Mum’s ‘bad headache’ was

IT was just another day for Sara Thomasnorman. As a mother of three grown-up children, the 49-year-old, of Swansea, was looking forward to a new phase in her life where she could devote more time to getting fit and building her career. That was until March 2017, where things changed for good. She felt she was having a “really bad headache” which had lasted three days. It turned out to be a stroke, and it saw her spend two months in hospital. “I was going to the doctors but I didn’t want to waste their time,” Ms Thomas-norman said of the headache. “I came home from work and laid on the settee and it was so painful. “One of my kids woke me up and said ‘Mam, something is wrong, go in the bedroom and look at your face.’

“I set things up on the work station and I could see my co-ordination had gone.

“My son phoned an ambulance and said ‘My mother is having a stroke’. Two hours later they came for me.”

Ms Thomas-norman, from Lan Street, Morriston, was not prepared for what came next.

“It was really frightening,” she said.

“I remember going into an ambulance and the next thing I remember was waking up the following day blind, paralysed.

“I thought my body was shutting down. I didn’t know if I was waking up or dying.”

During her time in hospital, she gradually showed signs of improvement, but not everything is back to normal.

“My vision started coming back within two weeks and my speech started to work again,” she said.

“My arm still does not work, I still have limitations in my arms and hand. It’s not a functional arm, I can’t pick things up.”

A stroke occurs when the blood supply to part of your brain is cut off.

It can happen to anyone of any age at any time, and symptoms usually are sudden weakness or