Survivor Stories

Ten years ago, I experienced weird symptoms where my hearing went funny; I could hear noise but couldn’t decipher the sound. My GP sent me for a scan and they diagnosed a cavernoma (a cluster of abnormal blood vessels) which had bled. My balance became very bad and I couldn’t stand if I closed my eyes...

My name is Grace and I am 32 years old. In 2020, I was 28 and living and teaching in Rarotonga with my partner, Theo. In April, I was feeling unwell and having some strange symptoms...

I was 27 years old when I was in a tragic car accident which nearly claimed my life. I am now 54. I remember seeing a p-plater in the rear window of a yellow station wagon. I had been t-boned in my right door jamb pillar. The p-plater had lost control from the other side of the road by colliding in a 360-degree spin.

I was an intensive care specialist and a cyclist. Now I am neither. I hit a lamppost at 65 kmh.

In August 2023 I had a bad case of the flu, which ended in a terrifying migraine that lasted six days. The auras were so intense that I couldn’t lie down at night because of the pain. I explained to my local doctor that it was like trying to give birth with my head at night and was told to come back in three days if the migraine medications didn’t help. I did get better over the next days, thinking this is what life with migraines is.  

The afternoon of July 16, 2018, I went to the gym to run and lift weights. This was a workout routine I had done hundreds of times over the past few years, and nothing seemed particularly different that day...

On December 6, 2022, I had a sudden ischemic stroke (where the blood supply to brain tissue is blocked by a blood clot). This caused paralysis of the right side of my body, partial paralysis of my right arm, and severe speech and cognitive impediments, such as difficulties with word finding and sentence construction...

I was laughing and joking until I suddenly screamed and slowly collapsed to the floor. The stage manager came rushing in and got me to repeat my name and say where I was, but I became unresponsive.

I suffered a severe brain haemorrhage on the 4th of November 2022. I’m from London and at the time of the brain injury, I was working as a youth empowerment worker, bar supervisor and a poet and actress... 

I originally acquired a brain injury as a teenager when I lived in England. The injury was not diagnosed for approximately 5 years. Eventually, I was diagnosed with hydrocephalus and had a shunt placed. This unfortunately failed twice causing me to go into comas...

21 years ago, I was five months pregnant when my optician saw a brain tumour in my eyes. He sent me to the optical clinic at St James’s University Hospital in Leeds and within a few hours, I was transferred to the neurology department at Leeds General Infirmary...

I was 28 when I had suffered from a stroke in my thalamus. The thalamus is a paired grey matter structure of the diencephalon located near the center of the brain, and is the body's information relay station. All information from the body's senses (except smell) must be processed through the thalamus before being sent to the brain's cerebral cortex for interpretation. The thalamus also plays a role in sleep, wakefulness, consciousness, learning and memory. 

December 1st, 2023, began like any other. Friday, the start of the weekend looming, a list of small, easy jobs were lined up for the day when I was struck by the most breath-taking pain consuming my entire head.

My name is Veronica, this is my story. I was diagnosed with arteriovenous malformation (AVM) at the age of twelve. I was born with it, and I never had any symptoms before my arteries ruptured in my brain.

Back on May 31, 2009, at 31 years of age, an aneurysm ruptured in the right frontal lobe of my brain. When people hear that, their first response is almost always, "Wow, that's terrible." However, I quickly talk about how it was, far and away, the best thing that's ever happened to me.

In 2005, as a serving soldier in the British Army, I was on a training exercise in the jungles of Belize. Whilst cutting our way through a dense part of the jungle, everyone heard an almighty crack and a crashing sound as something extremely heavy fell through the leaves above...

In 2011 I was young (35), very fit, healthy, happy and planning to get married the following year in June 2012. In January 2012, I went into King’s College Hospital for a foramen magnum decompression to treat Chiari malformation (brain surgery No. 1). I was told it would involve 1-2 weeks in the hospital and another 2 weeks at home to recover. I thought, “Easy!” Little did I know that this is when my nightmare would begin.

I suffered my brain injury not long after I was born. I was born 11 weeks prematurely and due to a traumatic birth, shortly after I suffered a bleed on the brain. It is said that bleeds on the brain and stroke are the leading causes of disability and in my case, this is what happened...

My name is Mel. I have been a paramedic for over thirteen years in Brisbane, Australia. In 2019, I had just returned home from a sporting event and holiday in France and Italy when I started to feel unwell...