I can talk about the pain that I went through after my stroke and what my family went through on the other hand my husband and kids were deeply affected by my stroke and unfortunately my husband doesn't believe in talking about it he says that it brings back all the emotions that he went through during that time. I have tried to get him to at least talk to a psychologist about it but he has refused to do it. I have only been able to get him to open up about the pain he went through and it was after a long drive back from a funeral and we passed the hospital were I was hospitalized and he happened to remember the times that he was in and out of the hospital visiting me on a daily basis for 2 months and us talking about it he ended up breaking down and he was telling me about how scared he was and thinking about what would happen to him and the kids should I have died. To this day it still makes him emotional when he remembers how helpless he felt during that time and especially when my kids said can he please do everything in his power to make sure that I survive even if it means selling our house to pay for the hospital bills just to keep me alive. We had just been at our current house for 2 years when I had the stroke and the kids were saying that they wouldn't mind moving to a squatter camp and have the house sold to pay for the hospital but luckily it didn't get to that even though we had recently changed our medical aid because the old one and the new are managed by the same company they were able to pay for my medical bills. I remember that when I left the hospital before going to the Rehabilitation hospital the bill was already nearing R1 million. The only person that I saw my husband being able to openly talk to about my stroke is a fellow stroke survivor who has something about him that gets people to open up and share their deepest fears with him. His name is Barry Nkosi he is part of our team at Stroke Survivors Foundation.
