Following a Friday night out with friends, Alex Bowles woke up the next morning with a dull headache. The group had enjoyed a few drinks with their dinner, so it wasn’t completely unexpected.

‘I just thought it was a hangover. It felt like half my head was missing, very airy,’ remembers Alex, who was 23 at the time.

Never one for taking painkillers, she soldiered on despite her pounding head, even when it was accompanied by nausea. 

‘I went shopping but felt so bad I had to sit down,’ Alex tells Metro. ‘I assumed I also felt sick because of a hangover – I didn’t think anything suspicious was going on.’

By Sunday, Alex was still reeling from a bad headache and wasn’t so sure her suffering was down to alcohol. She wondered if she might have picked up a virus instead.

Two days later – on a Tuesday in October 2014 – her headache remained steadfast and she’d started to be sick, too.

As Alex ran to the toilet to be sick for a second time that morning, she saw her family’s cleaner, who knew the family of four well. The cleaner quickly realised Alex’s speech was slurred and she was talking nonsensically. 

‘I wasn’t making any sense,’ the now 34-year-old explains. ‘She knew something was wrong, so she called my mum, who rang the ambulance.’

By the time the paramedics arrived, Alex was lying on the sofa and was quick to tell her to go straight to Queen’s in Essex, as the hospital had the best neurological department.

‘When they said that, my mum knew it was something serious. She was really worried, but very matter-of-fact. She knew I was going to the best place.’

While Alex doesn’t remember much of that day, one of the details she can recall is lying on the floor of A&E in her pyjamas. 

‘Someone told my mum I wasn’t allowed to lie on the floor, and she said I could barely sit up, so unless there was a bed, there wasn’t much else I could do,’ she recalls.

However, no one seemed in a rush to see Alex, except for one doctor. 

‘He thought something bad was going on, as he didn’t think a girl of my age would just be lying on the floor with a headache,’ she explains. ‘He pushed for me to have a CT scan, and they found I had a huge clot and bleed in the left side of my brain.’

Alex was told she’d had a stroke, and it was later suspected by doctors, but never confirmed, that it could have been caused by a combination of simultaneously using a birth control pill, steroids and having just returned from a long-haul flight. 

However, following the diagnosis, doctors said they couldn’t treat the clot and the bleed at the same time, as if they treated one, it would have made the other worse.

‘Doctors hoped the bleed would stop by itself, so they could treat the clot. They told my family they’d give it until Friday, otherwise it would be brain surgery,’ remembers Alex.  

Thankfully, the bleeding stopped, and doctors started her on blood thinners to treat the clot. But the stroke had left Alex unable to read, write or speak properly.

‘I couldn’t understand what people were telling me. It was like my brain shut off completely, but I was completely unaware of it. Physically, I was fine – it was all cognitive,’ she explains.

As she was unable to understand what the doctors were saying,  Alex didn’t feel afraid of the grim prognosis, but her mother never left her side. 

‘I used to walk around the hospital walls with Mum and shout out any random words I could read on posters,’ Alex remembers.

Over two weeks, her writing, reading, and speaking abilities started to return, and eventually she was allowed to go home, where each day, ‘got a little bit easier’. ‘It came back naturally,’ she added.

Alex had previously been working at a horse sanctuary and children’s nursery doing admin, but needed to take a year off.

Once Alex started to understand what had happened, she began feeling frustrated that she couldn’t communicate how she wanted. 

‘I was realising what had changed, and would get upset as I couldn’t get across how my brain was feeling,’ she remembers. ‘It was easier when I couldn’t understand.’

Alex also had to come to terms with parts of who she was changing forever. 

‘Anyone who has had a stroke will understand. My sense of humour went, I don’t understand sarcasm, or when someone is joking. For a long time, I hated being around crowds and too much noise.’

Alex also admits that being completely dependent on family and friends sometimes felt very ‘isolating’.

‘I went from driving and having my own life to being stuck indoors unless someone could pick me up and take me out,’ she explains. 

Ten months after the stroke, Alex started receiving counselling to work through her anger and frustration, as she found it easier talking to someone who didn’t know her, or could tell how she’d changed.

A year after her stroke, Alex could have full conversations and began playing netball again. A decade on, Alex, who will remain on blood thinners for life, works in her family’s tea room.

Although her risk of having another stroke is much lower, Alex says she’d ‘just have to get on with it’ if she did have one.

‘There have been two times I’ve been in the hospital as I’ve had a headache that wouldn’t shift, but I’m checked pretty quickly due to my history,’ she adds.

Alex has also set up a stroke support group to help people like her.

‘I started it to help other people, but it helped me. I was speaking with people who completely understood me, my feelings, and what I had experienced. I realised I wasn’t on my own. We call it the best club to be in that no one wants to be in.

‘I’m very lucky I’m still here,’ says Alex. ‘I don’t think of the stroke as a negative thing, as I appreciate stuff more.

‘I’m feeling positive about my future, and I’m now pregnant, so a lot of change is about to happen again.

‘It’s scary after everything that has happened, but I’m taking each day as it comes.’