When it all began…

🏐 September 2015 🏐 👉🏼🚑 🏥

One evening in volleyball training we were practicing a drill which we had always done in a sport that I have always loved. Within a few minutes I landed on the ground feeling very different. I had to come off the court, and as I was walking towards the bench I felt weak and lightheaded. I sat down, drinking water, but my head started spinning..something wasn’t right! I decided to go outside to get some fresh air, my coach followed me. Feeling this weak was something I’ve never experienced before, I sat on the ground just outside the gym hall. I got this excruciating pain in the back of my neck/head…I was terrified, however this was nothing in comparison to what was coming. My coach called two of my best friends, who trained there too and they helped me up off the ground, walking up to his car. They helped me sit in the front passenger seat, and as I sat down something very worrying happened. I had a short episode of paralysis (that lasted approx. 10 minutes), on the right side of my body. My right hand went into a spasm, and went into a weird shape, I lost control over my neck muscles, so it just flopped forward, but worst of all I realised I couldn’t swallow my saliva and I started panicking. My friend was talking to me, holding my head and calming me down. Well, she was trying her best but I had so many dark thoughts running through my head! At that moment they rang an ambulance. It arrived pretty fast and I was vomiting with a vertigo all the way to the hospital. When they wheeled me from the ambulance I saw my parents and my boyfriend (they must have contacted them), and I felt a little calmer. I was in A&E for a few hours waiting and I just vividly and distinctly remember being asked if there was brain tumour history in my family. Brain tumour? 😱😨 my face dropped…worst has come I thought! Anyway…to cut a long story short I was kept in hospital for 2 nights and then released home. I flew to Poland for my holidays just a few days later ✈️.

🇵🇱 October 2015 🇵🇱

So me and my boyfriend at the time (I’ll call him Mr P)  arrived in Kraków on October 2nd 2015. Little did I know,  just in 5 days this 2 week holiday would end in me staying in Poland for a year!  We decided to spend a night in this beautiful city, before driving down to my hometown-Żywiec, to continue the holiday. I was really excited, as we had big celebrations planned ahead for the 8th of October-my grandfather’s 70th 👨‍🦳👨‍👧🎂🥳. Me and Mr P were also celebrating Our second anniversary. Here I have to add that Kraków is really worth seeing. It was my first time visiting (even though I’m Polish🙈🙉 I know the irony, right?!), but it definitely wasn’t the last time! It’s so close to the airport, and there’s so much to see-especially the beautiful square ☝️☝️☝️. If you’re ever in Kraków and want to eat good steak 🥩🍷 you have to book the Pimiento restaurant-one of the best steaks I ever had, no kidding! 👌😍

On the 7th, the nightmare started and my life changed forever! In the early afternoon I was cleaning the fireplace at my parents’ house, where we were staying and I started feeling my hand going numb. It just went from there, the other hand and my legs too. It was all happening very slowly..I tried staying calm, lying on the sofa sipping some water and hoping the symptomps would stop. In the meantime I asked Mr P to dial my grandmother’s mobile number. I was worried that something was going to happen and he would have trouble calling an ambulance and giving them directions to the house, as Mr P is Irish and doesn’t speak any Polish. My grandmother arrived fast, because she lived only 15 minutes away..she sat beside me and we just kept chatting away, while weird things were happening in my body (I was having a stroke without even knowing😱). When my head started spinning and I started vomitting, we decided to call an ambulance. It arrived fast and the first thing they asked when they saw me was: ”did you take any drugs?” 😟🙄… I just remember answering them and explaining what was happening to me, before loosing my consciousness. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in hospital…

Before I keep going I would like to share with you what has happened in between. I was told this, as I was unconscious and unaware that my life was being saved in that ambulance 🚑. I will try to paint a little picture for you here… I’m inside the ambulance, which is parked right outside the house. Mr P and my grandmother are waiting outside, waiting and waiting. I can only imagine what was going on in their heads at that time.. During one of our conversations sometime later, Mr P told me that a thought of a paramedic coming out and saying that unfortunately I didn’t make it crossed his mind at that time . Every thought was present in his brain, it was a huge mixture of emotions. For half an hour the ambulance stayed still, and I was being intubated inside.. you see I lost my swallowing ability too. I couldn’t actually breath on my own and because I vomitted earlier, a food particle got stuck in my lungs, causing aspiration pneumonia just days later (as if I hadn’t enough going on already🙉😱, but when it rains it pours🤷🏻‍♀️. When the procedure was finished and I was finally stable the ambulance transffered me to a hospital, while my grandmother and Mr P followed in the car.

🦋 “Life can change in an instant, don’t be so worried about the future that you forget to celebrate what you have right now…” 🦋