Young Stroke Survivors

Why do so many people assume that strokes only affect the elderly? As a lifelong disability devotee with a particular thing about hemiplegia, I long ago learnt to distinguish between congenital hemiplegia, which is considered a form of cerebral palsy nowadays, and acquired hemiplegia, due to stroke, brain injury or brain tumour. Even if congenital hemiplegia (including hemiplegia acquired in very early childhood) which must be the commonest specific form of physical disability, is discounted, acquired hemiplegia in young or youngish people (let's say 40 or under) must be very common, if my observations since the 1960s, when I reached puberty, are anything to go by. I would not be surprised if most of the people reading this know or have known someone who became hemiplegic in childhood, youth or early adulthood.

I certainly have - my late wife had a left-sided stroke when she was 40, sadly three years after our divorce. She was very lame at first, but made a remarkable recovery over the next two years. She had many more mild, transient strokes over the following years, and eventually died, aged 66, as a result of a final major stroke. She had coped with great courage with increasing ill-health and disability all her life: she was partly deaf and asthmatic from birth, and lost her sight suddenly and completely when she was 18. In her 20s, when we were first married, she suffered frequent "absence" or "petit-mal" epileptic seizures, which could last up to five minutes, but which became rarer and finally stopped in her early 30s; and from her late 30s onwards she became increasingly deaf and asthmatic, and suffered from angina and other heart problems, and short-term memory problems. We remained good friends after our divorce and during her brief second marriage. I never stopped loving her, and miss her very much, two years after her death.

There are many videos on youtube of young people who have had strokes, including the lovely Amber Garland, who had a right-sided stroke at 19, and now has no movement in her right arm, is lame, and has serious speech problems, and a video about four American young women who all had strokes in their teens, and are now all physically disabled. One of them, a heartbreakingly beautiful young woman, is paralysed on her right side, and almost completely speechless.

I once saw a very obese woman in her 20s descending a flight of steps to a station platform very slowly and with great difficulty. In her left hand she was holding a walking stick, and aso holding on to the railing. Her right arm was completely paralysed, and very spastic, somewhat bent at the elbow, her hand tightly clenched. At each step, she would heave her right leg off the step and drop down to the step below, and then bring her good left leg down next to it, and repeat. It was agonisingly slow, and probably dangerous - she could have fallen. I'de have offered her help, but she reached the bottom before I got to her - she was nearly at the bottom when I first saw her - and them limped slowly to a bench, and carefully lowered her vast bottom onto it. There was a lift available, and I don't know why she didn't use it - a determination not to give up, perhaps.

Many years ago, when I was in my 20s, I saw a car pull up outside a house, and a middle-aged man get out of the driving seat, walk round to the back, get out a wheelchair, and wheel it to the passenger door, which he opened, and helped the woman who was in the passenger seat get her legs out, then put his arms round her back under her armpits, and helped her stand up. She was obviously completely paralysed on her right side, and I was shocked to realise that she was younger than me - probably only 19 or 20. She had obviously had a devastating stroke, head injury or brain tumour, and, being right-sided, probably had severe problems speaking and understanding speech. The man was presumably her father.

A few months later, I saw another young woman, late 20s, tall, slim and good-looking, walking slowly down a road in a busy shopping area. She was using a tripod walking stick in her left hand in conjunction with her right leg. She was a flinger - she would fling her right leg forward each time quite violently, her foot slapping down hard on the pavement, then bring her left leg forward while leaning hard on the tripod stick. Her arm was bent at the elbow, her hand clenched and stuck out in front of her. She had to stop and concentrate each time before flinging her right leg forward, and so was very slow.

At about the same time as those two, I saw a young woman, short, overweight, and unattractive, limping slowly downhill, a stick in her right hand being used in conjunction with her left leg, her left arm dangling uselessly by her side. The gradient was causing her problems. She looked desperately unhappy, poor girl. It was a heartbreaking sight.

Much more recently, a few years ago, I saw an attractive, plump woman in her 30s with long blonde hair in a wheelchair being pushed by another woman of about the same age with short blonde hair. I thought at first that the one in the chair was a paraplegic, but then I saw her take hold of her right hand with her left and re-position it on her lap, and realised that she was a right-sided stroke survivor. We were all in a local charity shop, and her companion kept asking her questions - did she like the weather? was she comfortable? what did she think of various items on the shelves? Her only reply to all these questions was "yeah", and it was obvious that that was all she could say - she was effectively completely aphasic. I saw her once more, a year or so later, still in the wheelchair, still being pushed by the same woman. Hopefully, she eventually regained more speech, but it was looking as though she would never walk again.

Then there was Wetherspoons lady. About 10 years ago, I went into my local 'spoons for lunch and a pint or two, as was my wont every Friday until the pandemic struck, and saw a woman in a wheelchair. She was in her 30s, overweight, not very good-looking, short, dark hair, her left arm in a sling - one of those fabric-covered foam-rubber jobs that hospitals supply. It was obvious that she had had a recent stroke - probably very recent, given the sling; maybe she had only just left hospital. She was with a somewhat older, blonde woman, and seemed remarkably cheerful for one who had become recently, suddenly and very severely disabled. She seemed to chatter away non-stop. I saw her nearly every Friday after that in the pub, always with her older friend and helper, usually talking non-stop. I got the impression that her stroke had affected her mentally as well as physically, and that she was a few bricks short of a full hod: logorrhoea - non-stop, inconsequential talking - can be a symptom of mental confusion. I saw her almost every Friday after that for a couple of years, and her mental state seemed to improve, though she remained completely left-hemiplegic, and wheelchair-bound, and it was pretty obvious that she would never walk again.

Then she disappeared, and I eventually assumed that I'd never see her again, but I was wrong. I saw her again, once more in the pub, about three years later. I was shocked at her appearance - in those three years, she looked as though she had aged about 10 years. She was haggard, her complexion was almost grey, her face was expressionless, and she was silent. It was obvious that she was in the late stages of dementia, despite her youth - probably multi-infarct dementia, caused by many minor strokes.

Many years ago, I saw, three or four times over the course of one summer, a group of teenage girls, always laughing and larking about. One of them was tall - almost six feet - overweight, and surpassingly ugly. She was completely paralysed on her left side, and wore an old-fashioned, leather-and-steel full-length brace on her left leg. Her left arm was very spastic, slightly bent at the elbow, hand tightly clenched and jammed into her abdomen. I have seen other groups of young girls, one of whom is disabled, but usually the disabled one will be tolerated and to some extent patronised by the others. In this case, the disabled girl, despite her disability and ugliness (the others were tolerably pretty), was obviously the leader of the gang, with the loudest voice and cackliest laugh. Presumably, she had established her position as leader before the stroke or head injury which rendered her disabled. I wonder if she thought that she was going to make a full recovery; if so, I fear she was going to be bitterly disappointed.

In central London, 30-odd years ago, I saw a very pretty young woman in her late teens or early 20s, in a wheelchair, being pushed by a somewhat older woman, probably her older sister, since there was a marked facial resemblance between them, but she wasn't old enough to be her mother. The wheelchair girl was slumped over to her left, her left arm resting immobile on her lap, her expression one of utter misery, poor girl.

A short, fat, pretty girl of about 16 or 17 was limping down a road, dragging her right leg after her. It was encased in a full-length brace, and she was cradling her right hand in her left.

And lastly, an enormously obese woman of about 30 whom I saw on a bus, and didn't realise was disabled until she stood up to get off at a stop. Her right side was completely gone, and she took a long, long time to get to the door and lower herself slowly to the ground. Her vast size must have been a serious mobility problem, to put it mildly.

There have been many others, including, on two different occasions in London, two very attractive, remarkably cheerful, right-siders, one in her 30s, the other probably only 19 or 20.