“I call myself a professional stroke survivor”
Name: Anneli Torsfeldt Heikenborn.
Age: 49 years.
Occupation: Has written the book Strokesurvivor – vägen vidare efter stroke (Strokesurvivor — the way forward after a stroke). Previously worked in HR.
“I call myself a professional stroke survivor”
“When I was expecting my second child, I got high blood pressure and was put on half-day sick leave. I went in for frequent prenatal checks. But one day in December 2003, I suddenly collapsed over the breakfast table. After that, there’s a weeks-long hole in my memory.
I had acute preeclampsia with very high blood pressure, over 200 in overpressure. As a result, I had a haemorrhage in a vascular tangle in my brain, which I didn’t even know I had.
The doctors told my husband that our baby was going to die and that I was going to be ‘a vegetable’. They actually used that word. But our son, who is now 17 years old, is perfectly healthy and I am not a ‘vegetable’, whatever that means.
While I was still in my hospital bed, I decided to actively use things I learned as a behavioural scientist in my recovery, like how to achieve results by setting goals with milestones. One of my goals was to be able to walk and run again. I trained very hard, incredibly hard, to get there. I had good rehabilitation staff to support me. I also found support in visualisations, where I ‘saw’ myself running, and thus evoked the feeling of running in my body.
Less than a year after my stroke, I ran the Tjejmilen 10k race. My doctor called me ‘a miracle’.
But I never rejoined the labour force, although that was also a goal. I have chronic brain fatigue, and it limits me. I need to shield myself from impressions, but it doesn’t always work. Then I get very tired and exhausted. My blood pressure is fine now; that was pregnancy-related. The vascular tangle in my brain has been removed with a radiation knife.
I think I’ve been lucky. I call myself a professional stroke survivor. Since my stroke, it’s a full-time job for me to live, train and rest so that I don’t get worse. I also give lectures on life after stroke, both for people who have had a stroke themselves and for those who work with stroke patients.
You can’t go back to the way things were after a stroke. But you can move on. And you can have a good life.”
Text: Annika Lund, first published in Swedish in the magazine Medicinsk Vetenskap no 1/2021.
More reading on this topic
Rehabilitation on the patient’s terms
Susanne Guidetti develops methods and interventions for rehabilitating people who have had a stroke and for supporting older people. Her interventions are based on person-centred care, digital support and activities where the individual’s own priorities are in focus.
Understanding and using physical activity for health
The health benefits of exercise are well known, but healthcare needs to become better at actually using physical activity as a treatment. This is the opinion of Maria Hagströmer, who is engaged in research concerning the relationship between physical activity and health.