An allergic reaction to medication landed a young mum in hospital unable to recognise her own name until she had five blood transfusions.
Lucy Gourlay was just 28 when had a stroke at her Dundee home as her twin babies napped upstairs.
Lucy had taken an extremely rare reaction to tranexamic acid – a drug to treat heavy periods.
But this year, the gutsy mum will run the Edinburgh marathon to raise money for the Stroke Association and to prove it is possible to recover.
Lucy, 29, was alone at home with her tots Stuart and Skye when it happened, as husband Iain was in Norway with the Army.
She said: “I started to feel a bit funny. A really cold feeling came over me and I lost the feeling in my left hand. The mirror was in the hallway and I looked in it. I tried to smile but I couldn’t on one side.
“I was 28, don’t smoke , don’t drink that much and I am not overweight. I thought, ‘I cannot be having a stroke’.
At first, doctors thought she’d suffered a mini stroke but when the scan results came back they discovered she had three blockages from clots and within 24 hours her condition deteriorated.
Lucy said: “I was very, very poorly for about a week and had a lot of blood loss. I had to have emergency surgery and five blood transfusions before I was conscious enough to know my own name.”
Lucy added: “It took a lot of therapy to improve the effects of my stroke.”
The stroke has left her with a weakness on her left side and she has to concentrate to speak.
She also suffers from anxiety but she is in training to run the full marathon in May.
Lucy said: “I wanted to prove my body is still capable of doing these things. You can be a new version of yourself.”
