Struck down with a stroke in her thirties, Angela Storr lost the ability even to count to ten, lost part of her sight and speech and was made redundant. Chris Webber hears how she returned to school and fought back

"I REMEMBER being cold,” says Angela Storr, “really cold. I got off this bus and fell over. It’s all a blank until I woke up in a Greek hospital. Dave, my husband was somehow there. I kept calling him Mark, my ex-husband’s name. I was confused, thinking, ‘Where am I?’”

That nightmarish day is how Angela, of Stockton, remembers the day of her stroke, while on holiday in Greece, in 2003. She was 37 years old, happily-married, with a decent home and a good administrative job in a factory.

Angela, who describes her previous self as “active, always on the go”, was content with her normal life.

Now, suddenly, she found herself in a remote, basic hospital a long way from home and couldn’t even remember her own husband’s name.

The frustration of that was overwhelming and something that, despite all her improvements, Angela still feels every day. “I can’t deal with the phone well, my conversation is all mixed up, I’ll say feet for hands for example, and not understand why people can’t understand me. I’ll forget how old I am, what the year is, what I’m doing, it goes on and on.”

It took weeks to get home to Stockton from Greece after her stroke.

Dave, a nurse, remembers her sitting watching TV all day, but being unable to change the channel. She would walk round with a kettle in her hand, wondering how to turn it on. He would have to cook all the meals. On top of everything else she lost all the peripheral vision in her right eye.

THE effect on Angela’s confidence was devastating. The woman “always on the go” would stay in her home, day after day. Her first attempt at a fight back was the obvious one: to go back to work. The experience was to prove another devastating blow. “They did keep the job open and I did go back,” she explains, “but I couldn’t use the telephone, taking notes was hard. I ended up on the packing line, but I couldn’t cope, it was too much. I tried but then the news came, ‘You’re redundant’.

“I wanted the job and I still think if they’d have kept me on I’d have recovered better. I was depressed, but I could not take anything for it because I was already on so much medication.

I had to somehow deal with it myself.”

Angela, unable to find any other work and on incapacity benefit, found salvation by turning from worker to student.

She re-entered the world of education for a short beauty treatment class at Stockton Riverside College, but her fortunes really began to improve, very slowly, when she walked through the doors of Tees Achieve, a council-backed adult learning organisation which had classes on her home estate in Roseworth.

This time she was assessed for her disabilities and was granted a one-toone support worker. That helped her with her confidence and Angela took class after class. First it was beauty, but then maths, this for a woman who had not been able to count to ten, and then English for a woman who got mixed up between the words for feet and hands.

“It was hard, very hard, especially the English,” says Angela, “but anything was better than sitting doing nothing in that front room.”

Still she went on, indulging her love of cookery with courses over several years. Angela took on Indian cooking, Thai, Farmhouse bakery and a food hygiene course.

“It was great, lovely food every night,” laughs Dave. And, for Angela, every course made her a little happier, a little less depressed, as well as improving her self-confidence.

Then came another hammer blow.

The Government appointed a doctor to assess everyone on housing benefit, and Angela’s was removed.

“When the letter came it said “fit for work. End her benefit”. It was the usual. Tears. “Why always me?” The feeling of going backwards instead of forwards.

“It felt like an insult. I wanted to work, had always wanted to work, applied for job after job, so, so many.

I’d had placements, gave it my best, but struggled, especially with the phone, and got told, ‘No, we don’t want you.’ I just couldn’t keep up and there’s so many people with no disabilities after every single job.”

Knocked back again Angela used the knowledge she had learned. Dave would take her cakes and bakes to the hospital. They were so good people offered to pay for them, asking for Angela to cook to order. She went back to Tees Achieve and began selling them for a few pence to other students.

Word-of-mouth spread.

She sought more help, a business course at Teesside University, advice from the Northern Pinetree Trust on setting up a small enterprise. Angela explains it’s not a big business, really more of a hobby to keep her ticking over and making a bit of useful pocket money.

Still she applied for jobs. This time she enlisted the support of Mencap and the Shaw Trust who helped her find a few months’ work cleaning, a few weeks in Poundland, and she has just finished a placement at Asda, which may lead to permanent work.

At last her hard work began to pay off and Angela got a real confidence boost.

Educationalist Chris Vipond, who helped Angela for more than six years at Tees Achieve, had put Angela’s name forward for a regional award. The judges, impressed by Angela’s sheer tenacity, awarded her the NHS North East Learning to Improve Health Award at a prestigious ceremony in Newcastle. “It’s lovely, especially because they didn’t make me speak in public,” she laughs.

Angela knows there’s still a long way to go. “Losing the incapacity benefit was a blow, but I almost think it was a good thing now,” she says, “For others it must be the end of the world, and it nearly was for me, but, thankfully, I pushed me. I never thought I would work again, now I have hope.”