All Survivor Stories

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 hemorrhage 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 tumor 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 breathtaking 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.