My stroke 16 years ago was totally unexpected. I was 47, literally had zero symptoms of anything untoward.

We were in the house in Glengarriff, Co Cork — quite isolated, inaccessible, up a mountain boreen. My husband Prakash and I had been there together a week. 

It was pure chance I wasn’t alone. I’d been on my own for 15 days before he arrived. I was in the middle of writing my third book.

I can’t last beyond 7am without coffee but from the previous Sunday — this was Thursday — Prakash had been having a proper lie-in, never stirring until 12. 

But on that day, by some unbelievable chance, he came down shortly after me, made tea, and was taking it upstairs.

I’d gone to the toilet. This was at the end of a long corridor, and Prakash, turning to look at our cat in the corridor, saw me slumped on the toilet. 

I had no speech so I couldn’t call out. He said, ‘Are you OK?’ I made a sound, I distinctly remember, bleating like a lamb. I was paralysed on my right side, had lost my speech.

What’s even crazier is Prakash is a vascular surgeon. He knew immediately I’d had a stroke. I knew straightaway too. 

I don’t remember feeling anything in that moment — all the bad thoughts about the consequences came later in the ambulance.

Physically, I felt like a very heavy person. My arm and leg felt heavy. I was willing myself to lift my arm, and my brain was telling me my arm was being lifted but it actually wasn’t. It’s the most peculiar feeling, this phantom movement.

Prakash managed to get through to the ambulance service — 16 years ago mobile phone coverage was poor — and also to the vascular team in CUH, who were all his colleagues and friends. 

He phoned neighbours, who stayed with me while he was packing up the house.

They and Prakash carried me in a chair to the front of the house, ready for the ambulance. I’m a poor traveller — I get car-sick easily. I remember thinking the stroke won’t kill me but maybe the travel sickness will.

I could see through the back door my husband tailgating the ambulance the whole way. I thought, ‘He’s going to crash.’

As we were coming into Béal na Bláth, my speech started to come back, my movement too. I said to the ambulance driver: “I can speak!” 

But before we reached Crookstown, not two miles on, I had another stroke.

 I was thinking, ‘Somebody is going to have to feed me, wash me, somebody’s going to have to do something for me all the time.’ 

I had three young children — my eldest 18, the others 16 and 12. I was thinking, ‘I’ve given my children a life sentence.’

Cauvery Madhavan: "I had three young children — my eldest 18, the others 16 and 12. I was thinking, ‘I’ve given my children a life sentence.’"Cauvery Madhavan: “I had three young children — my eldest 18, the others 16 and 12. I was thinking, ‘I’ve given my children a life sentence.’”

When we reached CUH, the gravity of everything really hit hard when the ambulance door opened and there were all my husband’s colleagues, who I knew socially. They had such anxious, serious faces…

I was taken straight to the ward. Maybe towards the end of that day — like an on/off switch — I got everything back in one moment. 

Stroke gone, my speech back, the paralysis gone — it was instant. Prakash was with me when I had this instant recovery. He was in a state of shock.

They ran a whole battery of tests. They figured I’d had a tear in the carotid artery, that a piece of the tear had moved and lodged into the brain, causing the first stroke. 

And I got my faculties back because whatever had lodged had moved away. It’s quite a miraculous thing. And then another piece lodged in a smaller artery in the brain, causing my second stroke. That this also moved away is an absolute miracle.

I was put on aspirin to thin my blood. Undiagnosed high blood pressure caused the stroke. I was told to get that back on track. 

I literally turned my life around health-wise. I became obsessive about my salt intake. I didn’t cut out anything but I went to less than half of the portions I had been eating. 

I started walking, exercising. I had this huge psychological barrier to overcome — fear of it happening again.

For about a year, I got tingling in my arms and fingertips, 15, 20 times a day. It frightened me — it was the sensation I’d had when I got the second stroke. But it was just a residual thing. Yet every time I thought, ‘That’s it now.’

I couldn’t be without my mobile phone in my hand. Prakash finally said, “If you have another stroke, you’re not going to be able to use the phone.” 

His realism and practical nature helped me overcome my fear. I burst out laughing. I realised, cruel as it sounded, he was spot on.

That was when I moved on from the psychological trauma.

I still consider it my lucky stroke. I could have had a terrible outcome. Instead I got a warning.

Afterwards, I did things I’d never dreamed of: walked the Camino, went to Everest Base Camp, started playing golf and won an all-Ireland medal.

I never say no to anything now. It’s not that I have no fear — just I got a second chance and I’m not going to waste it.

  • Cauvery Madhavan’s latest book is The Inheritance. 
  • She’s at the West Cork Literary Festival tomorrow at 11.20am in Bantry Bookshop. Free. 
  • See westcorkmusic.ie/literary-festival