60-year-old Martin had a stroke in February 2023.

Martin had been playing walking football that morning and even scored a goal for his team, before coming home and having lunch with his wife Joanne.

After lunch, Joanne and Martin were moving some bedroom furniture, and Martin sat down to take a break. It was at that point he realised something was terribly wrong.

Suddenly Martin was unable to speak, so Joanne called an ambulance straight away and the couple were rushed to Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust.

At the hospital, Martin had a thrombectomy to remove a blood clot from his brain, a life-saving operation only performed at two hospitals in the country. After the two-and-a-half-hour operation, Martin spent the next 10 days in hospital, including two days in intensive care.

Whilst in hospital, Martin was supported by speech and language therapy to help his aphasia and apraxia. Aphasia is a language disorder, that is common after strokes, affecting ability to use words in speaking, listening, spelling and reading.

The speech and language therapy team supported Martin to use technology to support his speech and language rehabilitation.

Martin’s wife Joanne says that his stroke had the biggest impact on his speech:

“After his stroke Martin couldn’t speak at all, and when he began talking again, he would get his words muddled up and the wrong way around. Over the past 16 months, he’s worked so hard to develop his speech, with the help of technology on the ward and in our home.”

More recently, Martin became an ‘expert by experience’ patient representative, supporting new speech and language therapy research funded by Leeds Hospitals Charity.

Thanks to donations, we've invested over £39,000 into a research project focusing on the recovery of stroke survivors who experience aphasia, led by Jen Thomson, Stroke Clinical Specialist Speech & Language Therapist.

The research is looking at the benefits of giving stroke survivors access to digital tools that support their speech and language therapy during their hospital stay.

Martin said:

“After having a stroke, early intervention is the best way to develop your speech and from my experience, having access to resources to support my recovery in hospital were so beneficial. The improvement I saw was transformational, and I think all patients should have the equal opportunity to use digital tools whilst in hospital.”