Running saved my life
When IMELDA KING had a brain haemorrhage, she was given a two per cent chance of recovery. Now training for a half marathon, she tells us her remarkable story
IMELDA KING will never forget the night she woke up with a headache so severe, she was sure she’d been hit over the head with a baseball bat.As she clutched her head, the searing pain was all she could think about.
An otherwise fit and healthy then 64-year-old, Imelda knew immediately that something was very wrong. She had never had such an intense headache before. It was 3am and her husband Terry was away on business, so she had no other choice but to ring 999.
“I’d been fine before I went to bed, in fact I’d done a bootcamp exercise class that morning and had run a 10k the weekend before so I really couldn’t figure out why I felt so awful,” says Imelda, 69, who lives in Deal, Kent.
Her next obstacle was getting down the stairs in order to let the ambulance crew into her house.
“We live in a five-storey townhouse and I felt so dizzy I had to crawl down the stairs. I was scared because my condition was deteriorating so quickly,” she says.
Imelda was taken by ambulance to Queen Elizabeth The Queen Mother Hospital in Margate, where they found she had two aneurysms – bulges in the brain’s blood vessels caused by a weakness in the blood vessel walls. One had burst, causing bleeding on the brain. She was transferred to the neurology department at King’s College Hospital in London where they diagnosed her with a subarachnoid haemorrhage, a type of stroke.
THE irony was that when this happened, Imelda was the fittest she had ever been.After setting herself the challenge of doing a marathon before the age of
60, she took up running for the first time when she was 58.To her surprise, she fell in love with it and ran the New York marathon a year later, completing the 26.2 miles in six hours.
“I found running was great for my mental health, it is like meditation.And I really enjoyed being fit so I started doing a bootcamp workout four mornings a week, and ran lots of 5k and 10k events.”
But just five years after running her first marathon, and a day after her brain haemorrhage, doctors were preparing to operate on her. Terry had rushed back from his work trip and her daughter Grace was by her side, both knowing this may be their last chance to say goodbye to the woman they loved.
Imelda was about to undergo a risky operation to clamp the aneurysms shut.The statistics surrounding the procedure were alarming – her family was warned that around 60 per cent of people died and only two per cent survived without brain damage. But Imelda was so confused by the chain of events, the gravity of the situation didn’t seem to register.
“I didn’t understand how serious it was. Even when one of the doctors said, ‘you may not come out the same way you went in’, I thought he meant I would come out of a different door, not that I could be brain damaged,” she says.
During the eight-hour surgery doctors had to remove part of
Imelda’s skull. Thankfully, she was among the two per cent who made it with no permanent damage.
“The doctor called me his miracle,” says Imelda. “He said I was one of the fittest people he’d operated on and not just at my age. I had a really good heart and lungs – most people get pneumonia, which affects their recovery, but I went back to work as a clinical librarian 10 months later.”
However, Imelda faced a lengthy recovery because the operation temporarily affected her speech and walking, and she spent a month in hospital working on her rehabilitation.
To help her gain confidence walking again, Imelda got a puppy, a miniature poodle named Mabel.
“You learn to do things differently,” says Imelda. “Having the puppy was great as we’d go for little walks when she was tiny, then build up to longer walks.
“Walking exhausted me, so I never thought I’d be able to run
again. However, by the time I went back to work we were doing five-mile walks quite easily.” Apart from the physical effects, Imelda also noticed she had increased anxiety levels.
“It must have damaged a part of my brain which causes anxiety, as things that didn’t worry me before worry me more now. But I have coping techniques, such as exercising and listening to audio books,” she says.
Two years after the haemorrhage, and her final check-up with the neurologist, Imelda was back at her bootcamp exercise class and also returned to running.
“The doctors said I was fine to start exercising again. I just had to listen to my body,” she says.
Imelda has continued to increase her fitness.“I’m not the fastest runner but I’ve built up my speed and distance. I’m even training for a half marathon. “When I was lying in bed after the operation I never thought walking again would be an option, let alone running. I think myself incredibly lucky to have got through this.
“That decision to start running at 58 ultimately saved my life. If I hadn’t been so fit I wouldn’t be here today, and I am thankful every day for that.”
● Imelda will take part in the Royal Parks Half Marathon (royalparkshalf.com).