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| Kate Allatt A Rocky Stroke Recovery |
This is a great article from Peter Kay at the Sheffield Telegraph, of my life over the last 4.5 years.
‘Kate Allatt (right) and Alison French won’t forget Kate’s 44th birthday on 3rd June this year.
She has been invited to a Buckingham Palace garden party on June 3 in recognition of her founding the charity, Fighting Strokes.
It’s the latest accolade for Kate, who made a remarkable recovery from locked-in syndrome and is now giving people around the world the belief to fight back against strokes.
Winning an Extraordinary Woman of the Year award in 2011, she has developed a career as a writer and a speaker, recently a guest speaker of Cunard’s Queen Victoria on a Mediterranean cruise.
Kate, who lives in Dore with husband Mark and children India, 15, Harvey, 13, and Woody, ten, said: “My 40th birthday was not scaling Kilimanjaro, but lying in a hospital bed in the Northern General.
“If anyone had said to me in four years time, you will have written three books, Running Free being internationally published, developed a stroke support app and established a world respected internet-based advocacy charity and launched an international speaking career, I would have thought ‘no way, you’re having a laugh’. But I have.”
Kate will go to the Palace with best friend Alison French, also of Dore, who has been with her “every step of the way” since she survived a huge brainstem stroke with locked-in syndrome at 39.
She describes the effect as like “being buried alive, where you feel and think normally, but you can move nothing”.
Now Kate visits families and uses social media to encourage others with the message ‘No promises, just possibilities.’ She liaises with researchers and clinicians.’
We did have a fab day out!
The hotel was rather basic though it only rained for 10 minutes so I got full use out of my Audrey Hepburn-esque birthday present umbrella!! It also happened to match The Queens umbrella!
We did break the rules by snapping away most of the day, though I’m not publishing the real corker I took.
We got a fabulous view of the whole Royal party and came away feeling that we’d experienced something very special.
Buckingham Palace has wonderful grounds and a fabulous lake which seems very odd in the very centre of urban London!
The organisation and food was very slick for all those guests too!
We met some very interesting individuals and learnt the secret of how to make the best scon(e), as opposed to scone Alison!
After the garden party we hit South Ken’s fabulous wine bars in our fastenators on a Tuesday night, which caused quite a stir amongst the cosmopolitan Londoners, who were incredibly friendly.
The night was rounded off with two Long Island Iced Tea cocktails – perhaps not my best decision in retrospect. Still always look on the bright side for my long suffering friend, Al.
I actually didn’t speak all the way home to Sheffield on the train yesterday! So she was able to rest her ears!.
See the original article:
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