My story is a lucky one By Sebastian Leith

Just after my fortieth birthday, I had a severe headache while I was working on spread sheet at work.  

I had planned to get my boat out of the water with a mate, so I took a break and headed down to the marina.  

But firstly, I went home to get changed. As I was pulling my car out of the driveway, I didn’t see the postman and nearly hit him, I thought that was odd. 

Although I didn’t think much more about it until I nearly hit another car leaving my street. I decided to go home immediately and when pulling into the car park at home I hit a tree.  

I took myself straight to bed, thinking that I had a migraine. 

When my partner came home, she gave me an aspirin for my headache. I now know that I was damn lucky I survived. 

The next day I walked to the doctor's surgery about 1.5 km away and kept freaking out because things would just appear from nowhere on my left-hand side.  

The Doctor diagnosed me with a stroke and insisted I go to hospital immediately. I walked home, got my wallet and a change of clothes, and booked a cab for the Epworth.  

At hospital getting an MRI caused me to me have a panic attack. I was nearly at the end of a 47-minute scan, but rather than stop, I had to restart the process - for those last three minutes, I was terrified.  

My partner was four months pregnant with our first child at the time, and I was being wheeled in for brain surgery – that moment will be etched in my mind for the rest of my life

I was also scared of the possibility of not being fully sedated during the operation, thankfully I was.  

Surgery went well, although it took two hours longer than they expected.  

Three months and about a thousand sudoku's later, I was back at work. I had lost some vision, but I feel like I have dodged a bullet - other than loss of vision there is no other damage.  

I feel slightly superficial writing my story as I know how lucky I am. But I really hope that it helps someone else.  

From Sebastian Leith