FOR years, Alister Mejury joked they only illness that would slow him down would be a heart attack. 

So, the taxi driver was as surprised as anyone when he suffered a stroke, paralysing him down the right hand side and leaving him jobless. 

A year on he’s learning to live with his new limitations and taking each day as it comes. 

However, like thousands of stroke victims across the country, he feels he has been “abandoned” during the Covid-19 pandemic, left to the care of his sister, Angela, and YouTube tutorials to complete his rehab. 

“We’ve been abandoned,” said the 53-year-old. “Everyone else is able to do Zoom and Facebook and all that sort of stuff but the physios have all been taken away.

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“I’ve learned such a lot about strokes since having mine, thanks to the support. So, you can imagine going from that to absolutely nothing due to the lockdown.

“I want people to see this isn’t a death sentence and we can all live a good life. The hospital did everything for me but I just think once I was finished with that the community rehab was null and void.”

The Paisley man added: “In Canada, if you have a stroke, as soon as you come out of the hospital there is a full team to help you. There’s nothing like that in this country.” 

He’s joining calls from the Stroke Association, which argues the pandemic has left survivors with “avoidable, unnecessary disability and exacerbated mental health problems”. 

Of the 2000 people who responded to a survey, over two thirds of stroke survivors reported feeling more anxious or depressed during the pandemic, and 70 per cent were worried more about their health.

The report showed that 6 in 10 agreed they received less support from health and care services than usual.

Andrea Cail, director Scotland of the Stroke Association, said: “Strokes didn’t stop happening because of the pandemic, but some treatments became unavailable, making lockdown even tougher for those living with the effects of stroke. 

“A stroke is a brain attack. It happens when the blood supply to part of your brain is cut off and brain cells are damaged or die. 

 

“Every year in Scotland around 10,000 people have a stroke. Stroke kills around 2500 of those people.

“This report uncovers a lack of access to treatment across the whole pathway from acute treatment through to rehabilitation and long term support.

“We are urging the Scottish Government to act now.

A Scottish Government spokesman said: “We asked health boards to postpone non-life threatening elective procedures to allow vital NHS staff to be redeployed to support the response to the pandemic.

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“While we have begun safely and incrementally resuming services that have been suspended, delayed or deferred due to coronavirus,  the reality is coronavirus is likely to be with us for some time to come and restarting paused services has to be measured against the need to keep the virus under control, while continuing to protect the NHS and save lives.

“We are continuing to implement our Stroke Improvement Plan which set out our priorities and actions to deliver improved prevention, treatment and care.”