2020 – August

August 2020 another month and another month of surviving in this weird but wonderful planet we live on, I guess we have to be grateful of every time we wake up, a new day, a new opportunity to make the day count.  It is fair to say that we are in challenging times.  Stay at home, go to work, don’t go to work, visit your local shops, don’t visit anywhere unless its completely essential and if you do, please make sure you wear a mask.  Yes its enough to confuse anyone let alone us that have had a brain injury.   What I guess that we can learn from this whole episode, is to use common sense, look after yourselves and if you need any guidance or support, we are here for you.  Despite restrictions including lockdown, easing lockdown and lockdown the return we remain focused on our job in hand, to help others who now find themselves where we once were.  Yes it is true the current state of affairs have affected us in the way we do things but it hasn’t effected us in continuing the support we offer.  Its exactly a year ago when we got a fellow stroke survivor back driving again and we occasionally see him in his black cab in an around the area.  Its also a year ago, since our first ever charity football match at Cheadle Heath Nomads featuring celebrities from the soaps and ex footballers tackle a Chairmans X1 marking their centenary.

One area we have excelled in over the last year is our online presence, we have the live chat platform which has worked extremely well in recent times.  Even as recent as yesterday we helped a son or daughter in law of someone who had a stroke 4 weeks ago and they wanted to know if what they were experiencing was “Normal” and by using this platform we were able to answer their queries and concerns, not medically as we are not trained to do that but from an experience point of view.  Also recently there has been talk over our local hospital cutting specialist stroke wards in these unprecedented pandemic times. Although we have confirmation from the NHS Foundation Trust & The local CCG regarding any cuts would be temporary, we have also witnessed the national stroke charity claiming to be working in partnership with the NHS to provide connectors to those impacted by Stroke, but rather strangely the plea is directed to anyone who knows NHS staff to signpost them into a stroke connector.  If they were working truly in partnership wouldn’t they know they existed??  ? obviously you are free to make your own mind up but as we seem to be steering stroke rehabilitation into the community doesn’t it make you wonder if those with real experience of STROKE would be best placed to obtain guidance and advice from??

Stay Safe & Keep Well