Strokewatch has had another successful year. We have seen the stroke service continue to improve, and we have regularly contributed to the Stroke Nurse Consultant’s training programme for NHS staff delivering the stroke service and also staff in private residential and nursing homes. For stroke patients and carers a new training programme has just started, with Val Cobbett and I providing the patient and carer perspective.

Dilys and I have attended all the meetings of the Stroke Working Group over the year and I would like to thank Claire Wood, chair of the Working Group, for taking Strokewatch’s views on board along with those of all the other members of the group.

This year I have given two talks at national stroke conferences, in London on 27th January and recently on 16th June in Birmingham. They are not easy but we must be doing it right as they keep asking us to do more. In March I also gave talks at Hull University to classes of some 35 – 40 student nurses, and am booked for two more in August this year.

The website is doing great and I would like to thank Shaun Foster for all his help. We continue to get requests for information and advice from people all over the UK and overseas. We do our best to respond to all of them, and are particularly pleased to hear from them that our Stroke Survival Handbook is becoming well known. Through our website you can see how the stroke service is progressing – have a look at Dinah Fuller’s Annual Stroke Service Report for 2003 and various other reports to do with the stroke service.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank Rachael Pymer, Dinah’s secretary, for all the help she has given not only Strokewatch but also myself personally. Her contribution has been invaluable.

Dilys is right when she says “Get real Strokewatch” we do have to move on and look at what we are doing we also have to get over our strokes and the past, move forward new faces and ideas are needed and that means new people are there any out there that would like to take over from us?

When Dilys told me she and Edgar were moving at first I was upset and then a second later I realised what they were doing was right their health has and must come first, that is something we all have to look at, what this is doing to us health wise. Dilys and Edgar need to retire in the true meaning and get their lives back. I for one have a lot to thank Dilys for she has taught me to think and not just jump as I used to, told me off when needed but always in a constructive way and led me in the right direction without Dilys at the start of all this stroke thing it would not have happened the way it has, a lot of strokesurvivors have much to thank Dilys and Edgar for this time I will not forget the carer in all this.

Dilys and Edgar find a place you like in Cambridge settle down and enjoy your lives together with your daughters and grandchildren around you, the time has come for you to be helped, you may be leaving strokewatch but you will never leave my friendship, the one thing I look back at and have a smile on my face is to the people when we first met who said we would never get on or work together how wrong they were, as we helped pull off a dream in this area on what a good stroke service should be from nothing.

I also have to look at what is happing to myself my health is not getting better, we all push too hard but do we have to? Strokewatch has to take a step back and look at itself and we are going to do that at a meeting in two days time, with new faces present. The one thing I want to do more then anything else is give my wife Pat her life back I have been very selfish for six years now, stroke has ruled everything and that has to stop.

There is one other lady that I have to thank as none of this would have happened if she had not called at my home one day in March 1998 she was and has always been at the heart of all strokewatch has done, for in the beginning there were only two of us I have talked to her late at night early mornings weekends and days off, I was never turned away she has kept my wife sane through all this for six years, and that lady is Julia Drury not just my family support nurse but a friend the kind you meet just a few times in your life. Julia is also moving on to do other work enjoy the new work, thank you so very much for everything.

MY ROLE AS CHAIRMAN WILL COME TO AN END IN THE NEAR FUTURE, I AM VERY PROUD OF WHAT WE AS A GROUP HAVE ACHIEVED DURING MY TIME IN OFFICE, AND I AM LOOKING FORWARD TO ENSURING THAT WE GO FROM STRENGTH TO STRENGTH, BUT IN ANOTHER ROLE.

Brian Archibald
Chairman Strokewatch Hull & East Riding of Yorkshire
16 June 2004