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Kathleen White

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$1,570

My Goal

$750

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Minutes Moved:

45 minutes

I’m taking on the challenge of Stride4Stroke and raising funds for Stroke Foundation!


My Updates

More strokes?!!?

So where I left off, I had just been discharged from RPH, as they don’t deal with headaches. In the following weeks I struggled, the pain was intense. Every day, just pain and I had to try and navigate my life. I slept a lot during those few weeks but I also attended OT and tried to be the best mum I could be to madds in these circumstances. This brings us to the morning of October 1st. I woke up at 7am with the same feelings as the last night I spent in hospital. I couldn’t move my head, I couldn’t control my legs, it was bad. But what did I do? I just sat there until these feeling were manageable as I thought it was only happening because I hadn’t eaten in 4 days and I needed my meds. So I got up had some pineapple and took my meds. I wasn’t feeling great still so I went back to bed and tried to sleep it off. At 11am madds came into me to check on me and I was not good, she called Nick and they decided I needed to go to hospital but this time after being told by a few different medical workers to go Charlie’s, so that’s what we did. I refused to call an ambulance so me and madds hopped into an Uber and off we went. 
Now I don’t know what I was expecting but I wasn’t expecting to be told I had had another stroke. So, I’m admitted to hospital again but this time it was a completely different experience. The care at Charlie’s was so much better. They took the time to explain things to me, the did different tests to find out what was happening to my brain, they tried different pain medications until they finally found a concoction that worked. But the biggest difference was, they weren’t trying to just stick a bandaid on my strokes they wanted to help! On Tuesday night, I had another turn. I had a thunderclap headache and I lost feeling in my left side. And within minutes of telling my nurse I had doctors coming to see me and I was taken for tests straight away. The worst was confirmed, I had had another small clot find it’s way to my frontal lobe. 
So thats three strokes in a month, all because of a damaged artery. Charlie’s was fantastic though. The chronic pain team became part of my medical team, they helped me so much and the Neuro team sat and explained what was going to happen next. I was put in a concoction of medications to help take the stress off my blood flow to my brain, help heal my dissection, to manage the pain, to counteract certain side effects and to basically just make sure I didn’t have anymore strokes. I was told if I had anymore the next step would be surgery but none of us wanted that. 
Charlie’s made sure I was heading in the right direction though, I was in hospital for 10 days and they only discharged me when both myself, my partner and the Neuro team were happy with my stability. 
So on October 10th I got to go home to my madds and my partner who was staying with me for the first few days to make sure I was ok and comfortable at home. 

And this is when my really journey started! I was half blind, had strength and control issues with my left side and I had issues with my speech but I was determined (some would say stubborn) to not let this keep me down. The hard work which is my recovery journey started!!

We don’t do headaches…

So I was discharged. Told to live my life but be careful. So that’s what I did. I went to things over the weekend that had been planned for moths, I was careful, but I was in pain. The pain is nothing I have experienced before and after about a week I ended up back in hospital. I found myself back in the neurology ward at Royal Perth but it was a nightmare. First night in I’m given a nerve blocker injection into my skull, not fun at all!! But it did nothing for the pain. I had pain in my neck and what felt like in my brain and nothing was helping. Over the next few days they tried different medications but none of them worked, the pain just wouldn’t go away. On the forth day the neuro team told me I was being discharged again, “hospital is not a place we can treat headaches, go to your gp”. I’ll never forget that. I couldn’t believe that after a major stroke, I’m in pain and still with no eyesight I was just told to go to my gp. So that’s what I did. My last night in hospital was eventful though. I woke up at 2am and the world was spinning, the pain was insane and I just couldn’t control my body. I was told it was nothing, given a vomit bag and some ondansetron and told it will pass. The next morning I was discharged, taken down to the transit lounge to wait for my meds (which took 4hrs!!), and told the taxi rank is across the road. Yeah, thanks Royal Perth, I’ll just take my blind ass and try an navigate a busy road. At least if I got hit I was close to ED! I was lucky though, my best friend demanded I stay put and she came and picked me up and took me home safely. I was home, still in the same amount of pain as when I went in… is this my new life?! 

Original stroke part 3

August 31 2023
The next day I woke up in hospital hope I h it was all a dream. I was sadly mistaken, I still had no sight and I had all the cords and stuff still stuck to me. 
Once again I had the OTs and physio come see me but nothing had changed. I still had only about 50% of my sight and pain in my neck and head. At about 9:30 the stroke team came and saw me. We spoke for about 10mins and they explained a few things. Said the stoke happened in my occipital lobe and had caused my sight loss, some peoples sight came back and others did not, there was no way of telling what was going to happen. I was told my stroke was caused by a dissection of my carotid artery. The dissection was just a freak accident, normally caused by trauma to the area but can randomly happen for no reason and unfortunately that’s what happened in my case. It has been pumped into me that nothing I did caused this and there is nothing I could have done  to prevent it, I just have shit luck hahah. But after the chat with the stroke team I was basically told to carefully live my life and they would see me in 3 months to check the healing of my artery, and that was it… just like that, less than 24hrs I’m sent home with pretty much nothing. At the time I was happy to be going home but looking back, they should have really done a lot more. I had just had a stroke, my life had just completely changed, dramatically and I had no idea what the fuck I was doing!! 

Original stroke part 2

So where we left off, I had just been told I had had a stroke. It was life changing. The doctor walked out and just left us there. I looked at my Nick and just repeated the words “I’ve had a stroke” and burst into tears. He was and still is my rock. He held me and reassured me that everything will be ok, not once have I seen this man break down as I know this has changed his life too. 
After about 30mins we were told I was being moved to the neurology ward. Everything happened so fast, we got to the hospital at about 8am and by 11am I was in a bed on the ward. The day feels like a blur. Nick had to go home and tell Madds what the doctors had said, she understood as she is 16 but it didn’t sink in and to be fair it took a while to really sink in for all of us. I saw the physio, the OTs, the stroke nurse again and then I was just left alone with my thoughts. It truely was horrible.
That night I didn’t get much sleep as I didn’t know what this all meant for me and my life. I had a stroke, I had lost half my eye sight and at that time that was pretty much it. How could this happen to me?! This isn’t what a stroke looked like, strokes make people weak in the left side, takes away their speech, and makes them all droopy, it doesn’t make them blind. Oh how I was wrong!

Heyy!!

Hey guys, Kat here!
For those who know and those who don’t here’s a little update on me about the last 6 weeks of my life. 

So on the 29th of August, it was a normal Tuesday. I went to work, it was a great and uneventful day and I went home. Got home chilled on the couch with Nick, made dinner for us, Madds and Jack and went to bed all like normal. But here’s where it changed. Around midnight I woke up with sharp shooting pain in my neck and skull. I was in tears, I hurt so bad, but I’m stubborn and thought I had just pulled a muscle. So I fixed my pillows and snuggled down in bed next to my man and went back to sleep.
Next morning I got up and got ready for work, and you know when you wake up and your eyes get all fuzzy and take a few minutes to wake up? Well I thought that what was happening to me but after 45mins and my sight still not right I told Nick about it and we decided to call HealthDirect. After 5mins on the phone they told me to go to ED but again, my stubborn ass was refusing and wanted to go to work but again, Nick saving my butt demanded he take me to emergency. We get to the hospital and within 15mins of being there I’m taken out the back to be evaluated and next thing I know I’m in a bed with what feels like 10+people around me and I’m being taken away for scans as Nick is taken the other way. The one thing that stands out to me was the big ass Stroke Nurse badge on this random nurses uniform and I just look at her. She pats my hand and says I’m only here as a precaution you’ll be fine, and I think nothing of it. 
After my CT scan I’m taken straight to critical care where My partner is bought in to me and he tells me he was told my scans a clear they are just waiting on the report. So now we wait… I had a heart exam with all the sticky dots, and heaps of blood taken then we were left alone for about 20mins. After going to the toilet Nick is helping me walk back to my bed in critical care as I still have no sight in my left side a doctor comes up to us as says she needed to talk to us. I get up on the bed and as Nick takes hold of my hand the words That are forged in my head were said “you have a tear in your carotid artery which has cause a blood clot to travel to your occipital lobe. You’ve had a stroke.”

Wednesday the 30th of August 2023, my life changed forever!

So far I have helped Stroke Foundation deliver…

Advice and support from a health professional on StrokeLine

Stroke recovery packs to 3 survivors of stroke.

Training to a StrokeSafe volunteer to deliver community talks.

Funding to stroke researchers to find the next game-changer in stroke.

Thank you to my Sponsors

$520

J

❤️ We miss you Kat.

$144.54

Anonymous

$105.50

Lewis Jones

$105.50

Simon Says

Together we are strong 🙏❤️❤️❤️ and you are a good soul, anytime simply reach out 🙏❤️

$105.50

Resin Creations

Hi Kat, Wishing you all the best with the fundraiser and really honoured to support you in this journey. God bless!

$52.75

Nick Evans

Xx

$52.75

Carmelo Sanfilippo

Thank you Kat for sharing your experience. Wishing you all the best in your recovery

$52.75

Marg Graybrook

Sorry I couldn't make it last night. Thinking of you Kat. L9ve ya xx

$52.75

Anonymous

Best wishes for your recovery.

$50

Ruby Mazandarani

$50

Anonymous

$40

Levina Mahendran

$31.65

Claire Evans

$21.10

Cat

Take care always! ❤️

$21.10

Rebecca Searles

$21.10

Janice King

You got this Kat

$21.10

Anonymous

Love banes

$21.10

Jenny Lazzaroni

$21.10

Joni

You are amazing, keep powering through girl ❤️💪

$21.10

Sofia Lidington

I’m so sorry to hear what your going through, but I know you are a strong person with all you have been through and you got your gorgeous girl with you c

$20

Nick Evans

$10.55

Anonymous

$10.55

Thomas Hill

$5.28

Ash

Lots of love to you during these tough times! Keep powering through ❤️

$5.28

Leah Holman

Simon Says sent me! power of unity :)

$5

Crafty

I hope my donation helps you out in any way possible. My good friend Simon is doing amazing things. All the best!

$2.11

Donna Ryder

🙏🏽❤️🥰

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