‘I thought, I’m only 44, I can’t be having a stroke’
As a new campaign highlights the condition in midlifers, Zeb Soanes tells Catherine Pepinster how he spotted the signs
IExperts predict the number of over45s affected will rise by 59 per cent by 2035
t happened on April 1 this year, and felt like a cruel joke. Zeb Soanes, Radio 4 newsreader and voice of The Shipping Forecast, was at home alone when suddenly he found he was struggling to speak. Not only that but the 44-year-old found his left arm was dangling, as he describes it, “like a marionette’s”.
“It felt as if the bone had been whipped out and I was left with a dangling sleeve,” says Soanes, whose voice is one of the most distinctive and popular on British radio.
It had begun with him feeling dizzy and lightheaded in the early afternoon as he loaded the washing machine at his east London flat.
“I thought it was because I only had breakfast and should probably have some lunch, and went to the fridge. But I couldn’t grab anything.”
Feeling that he was going to pass out, he lay on the sofa, thinking that the feeling would pass. It was then that his speech became slurred. He knew what all these symptoms were a sign of, but as a fit, slim, keen cyclist in his 40s, couldn’t believe it.
“‘I can’t be having a stroke, I’m only 44’ is what I was telling myself,” Soanes recalls on the day we meet at Chelsea Physic Garden.
After phoning his partner, Christophe, to try to tell him what was happening, he phoned for an ambulance.
“I had three thoughts,” he now recalls. “The first one was very clear: I’ve had a wonderful life. Then I thought, I’m not ready to leave the party, and the third was: I’ve not made a will!”
Five months on, Soanes is talking about his experience for the first time to highlight how stroke can afflict young people too, and the importance of knowing the signs so you can get seek help fast.
According to the Stroke Association, one in four people who has a stroke is of working age, and there is some evidence that the incidence is rising among younger people.
Experts predict that the number of people aged 45 and over who are affected by stroke will increase by 59 per cent by 2035, as a result of obesity, sedentary lifestyles and unhealthy diets.
Soanes has recovered well, but the experience was clearly frightening. Pandemic regulations meant his partner could not travel in the ambulance with him, and paramedics were restricted from touching patients.
But the team in the ambulance sensed how traumatised he was as they sped him to the dedicated stroke unit at the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery in London. Fast treatment is vital for reducing the chances of long-term damage.
“The ambulance driver took my hand and said ‘you’re going to be all right’,” he recalls.
Brain scans and tests showed he had suffered an ischemic stroke – the most common type, caused by a blockage, formed of arterial plaque, which restricts the flow of blood and oxygen to the brain.
This plaque builds up naturally over time, he says: “We all have that, no matter how healthy you are, when you get into middle age, which I am painfully aware I now am,” he says with a wry smile. “It goes up into the brain where the blood vessels are much smaller and it gets stuck there.”
But doctors have so far offered no explanation as to why he should have succumbed to it at a relatively young age, especially as there is no family history of stroke. It was, as he puts it, “the roll of the dice”.
More than 100,000 people in the UK have a stroke each year and a quarter of them are under 65, and often fit and healthy.
Soanes’s BBC colleague Andrew Marr – a keen runner in his 50s – had a stroke in 2013; he has blamed an intense workout on a rowing machine, though also reflected that he was “heavily overworking”.
At the time of his stroke, Soanes and his colleagues were in the eye of the Covid storm, still travelling into work and reporting on the pandemic – though, he says, “everyone was under a heightened sense of pressure during that year, so I’m not sure that it really led to my stroke.”
He adds: “I’ve always been someone who liked to keep the plates spinning but there was no obvious reason for my stroke and that is alarming.”
After tests, he spent one night in hospital and was off work for three months while he recovered, inundated with texts, cards and video messages including from his colleagues on Today, such as Nick Robinson, Mishal Husain and Martha Kearney.
There were regular hospital check-ups and blood tests, and he took anticoagulant medication to prevent further strokes. He also takes high doses of vitamin B2 to prevent migraines, which can be a side-effect of stroke.
Soanes’s stroke came as a huge shock to his friends and family too. His partner was “in pieces”, he says, but comforted by the ambulance crew.
“I was never more relieved to see someone as I was when I saw Christophe when I got out of hospital.” He recalls telling his parents over Facetime, and pauses to collect himself. “It was a very tearful experience. Parents in their 70s don’t expect their son in his 40s to have a stroke.”
Today, he is his usual dapper, chatty self – no sign of a slur, the voice strong again. But he experienced serious poststroke fatigue, and says he has had to “listen to my body”.
“For me there was tiredness like I’d never known, where for the first few weeks I would achieve one thing a day – walking round the block and getting a coffee and that was as much as I could do.”
Doctors warned him that depression is common after a stroke and in the early weeks, he suffered from what he describes as melancholy. He was fearful of another stroke, and worried about the impact of having one on his career. “I was worried about being seen as damaged goods. But there was a sense of embarrassment too, a feeling that I had brought it on myself, which was ridiculous.”
On one occasion he was so overcome by his feelings of sadness that he cancelled a lunch and went home to bed for the rest of the day. “It was like a dark cloud descending. I thought, I just can’t do this.”
It has understandably changed his outlook on life. “Something like this – a brush with the reaper – that makes you realise that it is all going to come to an end… it reframes everything.”
Now, he says, he appreciates the simpler things in life – and is keen to do what he can to raise awareness of stroke among others.
“For me, that message advertised about stroke and FAST – face, arms, speech, time – must have sunk in. I was surprised when I learnt from the Stroke Association how many younger people are affected. It’s important to know the signs and get help.”
While aware that he must be careful and not tax himself, he is edging back to normality. There are no earlymorning news bulletins, or ending the day to the sound of Sailing By, only daytime shifts for the time being.
Along with his career with Radio 4, he continues to write children’s books – with the next one due to be published soon – and works as a concert narrator, with a Christmas afternoon concert booked at St Martin-in-the-fields.
The Stroke Association is launching a campaign this week with a focus on hope – the charity says without it, many patients feel recovery is impossible. This is something that rings true for Soanes, who knows how vital it is for rebuilding confidence.
His moment of hope came when he took part in the Thaxted Festival in July, reciting William Walton’s Façade, a booking he had made several months before. He didn’t tell the organisers what had happened and decided to go ahead – and it went well.
“I knew then,” he says. “I thought – it’s going to be all right. I was getting back on that horse.”