By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
CRANBOURNE mum Kristi Bryceland describes the night her five-year-old daughter had a stroke as “terrifying”.
It was a normal evening, the single mum recalls – “there were no warning signs,” she said.
“Holli woke during the night and when I was putting her back to bed she wouldn’t lie down,” Kristi said.
“It looked like she was having a nightmare but she wouldn’t talk to me, the look in her eyes was very scary.”
Holli’s face drooped and she proceeded to convulse, vomit and eventually pass out.
Since the stroke in March last year Holli and her mum’s lives have completely changed.
“I went from working full time and earning good money to only being able to work one day a week,” Kristi said.
With their days taken up by visits to see speech therapists, occupational therapists, child psychologists, dieticians, paediatricians, neurosurgeons, tutors and a heart specialist, Kristi said she feels like her daughter’s youth has been stolen.
“She always has to be somewhere or doing something to aid her recovery,” Kristi said.
But they have decided to take one giant stride to help aid others through their stroke recovery and stop stroke in its tracks.
Holli and Kristi are walking in the National Stroke Foundation’s month long campaign Stride for Stroke and Kristi has pledged to run 100 kilometres and raise $2500.
“It didn’t actually register with me for a long time that Holli would have lasting effects from the stroke,” she said.
“I actually thought she would get better and that she would just be her old self again, but now she struggles enormously.”
Holli now suffers with aphasia which impairs her ability to talk, read, write and understand speech as a result of her stroke.
The condition also causes fatigue and concentration, focus and emotional disturbances and, due to her ongoing battles, Kristi has set herself a real challenge.
“I hate running and I thought that it was my turn to put myself completely out of my comfort zone because Holli will have to do this for the rest of her life so the least I can do is push myself for one month,” she said.
To make a donation to the Stride for Stroke campaign and to learn about the warning signs of a stroke visit www.strokefoundation.com.au.
