snowboarding fall

● Accident during first lesson leads to artery tear cutting off blood to brain

A Scottish teacher says she feels lucky to be alive after a simple fall during her first ever snowboarding lesson led her to have a stroke.

Shona Storr recalled how she woke up hours after the accident at Glasgow Ski and Snowboard Centre and the room was “doing a 360”.

The 33-year-old from Stepps in North Lanarkshire said she quickly realised something was very serious was wrong.

Shona’s husband John, 27, is an avid snowboarder and she had decided to test herself on the slopes alongside him, but fell backwards during her lesson.

Scared to “embarrass herself”, Shona got back up and carried on with the lesson despite feeling her neck may have been injured.

She said: “I just brushed it off and then when I came off, I said to my husband John ‘I feel

0 Shona Storr and husband John are expecting their first child in mid December

a bit hot and sick’ and my neck was sore. But I just thought I had just pulled a muscle and maybe hadn’t eaten enough.”

The couple went for something to eat on their way home, but Shona’s symp-

toms got progressively worse.

She said: “I went home and went for a nap and woke up and the room was spinning 360. I was screaming for John to come through.

“I felt sick and I couldn’t swallow

properly and the right side was numb.” The couple called NHS24 and were advised to go to an out-of-hours clinic.

Shona said: “I was seen quite quickly and a nurse thought I had stroke symptoms.

“However, a doctor said I was so young it didn’t make it sense. Then I started projectile vomiting and they took it seriously and I was sent to the hospital.”

It took three days before doctors realised Shona had suffered a stroke. It transpired she had torn an artery in her neck, which had cut of the blood supply to her brain.

Strokes in young people under the age of 35 are relatively rare – only around 3 per cent, according to charity Chest Heart and Stroke Scotland Shona said: “It’s just a one-in-a-million chance of something happening and it did.”

The couple is expecting their first child in mid December and Shona will require a caesarian section because she has scar tissue in the artery in her neck.

But she counts herself lucky she hasn’t suffered any longterm symptoms.

She said: “It was a big part of my brain that was affected, but the consultant said youth and health were on my side and that’s why I recovered so quickly.”

Shona’s husband John will compete in the Great Scottish Run half marathon on 30 September to raise funds for Chest, Heart and Stroke Scotland.