Liam Rudd and his girlfriend, Stella Slinger Thompson, moved out to Australia and shortly before he was due to start a new job he was found collapsed in a shower due to a stroke
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Brit forced to return home from Australia after suffering horror stroke
A Brit who saved up for a dream move to Australia is being forced to return home days before starting a job after suffering a major stroke.
Liam Rudd and his girlfriend, Stella Slinger Thompson, 28, moved to the Gold Coast in Australia and Liam had been ‘excited’ to start his new job as a fleet mechanic last month. But the 30-year-old suffered a stroke in the shower and fell to the bathroom floor paralysed on November 11 before Stella found him.
After being rushed to hospital, Liam had two rounds of emergency surgery to remove blood clots in his brain and was put in an induced coma. Now, the couple are being forced to return to the UK because the cost of rehabilitation in Australia is too expensive.
Doctors haven’t confirmed what caused the stroke but think it may be linked to a fibroelastoma, a benign tumour that can grow on the heart valves. Liam, who will be moving back to Guildford, Surrey, said: “It was a huge shock. I don’t remember too much from the lead up.
“I didn’t feel any symptoms coming on. I just remember having the stroke and being paralysed on the floor and scrambling and trying to pull myself up but being unable too.
“I was due to start a new job as a fleet mechanic for a fleet engineer company. I love work so I was disappointed. But at the same time there was nothing I could do to change anything so you have to embrace it. My plan is to go back to the UK to undergo intensive rehabilitation and then come back to Australia anyway. That’s still an open opportunity.
“I’m very fortunate. My employer’s been very understanding. I don’t think the opportunity is lost. The doctors expect a full recovery but it’s a long road ahead and will take an incredible amount of work to get to. You have to keep the mind strong.”
Stella, who works as an advertising producer and is from Brighton, was due to meet Liam for lunch with friends on the Sunday and became concerned when he was not answering his phone. After finding him lying on the bathroom floor she called an ambulance thinking he had a concussion.
Stella said: “It was insane. Even now I don’t think I’ve come to terms with it. This is a living nightmare. He was late picking me up. Usually he is a bit late so I didn’t think much of it. But I was calling him for over an hour. I would call then it would ring and it would pick up and decline.
“I thought ‘this is odd’. Then finally after an hour he picked up. He wasn’t making any sense. All I could make out was him saying ‘help’. So I rushed round and also called three of his friends.
“We arrived and found him on the bathroom floor. He’d had a shower clearly and fainted or hit his head. He was tapping his head and tapping the floor to communicate to us that he’d fallen. I called the ambulance. They gave me a note to put him in a recovery position because he’d been throwing up. We all at the time thought he had a really bad concussion. We didn’t realise at that point what it was.”
Liam became unresponsive in his left side and after arriving at hospital doctors revealed he’d had a stroke and needed emergency surgery to remove a blood clot in his brain. However, during surgery doctors found a second blood clot that was too ‘high risk’ to operate on immediately and he had to have a second surgery the next day.
Stella said: “Once we got to the hospital they rushed him into a surgery where they do an incision in the groin to retrieve any kind of blood clot. It usually should take an hour but it took eight hours because they found another blood clot that was too high risk to operate on. The first blood clot they operated on and tried to retrieve as much as they could.
“They called his mum and dad and explained it. Then they did the six-hour emergency surgery. They cut his skull to relieve any pressure in his brain. They felt like it went well. It was all about trying to save his life. The second surgery was a pretty sleepless night. It’s been pretty bleak. From then he was in a coma. They started to take him off sedation three days later. He slowly came out of the coma and came off all the tubes.”
The mechanic is currently being seen five times a day by doctors in a stroke ward and his partner visits him every day. While Liam’s emergency medical expenses are covered by the UK’s reciprocal agreement with Australia, it does not cover his rehabilitation process because he is not an Australian citizen nor does he have a sponsorship.
Stella said: “He’s in the stroke ward currently but as soon as he’s moved to the rehab ward that’s when the costs will start coming. Because he’s not a citizen or got a sponsorship yet, that from the rehab stage it would become very costly and a financial burden to the point where it’s £8,000 a week.
“They’ve advised that the best-case scenario is for us to go to the UK and get the rehab he needs back home where it is free because of the amazing NHS. We don’t know what’s going to happen. He could be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Who knows at this stage. It’s a lot of living in limbo and trying to stay positive but not really knowing anything.”
The advertising producer set up the GoFundMe page to help cover the cost of flying Liam home safely in business class before he will be taken to the nearest hospital. Stella said: “The support has been overwhelming. When we first launched it within 12 hours it was on £12,000. He, for the first time, got emotional and actually cried because he was so overwhelmed by the love and support he’s had. Doctors said in the meeting that he needs to fly business class. They need someone with him so I’m going to come back home as well.”
The girlfriend admitted Liam has ‘always wanted’ to live in Australia and it became their shared ‘dream’ and she hopes he will be able to return in the future. Stella said: “It’s so unlucky. He moved out here and was about to start a new job. He’s always wanted to go to Australia since the first day I met him. He’s always talked about it. We were like ‘right, let’s save up money and go out to Australia. Coming here we’ve made such a good group of friends. He was so excited about this new job and the offer of sponsorship.
“Staying here full time was the ultimate dream for him, and for us. It’s been unfortunate. We hope we can get him well enough to come back out here and continue his dream.” Liam’s mum, Mandy Mayhew, an estate agent who lives in Hayling Island, Hampshire, flew out to Australia for two weeks to be with her son once she heard the news. Mandy said: “I’ve never cried so much in my life. It was such a shock to everyone. They don’t know how it happened. They don’t know why it happened. He is super fit and he eats really clean.
“He’s a real warrior. From what we thought would be the first outcome which would be he was brain dead on his right-hand side and completely paralysed on the left-hand side to how he is now is extraordinary four weeks later. A long way to go but obviously extraordinary.
“How cruel is that. Apart from doing a degree which is hard and an engineering degree is very hard, he’s also been fixing people’s cars. He burns the candle at 100 ends. He spreads himself very thin. I said ‘that made you stop didn’t it’. He bloody does not want to come back but realises he has to. I don’t know what his future plans and dreams are. I really hope he goes back to where he wants to be.”
