Helen Mancini Helen Mancini

ONE SATURDAY NIGHT in August 2015, Helen Mancini was at home with her husband getting ready for bed. After brushing her teeth, she went to the toilet and in an unexpected split second, her whole life changed.

All of a sudden, I just couldn’t move. I had no headache and no blood coming from my nose. It just sprang on me. I managed to bang with my right arm onto the wall and my husband came in from the bedroom on the other side.

When Helen’s husband Emiliano called an ambulance and suspected that she might be having a stroke, she couldn’t believe it:

I just thought I was tired. I thought I was too young – I couldn’t be having a stroke. When my husband said I think you are having a stroke, I said that only happens to old people.”

Helen is sharing her story as part of Irish Heart’s month-long campaign, supported by the HSE, which raises awareness of stroke prevention among those of working age.

It was only when Helen’s speech was too slurred to repeat something back to the ambulance man on the phone that it became clear that they needed to get to her immediately.

Having a stroke is a race against time – it cuts off the oxygen to the brain and starts to kill off brain cells. The quicker you can get treatment the less brain cells get killed. But they don’t grow back – that’s why the recovery is so hard.

Luckily Helen was within the four-hour window to receive a treatment that would dissolve the clot using a tissue plasminogen activator (tPA).

The next few weeks were tough – Helen’s lungs collapsed and she developed pneumonia. Hospital staff struggled to get her blood pressure under control at first. Unfortunately, this was only the start of what would become a very tough journey.

Moving to rehabilitation in Blanchardstown, Helen remembers a friend warning her to think of her time there not in days or weeks, but in months. In total, she stayed in the facility for five months.

For the first two months, Helen was completely bed-bound and couldn’t move at all. She says that people would often come in and ask, “How did you have a stroke? You are so young.” She needed to re-learn how to stand, how to walk and how to sit up:

I was determined that I wouldn’t leave the hospital in a wheelchair. Once I learned how to walk, I saw that as my ticket home and knew I had to build my stamina. My goal was to get home for Christmas, so I could sort out the Christmas shopping and put up the Christmas tree.

Although she did return home in time for Christmas, Helen didn’t realise the full impact that the stroke had – she couldn’t remember how to do basic things like turning on the TV or using the washing machine.

Learning to become independent again was difficult. Helen’s husband and son were afraid to leave her alone – that she may fall or need something when they weren’t there.

Helen and her family became anxious that she would be lonely being home all day by herself – all of her friends worked full time. However, Helen had worked closely to targets in her job and had an incredible idea to keep herself occupied:

I thought, ‘how am I going to get through this? I’m going to have to set targets’. So I signed up for a mile walk. I thought ‘in five months I’m going to be able to do this’. At the time, I could walk about four steps before I’d get tired.

Helen Mancini at the Great Pink Run 2016 with her husband Emiliano. Helen Mancini Helen Mancini

Helen took a lot of walks with her carer where they’d wander a little further each day. During that time, she says, the support of her husband spurred her on:

I’d make up excuses for why I didn’t want to go out. I’d record a weather forecast saying it was going to rain and play that to my carer. My husband would come home and be clapping at a ten-minute walk I’d have done – he was my biggest cheerleader. On the day, I cried the whole way around the circuit. I was so shocked I was able to do it.

Instead of having “a pity party for one” leading up to the anniversary of her stroke, Helen set her sights on the Great Pink Run, a five mile run in Phoenix Park which she completed with her husband (seen above), and her 16-year-old son, Ben.

However, the journey back to full health is by no means finished for Helen:

I’m only two years in and I’m still at rehab. I still have a lot of recovery to do, some of which I don’t even realise. You only discover that you have new limitations as you go.

In Helen’s eyes, her stroke was avoidable and has been glad of the positive impact it has made on her friends:

A lot them have joined the gym or Slimming World. You get a shock – you never think it could happen to someone so close. The reality is that it could happen to anyone, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Helen admits that she knew she wasn’t healthy but didn’t want to face up to it. ”I was overweight, I just generally didn’t feel well. I was tired a lot but I had a very stressful job and just like everybody I thought I was coping.”

Her one salient piece of advice from surviving, and thriving after a stroke at 41? To get your blood pressure checked, immediately.

Irish Heart runs a Mobile Health Unit where you can get all these things checked, so there’s no excuse. I would have been guilty of the ‘I don’t have time’ excuse but it takes five minutes. It’s nothing compared to the amount of time it takes to recover.

Helen is just one of 2,000 people in Ireland under 65 affected annually by stroke. This September, prevention is for you. Some 60% of over 45s in Ireland have high blood pressure which is a major risk for stroke – start with a check and find out what you can do to avoid stroke. Life begins at 40, don’t let stroke stop it.

For more information and support, visit www.irishheart.ie. #StrikeBeforeStroke