It all started with a severe headache and blurry spots in one eye

My husband Shaun was only 38 when he suffered his first of many strokes on October 5, 2020.

A proud, loving, and active dad of two young children, Shaun had never had any health issues prior to his strokes.

In the week leading up to Shaun’s first stroke, he’d had a virus that we presumed he’d caught from the kids, as they were always bringing home coughs and colds from daycare. But it wasn’t.

Shaun woke up blind in his right eye one morning. We went to the ER and were then quickly sent to another hospital as they thought Shaun was suffering from an ocular condition. At this point we had no idea how bad things were.

He was admitted to a new hospital and tests started to be performed. The following day, after an MRI, we learnt that Shaun had suffered an embolic shower, a pulmonary embolism and that the two major arteries in his neck supplying blood to his brain were 100% and 75% blocked with clots.

Two days later, a code stroke was called as Shaun could not lift his left arm. Two weeks after this, Shaun lost sight in his other eye and suffered full right-sided paralysis and aphasia. He had suffered several more strokes that day and was told to prepare for the worst.

I was frightened to my core. Scared that I would wake up in the night to a phone call from the hospital saying that we had lost Shaun, and our children would no longer have a daddy. Thinking about what was taken away from us in an instant was heartbreaking and I relied upon family and friends to pull me through. It was minute by minute, and then a day-by-day situation, I thought only about pushing on and getting through one day at a time.

For Shaun, he doesn’t recall much from these harrowing days. But he does remember feeling scared that he was going to die and frustrated that he couldn't speak, as he had so much that he wanted to say to us.

I wrote a blog in the months after Shaun’s stroke, I needed a way to express myself and what was happening to our little family. 

Over time we have adapted to our new normal as a family. Shaun has a white cane for his vision and gets out and about, he looks after the kids, but he has developed epilepsy and can have a grand-mal from time to time.

However, if you were to ask what is one of our biggest challenges, it would have to be aphasia. My husband is a loving, funny, kind and intelligent man, he had a way with words, until stroke took his speech.

In the beginning I did not have any idea how to try and break the communion barrier, it was like playing a game of charades on a daily basis, trying to guess what Shaun wanted to say. It was very tough on the kids; how do you explain stroke and aphasia to a three- and four-year-old?

I tried to explain that Daddy could no longer see them, it was hard for him to use his arm, and that he may not say the right words anymore, but they didn’t really understand.

Cooper is now seven, and Ava is five. They have adapted well. It was hard at the beginning when they could not play the same way with their Daddy, and it took quite some time for them to accept that he was different. But both kids are resilient, they love their dad and we’re both proud of how they handle difficult situations and help Shaun when he gets disoriented.

Shaun and I agreed to share our next chapter to help the Stroke Foundation raise money for support, and research into stopping this terrible disease. When we heard that they wanted to focus on aphasia we had to say yes.

We want to thank the Stroke Foundation for all that you do to help the survivors of stroke and their families and friends continue to understand and learn about stroke, and for working so hard to fund research into treatments and prevention of stroke.

To the survivors out there, you are all amazing and we urge you to help spread the awareness along with us.

Lauren, Shaun, Cooper and Ava Bickley