This love story starts with a girl who collapsed on a Brighton street and a boy who took a bus using a borrowed £1 which would later save his life.
Simon and Becki lived in different corners of the country. They both had a stroke when they were young. They overcame disappointments and both had to learn to live with newly-acquired disabilities. Years later, they would meet by chance and fall in love.

Becki Cobb was 21 in 2011 and about to start her final term at university. She had just returned from a visit to Paris to see a friend and decided to walk to her part-time job at a clothes shop in Brighton.

"It was a beautiful sunny morning, but after 20 minutes I started to feel really light-headed. I had an apple in my bag, but as I tried to bite into it I dropped it and then fell onto my knees and I just couldn't get back up.

"I felt like I'd fainted but I was conscious."
She was found by two policemen who were concerned how unwell she looked, but Becki kept telling them she had to get to work. They said they would take her, but only if she was able to get into the car by herself.

"I couldn't open the door. My left-hand side was getting paralysed so it was getting very weak and all my muscles were stopping. I remembered lying on one of their laps because they were saying 'you need to keep talking to us' but I was just so tired.
"The policemen told me I was saying things that didn't make sense but in my head I was talking perfectly coherently."

An ambulance was called and Becki was in hospital within 20 minutes, but her memory remains blank until 22:00 that night. She has relied on other people to fill in the gaps.
The hospital contacted her parents in Lincolnshire and told them to get there quickly because it was not known if Becki would survive.

The medical staff were mystified. Although Becki was showing symptoms of stroke, they held back from that diagnosis because, at 21, she would have been unusually young to have one.
To rule it out, they called-in a consultant on her day off. When she examined Becki, the consultant confirmed the medical team's original thinking. It was a stroke.

Simon Commins was 17 and studying for his A levels in Chester in 2004 with plans to be an engineer. He skipped class early that afternoon to get to his job as a swimming pool lifeguard.
He decided he'd go to the gym before his shift and borrowed £1 from a friend to pay for a bus ticket. He says that, at the time, he wasn't aware the pound would save his life - had he been penniless and forced to walk, he may not have been near anyone who could help him when he needed it.

Just before he reached his stop, Simon began to feel light-headed.
"It was as if there was a loss of conscious control. The second I stood up my legs felt really heavy, every step felt like I was getting heavier and my vision was getting quite bad."

At 21 and 17 Becki and Simon were unusually young to have a stroke.
It was determined that Becki's was caused by a blood clot which passed through a hole in the heart between the two upper chambers which had failed to close as normal when she was growing up. The resultant hole is known as a patent foramen ovale (PFO).

Little did Simon know, but the daily nosebleeds he'd been having were a sign that he had a genetic disorder called Hereditary Haemorrhagic Telangiectasia (HHT). This stops some blood vessels from developing properly and they build up with blood, known as arteriovenous malformations (AVMs). These AVMs were in Simon's brain where they ruptured, causing a haemorrhage and stroke.

According to brain injury charity Headway, about 130,000 people are admitted to hospital each year in the UK with stroke - about 300 of those are aged under 25.
Warning signs include face drooping, difficulty in lifting the arms and slurred speech. It can also include a sudden, intense headache, dizziness, vision problems and confusion.

Continue...
https://go2pedia..com.ng/2017/12/the-1-which-saved-my-life-and-found-me.html

This cant hit front page