Thanks for taking the time to visit my JustGiving page 🙂

My name is Edward Kelly & in 2002 I suffered a severe
stroke that I've never fully recovered from (more details below). I’ll be
taking part in the 2021 Parish Walk on the 19th June where I’ll be attempting to get to Marown Parish Church.

As well as raising money for Hospice Isle of Man, I want to
inspire people to be more active, and I hope to prove that you can become a stronger person by overcoming a seemingly hopeless situation!

My story:

In October 2002, just three days after my 21st birthday,
I suffered a brain stem stroke. Below is a short summary of a story I wrote in 2004 when things were pretty fresh in my memory:

I'd been getting headaches in the back of my head and
dizzy spells on and off for a few months and one day I felt especially unwell and dizzy at work which resulted in me vomiting.

After being taken home, I made it up the stairs and into
bed as I thought I'd sleep it off. I was experiencing a feeling of pins and needles and numbness in my left side, and I felt my voice disappearing (I remember sounding like Yoda at one point!)

Fortunately my mum came to my house to see if I was ok
but she found me stiff as a board and shaking uncontrollably. After trying to give me mouth to mouth (yuk🤢), she called an ambulance.

I was soon in Intensive Care at Noble’s Hospital and they
asked me lots of questions, but I could only use my eyes to blink yes or no, so communication was slow and not easy.

I was very weak at this stage and could only move one
finger and my head a little. At first all the breathing was done for me by a machine, but over the next six weeks spent in intensive care, I was slowly weaned onto doing it for myself.

During the 10 months spent in various hospitals, I had
to start from scratch in terms of learning to speak and walk again, and my journey is still ongoing today, now over 18 years later