aTHE horror of a stroke was all the more real for Loraine Easdale because as a nurse on a neuroscience ward she knew exactly what was happening.
There were no obvious risk factors in 1996. She did not smoke or eat meat and was a fit climber. There was no warning. The first sign was a numbing and loss of sensation in her cheek, then shoulder.
''I just knew. My voice had also gone. I tried to say to my flatmate can you get me an ambulance but she was a nurse and she knew as well.
''I was not worried, which is very odd, but I knew I had get myself into a hospital.''
She awoke after treatment to the realisation that from being an independent 28-year-old she was unable to speak and partially paralysed down one side.
What she hadn't lost was her determination. ''My thoughts were I am going to get better, I am going to get better.'' For the next year she struggled to regain her voice and mobility. Then her parents suggested she return to Glasgow from the Oxford hospital where she had been both nurse and patient.
Now she has her own house in Bearsden and continues with speech therapy, swimming, yoga, and exercise. She found little help from organised networks to assist stroke victims but immense support from an informal group of fellow survivors in Glasgow.
''I can't nurse again because I can only use one hand. But I am still here and I am still Loraine.
''What I would like to do is counselling to help other people who have had a stroke,'' she said.
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