Coaching on poolside, in hideous humid warmth, for two and a half hours, darting between lanes, answering questions, watching technique, half-distracted by my thirst.
I filled my bottle, which was a litre down as I drank more.
Then, without warning, my vision went. It was not a gentle blur, not tired eyes — but a sudden, shocking patch of mangled confusion. Everyone I looked at on the left side of their face was horribly distorted – like Elephant Man. Then I realised it was an entire patch of vision as I couldn’t read a thing either—twenty-five minutes of it. The world is sliding partly out of sight.
I spoke to the Life Guard and called the Duty Manager to read about my efforts to get an answer from ChatGPT. The suggestion was to call 999. I spoke to a fellow coach and a parent of a swimmer—all were concerned, but I appeared otherwise well and stoical about it.
It faded, so I felt OK to travel home; otherwise, I’d have called my wife. Luckily, I got home without incident. At home, the nonsense started again, this time it was sound. Everything around me was far too loud, not up to much. I found Prometheus and decided to watch it, but I don’t understand why unknown, unrecognisable actors take all the parts. Maybe it was one in the series I’d missed? My wife came home, and she knew something was up. She called NHS 111 and then 999, and not long after, I was in the back of an ambulance driven at speed to Brighton.
The paramedics, a young female driver and an older male paramedic, were calm, professional, efficient — but I knew from their faces this was no routine call-out. With sudden vision loss, the fear is always the same: stroke, bleed, something in the brain. They clipped me into place, asked me questions, and monitored my every answer.
The siren and the flashing lights all felt strangely surreal, like being written into somebody else’s drama. Yet the fear was real enough.
The Trauma Ward
I was wheeled straight into the A&E Trauma ward and not left until I’d been seen. Questions, often asked several times over, by various doctors and nurses, all female, and eventually a consultant, also a women. I’m getting old; they all appeared young too.
I was parked alongside multiple other trolleys with their various occupants: an 85-year-old male who had broken his hip, a young man with mental health issues, confused and desperate to sleep (and snore), and others at various stages of being seen or not. A woman hit by a car, another woman drunk and aggressive.
My wife was soon to arrive and sat, and was shuffled about by my side for three hours, even trying to sleep slumped over my legs – constantly being woken and moved out of the way as the trolleys and their occupants were transferred this way or that, the four of us closest to the curtained cubicles the most urgent and to be monitored constantly. Others, all the most frail and elderly, had little processing – their diagnosis self-evident, they needed to be found a bed – extreme age appeared to be their status.
Told I had to be kept under observation for 12 hours minimum, Wanda headed home. She most thoughtfully left me with my phone, a charged spare battery, earphones and an eye mask. She had also grabbed a top, unwittingly grabbing the sweatshirt I wear when printmaking, which is covered in coloured printing ink. Never mind. Sometimes I wear it, sometimes not, the hospital was Mediterranean warm with staff lightly dressed in their colour-coded working trews and tops: grey for porters, navy blue for nursing staff and junior doctors (I think) and crimson or plum colour for consultants.
For the next 12 hours, I was prodded and physically tested: vision, grip, movement, and scanned and observed. An MRI revealed nothing – a good sign. Eventually, further scans and a lumbar puncture were dropped from the plan. The staff were relentless in their thoroughness. Nothing was left to chance. The splitting headache, a migraine was the diagnosis. I was declared dehydrated and put on a drip.
And while I lay there with my pounding, migraine-like headache, I found myself oscillating between fear and gratitude. Fear, because part of me still imagined the worst. Gratitude, because here was the NHS at its absolute best: attentive, meticulous, unflinching, and kind – though also chaotic, cramped and an environment hopelessly unsuited to being unwell: the bright neon light, the constant noise and throng of changing faces.
By morning, the conclusion was clear. Not a haemorrhage. Not a stroke. A severe migraine — albeit a ferocious one, with a visual aura so bad it imitated something catastrophic.
Release
Twelve hours after arriving, I was discharged. Unable to reach Wanda, I decided to enjoy the warm, bright sea air of Brighton and started to walk in the direction of home. I strode straight out of the hospital, onto the Downs, towards Brighton Racecourse. After all that confinement, I needed a horizon. I needed sky. I needed to reclaim my own legs.
Only later did I realise I had forgotten the prescription they’d given me — sumatriptan, to take at the onset of any future migraine—a safety net. I might never need it, but it’s wise to have it.
The Lesson
The episode has forced me to face a few truths. For me, migraine is rare. I am not one of those long-suffering colleagues who endure this week after week. But when it does come, it’s dramatic. And it doesn’t come from nowhere.
I had stacked my triggers:
- Too much caffeine.
- A hydration pattern that was all wrong.
- Fatigue after a long coaching block.
It was the perfect storm.
Since then, I’ve been told story after story by fellow coaches and friends who’ve lived with migraines all their lives and who recognised my description instantly. One of our competitive swimmer mums told me how she used to suffer constantly until she started adding electrolytes to her water. Something so simple made the difference.
So I’ve changed my ways. Yesterday, I took a litre of water with a bit of salt and sugar mixed in — a homemade rehydration solution. I’ve stocked up on bananas and prunes. I’m building balance into my days.
A Wry Coda
The final reminder came not from the doctors but from the postman. The morning after I came home, we received a Speeding Alert. In the chaos of following the ambulance, my wife — invited to drive behind rather than ride with me — had been clocked at 36 in a 30mph zone.
Perhaps she should have insisted on climbing into the ambulance. Maybe she should have followed later at her own pace. If it had been a stroke, being at my side would have mattered more than keeping up with the flashing lights. As it turned out, it was “just” a migraine — a very nasty one, but survivable. The speeding ticket was its final absurd twist.
Moving Forward
What I take from all this is simple: respect the balance. Know my limits—fuel and hydrate properly, especially on hot days. Keep sumatriptan nearby, but aim not to need it. And never underestimate how quickly life can turn from ordinary to extraordinary, from a can of lager in the sun to a blue-light dash to A&E.
If the story offers value to others, all the better. For me, it’s already a lesson written into my bones: migraines may be rare, but they are real. And avoiding another emergency ride is firmly in my hands.
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