By Lee Nicholson

[dropcap style=”font-size: 35px; color: #8cc7d0;”] C [/dropcap]lose your eyes for just a moment. Is everything silent?

No?

Is that inner voice chattering away, not letting you get any mental peace and quiet?

Maybe you quietly yearn for that internal voice to be silenced?

Be careful what you wish for.

It was exactly this time a year ago that the internal chatter stopped for me and everything went quiet … and it nearly killed me.

That mental silence, that inner voice shutting down, was just one symptom of Australia’s second biggest killer: strokes.

At just 47 years of age, I have suffered and survived a stroke.

A clot had formed, probably in my heart, and travelled through my arteries to my brain, got caught and starved my brain of oxygen.

I went down so quickly that I didn’t even have time to put my hands out to break my fall as I made a coffee in my kitchen.

Life, as I had known it, changed in that split second.

For people who survive a stroke in the Warrnambool district you are bound to come in contact with Pat Groot.

As South West Healthcare’s stroke liaison clinical nurse consultant, Groot is the expert who at some stage will help you trawl through your near-death experience, help you make some sense of what you have gone through and understand your new ‘normal’.

“People like to know ‘what could I have done that would have prevented this’,” Groot says.

“There’s a lot of soul searching because people would have liked to have avoided stroke altogether, perhaps never become acquainted with it, but they’re here and sometimes they’re not really sure why.”

When I was felled by an embolic stroke, I just didn’t believe it: the thought that I was “having a stroke” was inconceivable.

I was violently ill. My right side couldn’t move and I couldn’t walk. I had to drag myself to my bed and lay there amid the agony of the very worst of headaches.

As crazy as it might sound, I took 24 hours to seek help because I didn’t have the ‘classic’ signs of stroke, in other words, my face hadn’t fallen.

The area the stroke took out affected the part of the brain that controls my balance, speech and writing – all of my fine motor skills – and, of course, decision making.

[dropcap style=”font-size: 35px; color: #8cc7d0;”] I [/dropcap]

was unable to work as a journalist and I had to resign from a job I was enjoying as a business editor in Adelaide. My life was now about trying to relearn all of the movements that I had taken for granted.

Walking, talking, balance, eating, typing, writing, drawing, driving. You name it, every action I did since I was born and was second nature, I had to learn to do again.

The fatigue. You have a stroke and it feels like someone has disconnected your batteries.

That two, three, four or five kilometres you used to be able to casually walk? Forget it.

You will be knackered just getting out of the armchair back to your bed to sleep for 20 hours.

Despite my delay in seeking treatment, I am one of the lucky ones and, fortunately, I have almost made a full recovery.

According to the latest figures from the Australian Stroke Foundation, stroke is the country’s second biggest killer and a leading cause of disability.

The financial cost of stroke in Australia is estimated to be about $5 billion each year.

Stroke kills more women than breast cancer and more men than prostate cancer.

“You see other conditions which seem to be, for want of a better word, sexier,” Groot explains.

“Stroke continually fails to attract the attention of funders.

“We know if there was money directed at it we could reduce the instance of stroke by making people aware of the risk factors.”

In 2015, funding for stroke research through the National Health and Medical Research Council represented just 4.1 per cent of the total investment in medical research.

The foundation predicts that this year there will be more than 55,000 new and recurrent strokes or 1000 strokes every week: that’s one stroke every 10 minutes somewhere in Australia.

Around a third of all stroke survivors are of working age, or under the age of 65.

This year there will be more than 470,000 people living with the effects of stroke. This is predicted to increase to 709,000 by 2032.

After a stroke, 65 per cent of survivors have to live with a disability which prevents them carrying out daily living activities unassisted.

“The number of people who die within six months of a stroke is fairly high … about 12 per cent,” Groot says.

He adds a stroke is a symptom of our 21^st century lifestyle.

“The truth is we’ve become more sedentary, our diets have become worse, we perhaps drink too much and people who smoke are twice as high risk than those who don’t.”

Developed in the United Kingdom, the FAST test is an easy way to recognise and remember the signs of stroke.

FAST involves asking these simple questions:

• Face – Check their face. Has their mouth drooped?
• Arm – Can they lift both arms?
• Speech – Is their speech slurred? Do they understand you?
• Time – Time is critical. If you see any of these signs, call 000 straight away.

“When it comes down to it there is so much more we have to learn about stroke, more research that needs to be conducted for us to talk with authority,” Groot says.

Groot urges people who think that they might be having a stroke to act on the side of caution and seek medical help.

“If it turns out to be a stroke mimic, that’s not bad, that’s a good outcome. But if we’ve intervened in time … that’s a good thing.

“You could be one of those statistics that could be affected due to stroke and not everyone makes a good recovery.”

For more information on the facts and figures, click here.

[box]Victoria

Stroke Association of Victoria: (03) 9670 1117 local call 1300 434 233.

New South Wales

Stroke Recovery Association of NSW: (02) 9807 6422 local call 1300 650 594.

South Australia

Stroke SA Inc: (08) 8352 4644.

Call StrokeLine for free information and advice. 1800 STROKE (787 653)[/box]

 

 

 

Words and images by Carol Altmann

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] I [/dropcap]f it’s true that people subconsciously choose a pet dog that mirrors themselves, it is appropriate that Warrnambool City Councillor Peter Hulin owns a 68kg Rottweiler called Boris.

Big Boris, who Peter jokingly refers to as a Chihuahua cross, is – like his owner – from strong German stock, intensely loyal to those he respects and not one to take any crap when provoked.

“Does Boris reflect you?” I ask Peter during our conversation at his Koroit St upholstery business, where a stretched-out Boris looks like a couch blocking the doorway.

“In many ways, yes. He is as placid as can be and would not hurt a fly when he is out here, hanging around, but come to my place after dark and try and take something and see how you go then,” Peter says, laughing.

“It was like when I grabbed a guy who had hurt my son,” he adds, referring to an incident from 2008 when he attacked a man in Port Fairy, who, Peter argued, was part of an ongoing campaign of harassment against his son, John.

Peter was fined, but no conviction was recorded, after being charged with recklessly causing injury and unlawful assault.

Peter has similarly been accused of being too aggressive in his role as councillor since being elected in 2008, but others – like the steady stream of ratepayers who visit his shop to seek advice or a listening ear – consider him a hero of the common person.

Perhaps more than any other councillor, he is either loved or loathed, with not much space in between.

“It’s not personal to me and I don’t take it personally. I just believe there is a better way,” Peter says of the criticism he receives from those who would prefer he remain quiet.

“We need people elected to council with the ability to move this city toward the place it should be, and could easily be: we are not elected to be puppets.”

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”] P [/dropcap]eter grew up the son of an upholsterer and World War II veteran who, Peter says, could be extremely violent as a result of the mental trauma he suffered after fighting on the Russian front line for the Germans.

It was an often traumatic childhood, but one that Peter says has given him a strong survival instinct.

As a teenager, Peter was apprenticed to his father and, during this time, witnessed an event that shaped him for life. As Peter tells it, his father had complained to the council for years about an unsafe auto engine business at the back of his shop in Kepler St (at what is now Day Kitty), warning it was a major fire hazard.

The inevitable happened and a fire from the engine business swept through a number of buildings, including a garage that housed the Hulin’s new car. Peter, who was then 17, and his father attempted to retrieve the vehicle but such was the shock and strain, his father suffered a heart attack and died in front of him.

Peter saw the tragedy as an avoidable problem that, because of the council’s ineptitude, had catastrophic consequences.

“I understood then that if you had a problem, you sort it out: you don’t pretend that it is not happening,” he says.

“When someone comes to me with a problem now, I try and sort it out for them and get something done, and I cannot see why that is considered being radical.”

[dropcap style=”font-size: 60px; color: #DC943C;”]T [/dropcap]he difficult and ultimately tragic relationship with his father saw Peter seek out his own role models and he has several older mentors who continue to guide his thinking.

He also absorbs information like a sponge, listening to ABC 774 rather than 3AW and reading biographies on inspiring leaders such as Abraham Lincoln.

“I want to know what I don’t know,” he says.

A passionate, rather than a passive, approach has always been Peter Hulin’s style. Before being elected to council (it took two attempts), he wrote copious letters to the local paper, outlining where Warrnambool could do and be much better.

“Those same issues are the ones I am still fighting for today – CBD renewal, pedestrian safety, the environment,” he says.

“I fix things for a living. I can see the potential in someone’s old piece of furniture and what can be done with it. And I can see Warrnambool bursting with potential, but it is being held back.”

With council elections to be held next year, Peter Hulin will again be among the candidates and, if re-elected, has no intention of pulling his head in.

“Making the right decisions can be hard: it is easy to just blob along and not rock the boat, but I am not like that,” he says.

“I know who I am and what I am made of and not many people can say that. If you stand up for what you believe in, it can be very difficult, but nobody can question your integrity in being prepared to do it.”

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