Oh yeah, the stroke story. While R is at my mum's and I've got my feet up...
Christmas 2012, we do the usual of seeing my family for Christmas Eve dinner then popping for breakfast on Christmas morning for presents. Car full of stuff - no room for travel cot or buggy, small car! - so 3 days of clothes, nappies (cloth) etc. R 5 weeks old so plans to stop and check him half way into the 2 hour journey blah blah. Drove up to MILs to stay in the spare room of her new house, she completed the weekend I went into labour (38 weeks) so boxes everywhere, no curtains up etc - standard new house chaos. We had a lovely Christmas, then left mid morning on the 27th to visit R's godfather and DF's god daughter (his dd) and their family about an hour on from the ILs. Stopped into SIL's about a mile away from MIL's to say goodbye to her and the dn's. DF said he had a headache so SIL told him where they were. He came back into the room to tell us he couldn't pick them up. His face had drooped down the left side, his left hand was limp and he was shuffling and couldn't walk properly. His voice was really really quiet and a little bit slurred and he was struggling to get the words out, repeating himself. The kids noticed (7 and 5 at the time) and seemed worried so SIL and I kept everything calm and I told df we should get him looked over on the way to our friends house and bundled him into the car. It didn't occur to me to call an ambulance even though I'd guessed exactly what was happening.
DF managed to direct me to the nearest hospital, about 25 minutes away. Luckily R was calm in his car seat for once, he hated it to start with. I sent DF in while I parked and got R out, met him in the waiting room. He'd staggered to a seat so I went to queue. R started squeaking from his seat so I went to get him, that got the attention of the receptionists who thought I was there for him so I said no, it's my partner, I think he's having a stroke. They must've hit the panic button because he was rushed straight through while I was giving details and pacifying R. There wasn't room for us to go through immediately and they whipped DF off for a CT scan(?) asap so I was taken to a sofa and brought a cup of tea so I could feed R. The CT scan showed that it was BP not a clot so the ambulance waiting to take him to the specialist hospital was cancelled and we hung around the A+E ward till they found a bed on the Stroke unit. Settled him in there then I got sent home, well, back to MIL's.
He was in for a week, learning how to walk, eat and talk again then discharged as a Virtual In Patient to our local hospital which at least meant he was home - we had daily visits from OT, SALT, Physio etc and weekly with the bp nurse while they got his meds established. That went on for about 8 weeks, then he was discharged. It's taken a year to get any further movement on rehab, although it is now happening thankfully.
Huge epic post, sorry 