Marathon effort to help charity

12:05pm Tuesday 1st April 2008

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A 51-year-old woman is running the London Marathon to support the charity which helped her following a brain haemorrhage. DAVID MILLS finds out more.

LAUREN Downie could not even remember how to make a cup of tea after she suffered a brain haemorrhage while playing tennis four years ago.

‘It was like an explosion in my head. The pain was excruciating.’

LAUREN DOWNIE

This month she is running in the London Marathon for the second time in two years.

Lauren, of Cloonmore Avenue, Orpington, will be raising money for the Brain and Spine Foundation, the charity which helped her recover.

She said: "It gave me invaluable advice on how to cope, but it was an uphill struggle.

"It was my bedrock throughout my recovery."

Lauren suffered a sub arachnoid brain haemorrhage in 2004.

This is when an aneurysm or a bulge in an artery in the brain bursts, and can lead to death at any time.

In 60 per cent of cases, it is fatal.

Lauren, a training programme support officer at Orpington Hospital, in Sevenoaks Road, said: "It was like an explosion in my head.

"The pain was excruciating, nothing like I had ever experienced before.

"I was lucky. I got to hospital quickly, was scanned and blue-lighted to King's College Hospital, where I was operated on the next day."

She added: "I was unconscious for a couple of days and when I came to I had short-term memory loss and was extremely confused by it all."

Lauren says it was hard work readjusting after her operation and it took a year before she was back to normal again.

She said: "Doing anything was totally exhausting. It was a struggle to even make a cup of tea."

By running the marathon, Lauren is hoping to drive home the message there is help available outside hospitals for people with a neurological illness.

She said: "One of the overriding factors of my experience was discovering how little support there is for people suffering from neurological conditions, ranging from my type of stroke to conditions suffered by people in every age group including ME, epilepsy, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and dementia, to name but a few.

"The Brain and Spine Helpline provided me with a lifeline."

The London-based foundation provides a helpline manned by trained neurological specialists to answer questions and support those who find themselves in a similar situation to the one Lauren was in.

For more information, visit the website brainandspine.org.uk and to sponsor Lauren, visit the website justgiving.com/laurendoesthelondon

WHAT CARE IS AVAILABLE?

• THERE are three-and-a-half million people with neurological disorders in the UK.

• Of the 760 acute hospitals in England and Wales, only 32 have neuro units providing doctors able to carry out specialised surgery.

• One in every 11 hospital beds is occupied by someone with a neurological illness.

• Out of 20,000 consultant specialists in the UK, 140 are neurosurgeons and about 500 are neurologists.

• There are no brain surgeons in the whole of Kent, Cornwall and north Wales.

• People with a head injury in Dover or Margate will be taken to King's College Hospital, London.