About me
I started Hugs & Hertz to support other people like me looking for more tranquility and calmness in their lives.
Being a professional mental health lead in eduction and responsible for safeguarding I understand the pressures and stress many of us face in the world of work which is often difficult to turn off once we are home with our loved ones.
In the past like many I would often use alcohol to unwind, eat junk food and crash out in front of the tv and doom scroll on my mobile phone.
STRESS IS A KILLER :
A few years ago I worked in secondary eduction which was at times a toxic environment. I could see a lot of injustices and often clashed with managers.
On a training day, I suddenly suffered terrible pain in my ear after hearing a loud pop. I started to feel unwell, clammy and dizzy. I managed to get through the latter part of the day before going home. Thinking it was nothing more than a virus giving me some sort of ear infection.
I couldn’t have been further from the truth, within a few days I started to lose my memory, the pain moving to my eye and scalp. It felt if something was pulling out my hair and buning my eye. The next morning my right leg was heavy and dead. I had a headache which was the worse I had ever had and knew something was terribly wrong. I made a visit to my doctor who red flagged me to hospital.
After having an MRI scan the consultant confirmed I was having stroke symptoms due to my carotid artery walls collapsing forming a blood clot in one of the main arteries feeding the left side of my brain.
I was in my early 50s wondering if was going to survive, wondering what had caused a sporadic artery dissection. The consultant said that I was lucky, sometimes within a few minutes it’s possible to have a massive stroke followed by death.
My blood pressure due to prolonged stress was the culprit.
It was then I knew things needed to change..