
Portrait: Elizabeth
I’m a media producer and a survivor of a ruptured AVM that happened in 1990 when I was thirty years old.
I’m a media producer and a survivor of a ruptured AVM that happened in 1990 when I was thirty years old.
In May 2019, aged 32 years old, I contracted encephalitis. It started as a headache at the base of my skull, dizziness and vomiting. The hospital diagnosed me with migraine and vertigo before sending me back home.
Just shy of my 25th birthday, I was on a date saying goodbye to a friend. As I stepped out of his vehicle, I got a whirling sensation in my head and high-pitched ringing in my ears and dropped to the ground.
In 2020, I dissected both of my carotid arteries while swimming. My survival chance was 2% but I strongly believe that with rehab and willpower, you can achieve the unexpected.
In 2016, I was doing well at work in Scotland, and I was about to start a new job in Cornwall when about a month before I was due to start, I had a stroke. I was aged 30.
On November 12th, 2021, I woke up feeling fine, but while on a Zoom meeting, I heard a pop in my head and the room started spinning.
My dad was working as a correctional officer at a juvenile facility. His radio was taken by an inmate, and while attempting to get it back, the inmate picked up my dad and slammed him into the concrete floor.
I was 25 years old. I was married to the love of my life; we had an 18-month-old daughter and I was also 24 weeks pregnant with our son when I felt a "POP" in my head.
In November 2020 my fit and healthy 32-year-old wife Suzanne suffered a catastrophic subarachnoid hemorrhage.
I had just returned from holiday when I started to feel really unwell and sick. I now know it was an AVM that had ruptured and I was suffering a bleed on the brain.