As soon as I established that my stroke in December 2013 wasn't going to kill me or leave me permanently paralysed in any way, I began to start looking for ways in which I could help my fellow stroke survivors.
Hence this blog, hence my willingness to be a media volunteer for the Stroke Association, hence my involvement in charities such as Different Strokes and Headway.
I've also started to become involved in academic research into stroke; why it happens, how we can avoid those factors which cause it and how, with money becoming ever more scarce, we can help stroke survivors to rehabilitate themselves.
This has led me, with the encouragement of a fellow stroke-survivor and former teacher called Brin Helliwell, to become part of the Stroke Association's panel which adjudicates on the award of grants for research into stroke. The panel is mainly made up of medical academics, but also includes a number of stroke-survivors (slightly euphemistically called service-users....) who are there to give our take on proceedings. After all, the academics can award money for research until they are blue in the face but if it's not going to result in something which actually helps strokies, what's the point?
Hence, last Thursday, myself and Brin were in London at Stroke Association House for a meeting of the panel. Hundreds of thousands of pounds in grants were to be awarded; what was required of us all was to get the shortlist of eight proposals down to two which would definitely be funded and another two which may be funded if money can be found.
It was an exhausting six hours, spent in a hot and humid underground room on the very day when summer decided to come to central London, but it was hugely rewarding. As stroke-survivors/service-users, Brin and I were able to put some very pertinent points which the other members of the panel wouldn't have considered; as a journalist, I was able to steer them away from certain things which it would be only too easy for the Daily Express or Daily Mail to pounce on during a quiet news day.
By 4pm, several hundred thousand pounds worth of research funding had been allocated to projects which will run over the next three to four years and which could result in real benefit to those who live with stroke. My most memorable moment of the day came when Brin told the committee that "all that stroke-survivors, indeed all disabled people, want is some hope."
My hope is that through my work with this committee, I can play some small part in providing that.
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