A funny thing happened on the way back from the toilet...

It was 4:23 in the morning. Unusually, my wife had asked me to feed our youngest because or eldest (also unusually) had woken up crying. I had done the zombie feed, burped her (the baby, not my wife), put her back in bed and made my way sleepily to the toilet. I got up to return to our bedroom. My foot was asleep... not uncommon after a stint on the khazi. I shook it out and continued walking. But it didn't wake up. In fact, by the time I got to our door about 10 feet away, my right arm felt funny, too. My wife, slightly annoyed that I was making such a commotion, turned the light on and asked I was OK. I looked at her, and I was suddenly very aware that I was not OK. I slid down the wall as she repeated my name and asked whether she should call an ambulance. My eyes must have said 'yes' because my mouth no longer wa0 doing as it was told. I wanted to scream out 'Yes, call the ambulance quickly!' I knew every second counted. I I knew it was serious.I knew I was having a stroke.

I wanted do be able do something other than lay there in a crumpled heap, moaning and drooling. I think I managed to mumble 'I'm scared,' and flop myself onto my back before the paramedics arrived. The looks they gave me and the serious, professional tones of their voices confirmed my fears. A muffled tear - the first of many that I would shed over the next week - worked its way down my lazy right cheek as she said those words. 'Listen,' she said. 'You've had a stroke. We need to get you to hospital'. In the background, I could hear her partner calling it in. '43-year-old male, FAST positive... no sign of head trauma...' I felt myself trying to correct her, 'Forty-TWO! I'm 42!' Even I understood the absurdity of trying to correct that tiny, insignificant thing. But it felt immensely important. My wife knew; she giggled a little as she translated my slurs.

With the help of all three of them, I got into the evac chair and they put a blanket over me to cover my modesty. 'I'm a drooling vegetable,' I thought. 'What dignity could I possibly have left?' As I got upright and strapped in, a neighbour arrived to help move me down the stairs. The way he looked at me reminded me again that this was real.

As I got to the top of the stairs, the oddest thing happened. Everything went... normal. My hand relaxed, my leg pulled itself in and my tongue shrunk. I looked up at my wife, showed he my fully functional hand and exclaimed in relief, 'Thank fuck for that!' A temporary glitch; a mini-stroke. I'd gotten away with it. I didn't have too much time to celebrate; by the time we'd cleared the last step, I was all strokey again. I sighed in despair.

Outside, a Welsh monsoon had blown into Devil's Bridge. The edges of my hospital blanket were dragging through the run-off river that was racing down our road. I remember think that the 'loading' was much clumsier than on TV; it was bumpy and rattly and noisy. My father-in-law's head peered around the door. Another set of eyes making a mockery of my wife's assurances that 'it was't that bad.'

They adjusted the oxygen mask on my face, strapped me down and with two unceremonious thuds as the doors closed we started the 12 mile trip to the ER. I was trembling from a mixture of cold, fear and spasm. The gas was making me nauseous and the unforgiving Welsh roads tossed me around like the lifeless ragdoll I thought I'd become. We stopped once to shut the door. My wife held my hand and kept me awake as we made our way agonisingly slowly to the hospital. I was literally putting my life and into the hands of a hospital I'd never trusted. The last time I was gettting treatment here (in 1996), the nurse showed me how to take a really deep drag on the nitrus oxide before he took out a pair of pliars, put his foot on my shoulder and yanked a wire from my previously broken finger. To say I was worried about the standard of care I'd receive is putting it mildly.

There is a certain degree of calm that comes with resignation. As far as I knew, strokes always won and they always kicked your ass. As they wheeled to have a CT scan, I was simply waiting to be told that my life was over as I knew it. My family, my job, maybe even my residency in the UK had been taken from me in an instant.  The tears came again - this time mourning the loss of identity and independence. As my wife tried to reassure me that everything would be alright, I tried to reassure her that I wasn't scared shitless. I don't think either of us would have won an Oscar for our efforts.

We sat. Well, she sat; I lay. But we both waited for the results of the scan that tell us how much we would allow ourselves to hope.