Trish Gavigan

I had a stroke almost four years ago. I never thought that someone at my age – I was only 37 years old – would have a stroke.

I was pregnant at the time – 5 weeks pregnant and very excited about having a baby. It all started with a bad headache which went on for three days. I looked everywhere on the internet to try and figure out why I had such a long-lasting headache. Different websites said that headaches were a symptom of early pregnancy so I assumed that was what must be causing it. I went for a head massage and for reflexology to try and relieve it but nothing worked.

On the third morning since the headache began I woke up and I had no power in my left leg. I began to think that something more serious was going on. It was a Thursday and I drove to work. But while I was there I began to feel really unwell so I left and went straight to my GP.

My GP was really good and sent me straight to hospital. The letter she gave me for the hospital said, ‘Query Stroke’. She picked up that it could be a stroke because of the loss of power on my left side.

I went to my local regional hospital and I did not have a good experience there. The first thing I told the staff when I got to the hospital was that I was pregnant. I was so worried about my baby.

I spent 36 hours in this hospital, initially in the Medical Assessment Unit and subsequently in a ward, where I was given paracetamol every four hours for my headache. By this stage it was clear to both my husband and myself that this wasn’t just a headache it was something much more severe.  I had a number of CT Scans but no definite diagnosis.

After spending so long waiting, with no diagnosis, my husband was getting more and more anxious. He had a row with the staff, trying to get them to see how sick I was. It was soon after that that I became very ill and had to go to intensive care to be stabilised.

At 6pm on Friday I was transferred to Beaumount Hospital. I had had a CT scan in my local hospital and between that and coming to Beaumount I had two haemorrhages. I also had a MRI scan and a lumbar puncture but they still weren’t sure it was a stroke. They looked at all options – meningitis, stroke, haemorrhages etc.

I don’t remember much of what happened on Saturday and Sunday. My husband was told that it was unlikely that our baby would survive and that it was questionable whether I would make it as well. It was a terrifying couple of days for him and for the rest of my family. My father came to see me while I was in the High Dependency Unit. I didn’t recognise him and asked him who he was. That is a terrible thing for your father to have to go through. Really that period was harder for my family than for me because I wasn’t aware of what was going on around me.

When I started to become more alert I realised I had no movement in my left leg and my speech was garbled. Someone had to come and wash me. It was horrific to wake up and feel like I couldn’t do things for myself. It felt to me that all my dignity was gone.
Not being able to speak properly was the worst part for me. I couldn’t think of words, or I would think I was speaking normally but the sentences I was actually saying weren’t coming out properly. I was lucky that my speech did come back on its own. I’m a solicitor specialising in court work so speaking is obviously a vital part of my work. If my speech hadn’t come back I couldn’t have continued in my current role.

I started physio straight away in Beaumount to get my strength back. My husband and I can’t speak highly enough of the staff there. They were exceptionally good to us. We didn’t know anything about stroke but they helped us to understand what had happened. They explained everything to us in very simple ways.

I left hospital after two weeks and was put under the care of the high risk pregnancy team in Holles Street Maternity Hospital. They are an amazing medical team. Many of the other women who they were looking after had had clots in their legs during their pregnancies and were on the same blood-thinning medication I now needed to take. I had two injections daily for just over a year.

Because I had my stroke so early in my pregnancy I was going to Holles Street once a week for more than thirty weeks. Every Wednesday, I would faithfully drive up to Dublin to meet with the team there. They knew exactly what I needed and they gave me an amazing amount of support throughout my pregnancy. We worked out my birthing plan and there were copies of it on my chart, in my car and in my bag, just in case I went into labour quickly and needed to give it to another doctor in another hospital.

Ten or twelve weeks after my stroke, I went back to work two days a week. I really, really wanted to get back to work. I didn’t like being at home on my own, partly because I had a huge fear of the stroke coming back and being at home gave me too much time to think. At the beginning anytime I had a headache I would be afraid that it was starting again. I would take a paracetamol and think, ‘Here we go’.

For the final month before I gave birth, I also saw my GP every day so that she could keep a close eye on my blood pressure. She was very helpful to me.

In the end my labour went exactly as per the plan. Because we had worked out my birthing plan well in advance I knew that I would need to have a completely natural birth. My blood-thinning medication meant it would have been very complicated for me to have an epidural or a C-section. I had met with the anaesthetist so that he could explain the risks of an epidural to me. I told him I didn’t want to take any additional risks so I said that, ‘If I ask for an epidural, please say no’.

I gave birth to a very healthy little girl. She’s three years old now and is our little miracle. I am extremely lucky to have her, my eighteen year old son and my fourteen year old step daughter.

That fear of having another stroke never really goes. But a year after I had my stroke I felt I had achieved a milestone and I am less afraid of it happening again now. I still have residual balance problems which Beaumont are still looking into but in general I have been very fortunate.

Nowadays, I’m back at work 3 days a week and I’m also lecturing in law in a Dublin college. I decided that I wanted to work part time so that I can spend time with my precious daughter.

I never thought a stroke would happen to me when I was pregnant or to someone as young. But strokes do happen to younger women and I want to tell my story so that other people know that you can recover.