A YOUNG, healthy, surfing loving dad of three has told how he experienced a massive stroke at the age of 46 while playing hockey.
It was a real-life drama that mirrors a big new Emmerdale storyline, highlighting how a stroke strikes a person every five minutes in the UK.
Next week Emmerdale’s legendary character, Marlon Dingle, played by actor Mark Charnock, will have a stroke on his 48th birthday after proposing to his partner, Rhona.
As he excitedly goes back to his home to find her engagement ring, Marlon, who has been seen stressed out in the weeks leading up to his stroke, starts to feel disorientated.
Minutes later he notices in the mirror that his mouth has drooped on the right side of his face, before he dramatically collapses.
Found by his daughter, April, he is rushed to hospital and given an emergency procedure called a thrombectomy to get rid of the clot in his brain that has caused the stroke.
It’s then a long road to recovery for Marlon as he comes to terms with his stroke and learns how to speak and use his right arm again.
For sporty Nick Hounsfield, who is a former osteopath and now a successful entrepreneur, the heartbreaking storyline is an emotional reminder of what happened to him two years ago.
Nick – who now helps other survivors and who shared his own experiences with Emmerdale star Mark – had his stroke on February 1 2020 while playing hockey.
“About five minutes into the game, I suddenly wasn’t able to follow the hockey ball and my right hand couldn’t grip the stick,” explains Nick, in an exclusive interview with HOAR.
“I felt really weird and so I ran to the side of the pitch.
“When everyone came over to ask what the matter was, I couldn’t speak.
“I knew in my head what I wanted to say but it was just not coming out of my mouth.
“Then suddenly I heard someone saying: ‘Oh my god, I think he is having a stroke’.”
His quick-thinking team mates frantically called for an ambulance and his wife, Julianna, drove to the scene.
But after an hour or so of waiting for one to arrive, she eventually drove Nick to nearby Southmead Hospital Bristol.
“I think because I was conscious and I was young, I dropped down the ambulance priority list,” says Nick.
“So my wife drove me. But by the time I had a MRI scan, some four and a half to five hours had passed.
“Because of the delay, they then had to decide whether to use the clot busting drug or not.
“They did but unfortunately it shattered the clot and it broke into eight different clots around my brain, so I then ended up with quite a complicated issue rather than one single point.”
ROAD TO RECOVERY
Nick, now 48, spent the next week in hospital before being discharged to the Bristol family home he shares with Julianna and their three sons.
“It was right at the start of the pandemic and the hospital needed the bed space, so I was sent home,” he recalls.
“By then, my dexterity on my right side had thankfully started to come back and I could say a few phrases.”
Over the coming weeks and months, Nick says his road to recovery was a gradual but incredibly difficult one.
He says: “I was lucky in the sense that I didn’t have too many difficulties on the physical side, but by far and away, the hardest thing to cope with was the mental battle and the frustration of not being able to do things or get points across.
“Things like tying a shoelace.
“After the first stage, I wouldn’t be able to remember what was next and if a family disagreement broke out, I would find it hard to get my point across as I couldn’t find the right words.
“I would end up smashing plates and slamming doors.
“I turned into a petulant toddler who has a tantrum when they can’t get their view across.
“I had always been an incredibly passive person and I didn’t like how I had become.
“I was worried I was going to be stuck like that.”
Gradually over time, things did, however, become easier for Nick and nine months after he had his stroke in November 2020, the businessman returned to work at the inland surfing lake company, The Wave, he’d proudly founded in 2012.
“I wanted to show everything was going to be fine,” says Nick.
“In retrospect, it probably was too early, and I should have taken a year off, but we were in a pandemic, and I wanted to get back to the business I had founded.”
PANIC ATTACKS
Two years on, Nick says he is now in a much better place, but he thinks it will be another few years before he fully recovers, explaining he has recently started to have panic attacks over the fear he will have another stroke again.
Nick admits: “If I suddenly forget a word or lose track, I have this primitive reflex which goes ‘Oh my god, I am going to have another stroke’, and it starts off a panic attack.
“I know I have got to work on this to make me stop getting them, but it’s going to take time.
“I’ve realised how important it is to be kind to myself and how the mental side of having a stroke is hard to navigate at times.